Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Rocksteady 87]

Middle Earth is literally not Europe. Christ.

I mean, it is. Tolkien has repeatedly stated that Middle Earth is our Earth, just before recorded history.

The focus of his stories is suggestive of Europe, particularly the north-west of the Old World, with the environs of the Shire reminiscent of England, but, more specifically, the West Midlands, with Hobbiton at the same latitude as Oxford.

Also literally's original usage was the same as what figuratively is now. If that's what you're inanely bitching about. It's even described as such in dictionaries, albeit as the informal usage of the word. So see that high horse you're riding? Maybe consider dismounting.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Remember kids, European culture is the only one that it's ok to appropriate and make your own.

We just had an Elvis movie come out, a Major figure that became famous off of appropriating African American culture, While I haven't seen the movie my self id be willing to bet they don't villainize Elvis for doing so and instead show it was ok for them to make it big off his appropriation.

[VMSmith]

Afrikaaners are colonizers who've lived in Africa a few hundred years, at most. Most white people in Africa are colonizers - which is why it isn't appropriate for them to play an African Prince of an isolated African country which was never colonized.

So you agree that history does matter? So the fact that Tolkien described the history of the people's of Middle Earth in a specific manner regarding racial depictions should matter? Because that's what people are saying, no one has said that they don't want black people on the screen at all.

Or was it supposed to be a straight historical piece?

It was a historical piece.

No one has a problem with things like West Side Story, an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet that has been transposed into a completely different setting where Latin gangs make sense rather than European merchant families, while still being basically the same story.

eta: sorry, just saw mod warning. I'll shut up now

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Middle Earth is literally not Europe. Christ.

And Wakanda is not really in Africa. Bring on Brad Pitt as T'Challa!

[Xath]

Because if they get the dress right, they'll get the shoes wrong, and so on and so forth - you can ALWAYS find SOMETHING that doesn't match, which is a basic reality of all adaptations. And it's especially egregious when it comes to details wholly irrelevant to anything in the narrative - demanding perfect accuracy is a pipe dream.

The shoes weren't described the robes were. Same with the book title they are just weird changes that don't add anything. If things are specifically described they should be followed within reason.

[Biomega]

The shoes weren't described the robes were. Same with the book title they are just weird changes that don't add anything. If things are specifically described they should be followed within reason.

One might argue that changing the color of a dress (when it has no bearing on the plot in any way) is entirely "within reason".

Book titles are usually changed for marketing reasons. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" apparently was deemed to sound too complicated and old-fashioned for US readers, so the publisher changed it to "Sorcerer's Stone" to sell more copies. One may disagree with that, but someone's got to sell those books. Authors who resist all such alterations tend not to be published authors for very long.

[InfiniteCharger]

But that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying bad writing is bad writing, and diversity doesn't excuse bad writing; and, in much the same way, good writing is not invalidated by diversity either. And there's no conspiracy actively pushing bad writing, it's just a corollary of people using a cheap cop-out of diversity to cover up shoddy writing jobs.

That says nothing about whether or not there are people actively pushing for diversity - there absolutely are. That's not what I'm talking about, though. I'm only talking about the quality of the writing, and that it should be called out if bad, no matter what else is going on.

It is fine if you are OK with it, but that doesn't mean everybody is going to like changes to source material, for diversity or otherwise. Like I said, Akira is set in Japan in the source material. No amount of good writing is really going to make me like an adaptation of it set in New York with American characters. And if they have to do a whole lot of extra writing and make up a bunch of new back story to make it work, they may as well not call it Akira and call it something else. I wouldn't care how diverse they made the cast because it is set in New York, it still would not be Akira. Its that simple. To sit here and argue that "good writing" can make it work is irrelevant to whether it is truly Akira, as that story really only exists in the source material. Either you are doing that story or you are doing something else. And sure I may somewhat like the result, but I wouldn't see it as "Akira" because that is a specific story, characters, settings and actions. Diversity doesn't provide for a "special exception" to that in my book.

Beyond that, most times the people changing the source material are not as good as the original author, so it goes hand in hand and is all part of the same issue. Diversity and Inclusion is just one example of it, but beyond that everyone has their own way of thinking about things, including stories and characters. So having a different take on something, because of the different people involved in making it, is fine. But that is still a different story and for some franchises that is perfectly fine, but this is totally different, especially when they claim to be "faithful" to Tolkien.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. I don't care how much people deviate, I only care about the end result - if it's good, then I don't care if it's 5% accurate; and in the same way, if it's bad I don't care if it's 99% accurate either. I want good writing, period. The rest is negotiable. In its entirety.

Whether you like it or not isn't the same as whether it is faithful or not and can really be considered an adaptation versus something "loosely based on" something else.. And again, if they are not going to be faithful they should stop trying to do this song and dance around it and just be up front about it. Literally they want the fame and prestige of Tolkien without being faithful to Tolkien and this is true for a lot of adaptations. Diversity or female empowerment doesn't give them a pass on that. So it is simple. When is an adaptation no longer an adaptation? If you are making so many changes you have to rewrite big parts of the lore from the source material, it likely no longer an adaptation.

Now, there does seem to be some CORRELATION between truth to the source and quality of the writing - mostly because if something is worth adapting, chances are it's already fairly good writing (though there are exceptions). The more you deviate the harder it is to get things right; but that's a matter of practice, not principle.

Quality of the writing is not what makes it an "adaptation". It is how true to the source material it stays that makes it an adaptation. It just appears that your way of defining adaptation especially 'literal adaptation' is very loosely defined.

Tolkien is already quality writing. The point of "adapting" Tolkien is to bring his already quality writing to life on screen not to showcase whether or not some other people can write something quality of their own that is totally different.

That's mostly a red herring to me. I don't care about the terminological quibbles over what's an "adaptation" and what is merely "inspired". Doesn't matter to me. Doesn't change how I view the result. Good writing is good writing, bad writing is bad writing - whether it's an adaptation or a reimagination or inspiration or whatever else doesn't interest me. Only the quality of it does.


That's also a red herring. ALL adaptions deviate in SOME way. That's not up for discussion, that's pretty much an unavoidable fact borne out of the different mediums and formats.

But that is your definition and everybody doesn't have to go by your definition. You are trying to force your definition of "adaptation" into being whatever you want when that simply isn't true at all. If you say you are "adapting" something, then that means you are sticking true to that source material to a large degree. Sure, there may be changes here and there, such as Peter Jacksons changes for LOTR, but he tried as much as possible to stay true to the source material. And as an example, if Tolkien said the elven armies were mostly men, then that means the adaptation should be the same. Changing it to the Elven armies were 50% women or led by a female general is just not an adaptation. That is just a completely different story using settings and characters from Tolkien but literally not an adaptation of Tolkien. And the Hobbit movies in many ways do cross the line between being an adaptation and an "interpretation". I don't mind someone doing an "interpretation" but to argue that no matter what someone does to the story it is still an adaptation is just objectively false.

Even if you care about accuracy (and I explain above why I don't really), it's never about "is this accurate", it's ONLY EVER about "HOW accurate is this".


And yet there's an entire catalog of things he DID change, including an egregious intervention in the plot with the whole Faramir thing. All adaptations change something. Period.

Again, you keep trying to use the argument that any changes to the source material are justified in an adaptation. That is false. Some changes just go so far from the source material as to make it no longer an adaptation. You just keep trying to equate them all as being the same in theory when they are not. Time compression in Rings of Power being one absolutely good example of that. It fundamentally goes against the mythology of Middle Earth and at that point is no longer Tolkien. Period. I don't care what justification they use or whether you like it or not.

Mostly because black people exist in the world, and saying to someone "sorry, you don't belong here" would need a VERY good reason - and "well it's just always been like this" just isn't one.

Black people exist in the real world. Middle Earth is a fantasy world. It does NOT have to reflect the real world. That is just fundamentally false. Whether you are OK with it or not doesn't change that.

Here I can refer back to my Julius Caesar example: you would have the exact same historic right to deny a Germanic-descendent person playing the role of Julius Caesar, because come on the Germanic tribes literally destroyed Rome they can't just suddenly be the most revered politician in Roman history. AND YET nobody ever gives a shit when that happens, and nobody cries about historical accuracy or anything you brought up.

Why? Because somehow, white or black skin is SOMETHING ELSE, and seems to be treated in a special way. And very often there's just as much - or rather, just as LITTLE - reason to exclude them.

That doesn't even make sense. If Julius Ceasar was white then any film with a black Julius Caesar is fiction, meaning that it is literally a different story and different character from the original. Because being black or white or anything else is based on biology, so you would have to explain how he was born black and how that worked in a Roman empire set in Europe that was mostly white and run by elites who were white. You are just trying to hard to say that any changes to source material in an adaptation of a work of fiction are justified because of "inclusion and diversity" when they are not. If Tolkien has a genealogy of the 2nd age and showing the family trees of important characters, then making a change biologically to someone in that also requires a change to that genealogy. And at that point when you are literally going against literal fictional biology it is no longer an adaptation. You can argue diversity is noble and honorable all you want, that still doesn't change the point. Just like the Akira example I gave above.

Because at the end of the day, accuracy only matters to foster the narrative. And if the narrative doesn't care, we shouldn't either. The only reason it upsets people is preconception and tradition, and it's easy to say "why do we need to change anything, it's not a problem for me" when you're the one who gets to have everything and be everywhere by default.

No accuracy only matters if it is being called an "adaptation" and "true to what Tolkien wanted". This is the part you keep dancing around because that is what I am talking about. I don't care if someone made a high fantasy story with all black elves and dwarves. That would be great! But it isn't Tolkien. If Tolkien didn't put that in his story, it really isn't "racist" and someone coming along later and adding it is not changing what Tolkien literally wrote. It is basically an all new and different story that is deliberately going against the source material for whatever reasons. And yes that does have consequences in this case because they literally changed up the entire timeline just to get two females together to play a dominant role in the story as warriors when they never were in the source material. No.... That is just not Tolkien is all I am saying.

And who then should be the gatekeeper of adaptational purity? Who gets to decide what can and can't be changed, and by how much?

The show runners literally said this:

In an expansive first-look piece from Vanity Fair, co-showrunner Patrick McKay revealed the driving force behind taking on the tale behind the making of titular rings. "Rings for the elves, rings for dwarves, rings for men, and then the one ring Sauron used to deceive them all," he said. "It’s the story of the creation of all those powers, where they came from, and what they did to each of those races. Can we come up with the novel Tolkien never wrote and do it as the mega-event series that could only happen now?"

https://www.cbr.com/lord-of-the-ring...n-never-wrote/

My point is no they are not writing the Novel Tolkien never wrote and are actually going very much against what he did write. This is what people are upset about, not some abstract definition of "purity". If Tolkien didn't write it and didn't describe it a certain way, then going and changing it and rearranging everything or compressing timelines is literally the exact opposite of what Tolkien would have wrote. You keep avoiding this and I keep saying this is a big reason people are upset about this series specifically. This is way beyond just some show that was created based on something else and changed as a result, because they aren't claiming their changes to be literally the same as the source material. While this is what is happening here.

At the end of the day the audiences are what drives behaviors. Don't reward shit writing with attention (i.e. money). Stop buying bad products. They'll change REAL quick if they realize it's not working. The reason they keep getting away with it is because PEOPLE LET THEM. Be a discerning, critical consumer. That's the only way they'll get your message (whatever that message may be).

I think this is just a case of audiences being tired of these people fixing what isn't broken. If there is an existing story that is popular then stick to that story and you will make money. In most cases that is just a simple thing. But to argue that oh we need to make this and that changes to something, in order to make it "popular", and then the people reject it, then maybe you should just admit that those changes weren't popular and stop trying to guilt people into why they should have liked it. If they already liked it as it was, then maybe you should just go by that. And if for whatever reason you can't do that, then maybe you shouldn't do it. That goes for anime, manga, Tolkien, video games or anything else.

I call bullshit on this. What are they "going against" that he wrote? Skin color was never more than a cosmetic detail for Tolkien. He never made it a theme or topic, never used it as anything but ancillary information in very few places. He didn't give a shit about skin color, because to him culture, language, etc. were the ACTUALLLY important things.

I gave you their literal quotes. You are just trying to use 'diversity' as some kind of special exception, in order to say that it still qualifies as being faithful, when it isn't. I gave you the example of Akira. It isn't just about white or black, it is about staying true to the story and characters as they are. Arguing just to argue isn't changing that, especially if you claim to be "true" to the source material.

You haven't even seen this show, yet somehow the existence of a few black elves or dwarves "goes against what Tolkien wrote"? Please.


Says who? If Frodo was played by a black actor in the original LotR and there were black hobbits around, HOW IN ANY WAY would the narrative change?

You're taking minor cosmetic details and blowing them up to be narrative elements they're simply not.

The story of the second age was substantially changed across the board in order to tell the story they wanted to tell and that includes the diversity element. You keep trying to separate the diversity element from everything else when it all goes together, just like the Akira example I gave earlier. The fact that they put black people in it doesn't give it some kind of special pass. That is just the stupidest BS I have ever heard in my life. If you want to make a black version of "LOTR" then fine, but don't claim that is what Tolkien wrote. It is not. Period.

Was I making that point? Anywhere?

My point is much simpler: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER what color someone is 99.99% of the time. There's a few isolated stories where it's of relevance, and I agree it's different for such cases, but for the vast majority of narratives it just doesn't matter one lick. Historical accuracy in a mythological narrative is worth fuck all, and basically completely irrelevant in almost every case.

And in fact a lot of stories ARE fungible across cultures, as people did when adapting stuff like e.g. the Pañcatantra across cultures for hundreds of years. Or look at stuff like Orpheus and the story of Izanagi and Izanami - completely irrelevant to the story that one is Ancient Greek and the other one is Ancient Japanese, the mythology works basically identically.

What you are saying is blatantly false and you know it. This just shows you are not following reality but making up nonsense arguments that have no merit in reality. If the Japanse myth is about a Japanese person doing things specific to Japanese culture, which is unique to them, then how is that not relevant to the mythology? If there are a lot of mountains and snow in Europe and the people are pale because of that, then how is the mythology of them and their white skin not relevant to that mythology? If there is a mythology about people in the desert involving dark skin and the sun as part of that mythology, then how is that not relevant? How is an Ice Queen white as snow going to make sense in a desert or tropical environment where everyone is black? You just are making up nonsense. If Tolkien mythology is based on European mythology where fairies and elves or other characters are described as white or pale, then how can you argue that it is not relevant to make them black?

Are there some mythological narratives that are easier to adapt and some that are harder? Absolutely. But that doesn't matter - the point is, they're not ALL FIXED, and they CAN be and WERE adapted across cultures for centuries.


The virtue signaling problem is a separate issue. I'm not okay with people mining diversity for profit if it comes at the expense of quality. That's counterproductive and potentially actively harmful to normalizing a more diverse society.

But that's a different debate, and not liking corporations engaging in excessive virtue signaling with badly written content does NOT IN ANY WAY translate to having a problem with diversity in principle.

Like I said before, it isn't about the quality of the writing that makes something a faithful adaptation. You seem to just be making up your own talking points on this instead of following the commonly accepted definition.



And like it says in this video, there is a legal distinction here.

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Read my post, the Point is exactly what it says with nothing else added.

OK, but why inject something irrelevant to what I am talking about?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

OK, but why inject something irrelevant to what I am talking about?

um, You replied to my post that wasn't replying to you and had nothing to do with you.

[Biomega]

Like I said, Akira is set in Japan in the source material. No amount of good writing is really going to make me like an adaptation of it set in New York with American characters.

You're free to hold any position, even unreasonable ones. I don't think there's a good justification for a hardliner stance like that, but you do you.

To sit here and argue that "good writing" can make it work is irrelevant to whether it is truly Akira, as that story really only exists in the source material.

That's a very narrow, essentialist argument. It runs into all sorts of logical consistency problems when it comes to ANY adaptation, because all can do is negotiate about degrees - or refuse ANY adaptation whatsoever.

Diversity doesn't provide for a "special exception" to that in my book.

Certainly it wouldn't, since you're rejecting ANY kind of adaptation. Which means there's nothing to discuss, you go that way, we go this way, and never shall the two meet.

Beyond that, most times the people changing the source material are not as good as the original author, so it goes hand in hand and is all part of the same issue.

I don't really care about probabilities. I don't judge things by how likely they are to be good, I judge them by how good they ACTUALLY are. You're free to just use sweeping generalizations, I'll stick to actually looking at stuff in detail as it comes into my view. Seems more reasonable to me than to have my mind made up going in.

But that is still a different story and for some franchises that is perfectly fine, but this is totally different, especially when they claim to be "faithful" to Tolkien.

That's another terminological quibble I want no part in; aside from the fact that I believe they did NOT claim to be "faithful to Tolkien" but rather that they're doing "their own story inspired by Tolkien", I really couldn't give two shits about what they call it. Adaptation, reimagining, whatever. It's not the original, so it'll always have some points of difference. What they call it doesn't matter, only how good the result is. I see little value in pre-judging things based on their label.

Whether you like it or not isn't the same as whether it is faithful or not and can really be considered an adaptation versus something "loosely based on" something else..

And I never claimed otherwise. I said I don't CARE if it's faithful or not or if it's an adaptation or not, not that my like or dislike somehow influences that categorization. That's a ludicrous notion I don't even come close to. I wonder if you actually read what I said to be coming up with nonsense like that.

Quality is all that matters to me. Not labels, not intent, or agenda, or whatever else. Call it adaptation, call it green cheese soufflé, I don't give a fuck. Is it good writing yes/no? That's all I'm interested in. I don't know how often I need to repeat this, since VERY CLEARLY it doesn't seem to be getting through to people for some reason.

Quality of the writing is not what makes it an "adaptation".

Another thing out of nowhere, that I never said or suggested in any way. This is very puzzling.

But that is your definition and everybody doesn't have to go by your definition.

Just like no one has to go by YOUR definitions either. Glad we got that cleared up. Not sure that was ever in question, but cool, let's say it anyway.

You are trying to force your definition of "adaptation" into being whatever you want when that simply isn't true at all.

This is just getting more and more bizarre. What is "my definition of adaptation", pray tell, when I basically just keep repeating "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU CALL IT, ADAPTATION OR WHATEVER ELSE, NOT INTERESTED, DOESN'T MATTER TO ME".

And now, somehow, I've put forward a definition of adaptation?

Did I slip through a wormhole or something?

If you say you are "adapting" something, then that means you are sticking true to that source material to a large degree.

See, YOU are making the definition of "adaptation" here, NOT ME! And that's a terrible definition, by the way, because "sticking true" and "to a large degree" are incredibly vague and ill-defined terms of no real practical use to any kind of definition.

But, for the n-th time, just to be clear: I don't give a fuck about terminology here, "adaptation" or whatever other label, screw that, not useful, discard, move on.

Again, you keep trying to use the argument that any changes to the source material are justified in an adaptation. That is false. Some changes just go so far from the source material as to make it no longer an adaptation.

It's like you're not even reading the stuff you're quoting. I even added in brackets that I don't CARE about accuracy OR what is or isn't an adaptation, and here you go, trying to make it sound like I'm defining adaptations. I'm at a loss.

You just keep trying to equate them all as being the same in theory when they are not.

Now THIS is just a straight-up lie.

I'm saying nothing of the kind. I'm saying I disagree with the CATEGORY, not that everything is the same. Just because I don't like to put a label on it doesn't mean I can't distinguish - in fact quite the opposite, I'm VERY discerning, I'm just looking at SOMETHING ELSE: the quality of the writing, not what terminology you use to label the work.

Black people exist in the real world. Middle Earth is a fantasy world. It does NOT have to reflect the real world. That is just fundamentally false. Whether you are OK with it or not doesn't change that.

Of course I'm talking about the real world. I'm talking about real, actual black people, and them being told "sorry you can't act in this, no black people in this setting" with no good reason. I'm fine with that if there IS a good reason, but so far no one has put any forward. We've had "but it's not exactly how Tolkien wrote it!" - which is bullshit because there's tons of stuff they don't do exactly the same that nobody has a problem with; we've also had "everyone knows what elves look like and they're not black" which is basically just arguing that biases are okay if they've been around for long enough; and oh yes, we've also had some people go "I know there's no good reason, it just doesn't feel right" which is basically just garden-variety racism without spelling it out.

If you have a GOOD reason for not letting black people play elves here, bring it.

That doesn't even make sense. If Julius Ceasar was white then any film with a black Julius Caesar is fiction, meaning that it is literally a different story and different character from the original.

Thank you for walking right into that one, I was hoping someone would.

Because guess what: any film in which Julius Caesar is played by anyone BUT Julius Caesar himself IS ALSO FICTION AND LITERALLY A DIFFERENT STORY by the same criteria you just put forward. All you're doing is giving skin color a special consideration over ALL THE OTHER differences between any arbitrary actor and the original person they're portraying, but you're not raising complaints about height, hair color, the distance from their nose to their chin, their nationality, age, whatever. You're fine with a 60-year old German dude born in the 20th century playing a 55-year old Roman from the -1st century, none of THOSE differences matter, BUT SKIN COLOR, OH NO, suddenly we've crossed a line.

We have a word for that, and it's fucking base-ass racism.

Because being black or white or anything else is based on biology, so you would have to explain how he was born black and how that worked in a Roman empire set in Europe that was mostly white and run by elites who were white

First of all, that's just not true. Feel free to look up race in the Roman Empire, it's a very interesting topic.

Secondly, all you're doing here is giving skin color special consideration - see above - which is nothing but racist fuckery. Accuracy is a smokescreen when you're entirely fine with 2,000 little differences but suddenly the color of the skin goes too far.

You are just trying to hard to say that any changes to source material in an adaptation of a work of fiction are justified because of "inclusion and diversity" when they are not.

Again something I never said anywhere and in any way. I'm saying I don't give a shit about things not relevant to the narrative. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything else is your invention. Talk about being accurate and true to the source!

The show runners literally said this:

You absolutely 100% did not understand what I said. Read it again, slowly. Use your finger if it helps. Your response has nothing to do with what I was talking about, not even close.

You keep avoiding this and I keep saying this is a big reason people are upset about this series specifically.

I keep avoiding it because I don't think it's relevant; I'm not interested in definitions of adaptation (hmmm did I mention this somewhere else already, can't recall) or in fighting over what is or isn't true to the source material. Don't give a shit. Is the result good writing? Yes or No. That's ALL that matters to me. And it's the same for diversity. I don't give a shit about what actors look like unless it impacts the actual story and its quality. If it doesn't, they could be green people from Pluto for all I care, if the result is good, then kudos, more power to them. And if the result is bad, then they could be the unholy actor-god love child of Daniel Day-Lewis and Helen Mirren and I'd still call a turd a turd.

I think this is just a case of audiences being tired of these people fixing what isn't broken.

And by "audiences" you mean "white people", because I can totally get why they don't think anything is broken or needs fixing. Have a talk with some black actors some day about what Hollywood is like, and the realities of casting and acting.

Hint: there's other people on the planet who may not be too happy with how things are. Telling them "come now, why fix what isn't broken?" is a slap in the face to put it mildly.

But to argue that oh we need to make this and that changes to something, to make it "popular" and then the people reject it, then maybe you should just admit that those changes weren't popular and stop trying to guilt people into why they should have liked it.

That's a VERY different discussion. I've said repeatedly that I have not a sliver of respect or understanding for anyone who uses diversity as an excuse to cover up bad writing. It's a terrible practice that deserves nothing but scorn and condemnation. But that doesn't translate into "trying to make things more equitable and diverse is a bad idea". Not in any way, shape, or form.

You are just trying to use 'diversity' as some kind of special exception to say that it still qualifies as being faithful, when it isn't.

This is really just getting insulting at this point. Are you trying to troll me or something? I cannot POSSIBLE be clearer about how little I care about whether or not something is "faithful" and here you go again, putting that term up on a pedestal as though it interested me one wit.

You need to work on your reading comprehension, like seriously. This is really, really concerning.

The story of the second age was substantially changed across the board in order to tell the story they wanted to tell and that includes the diversity element. You keep trying to separate the diversity element from everything else when it all goes together just like the Akira example I gave earlier. The fact that they put black people in it doesn't give it some kind of special pass. That is just the stupidest BS I have ever heard in my life. If you want to make a black version of "LOTR" then fine, but don't claim that is what Tolkien wrote. It is not. Period.

Ignoring for a second the horrific mass of non-sequiturs in this paragraph, you seem to - again - not understand what I'm saying. I'm talking about what in there "goes against what Tolkien wrote", which is NOT the same as "it's not the exact same as he wrote it".

Here's an example: let's say I write "everyone loved peaches, and that was a good thing". If you wanted to write something that GOES AGAINST what I wrote, it'd be something like "everyone hated peaches, and that was a good thing" or "everyone loved peaches, and that was a bad thing". But what it would NOT be is something like "everyone loved apricots, and that was a good thing", which is different from what I said, but does not GO AGAINST what I wrote.

We're talking about literature here for fuck's sake, the least we should expect is being able to actually parse a sentence or two.

What you are saying is blatantly false and you know it.

I'm glad you know my own thoughts better than me. Despite the fact you can't even read what I write properly, which I guess makes it quite the feat then.

This just shows you are not following reality but making up nonsense arguments that have no merit in reality. If the Japanse myth is about a Japanese person doing things specific to Japanese culture, which is unique to them, then how is that not relevant to the mythology?

You have no idea what those myths are actually about, do you. This isn't an example I pulled out of thin air. It's one of THE premier examples in mythological scholarship. It's been very well researched and extensively written about.

But you know nothing about this, you're just gargling vitriolic nonsense without information or expertise. This is an embarrassing statement you're making, quite frankly.

If there are a lot of mountains and snow in Europe and the people are pale because of that, then how is the mythology of them and their white skin not relevant to that mythology?

How IS IT relevant to a particular myth? And how do you explain myths traveling from the Indian subcontinent through the Middle East and the Levant and to Europe, being adapted along the way without any problems DESPITE the cultural and physiological differences involved? Because that's EXACTLY what happened with things like the Pañcatantra.

Which, again, you know nothing about because you've never actually looked into this or researched it in any way, and are just farting out nonsense statements that even the most cursory look at the scholarship would unmask as exactly the kind of ignorant babbling it is.

This is making me angry.

Like I said before, it isn't about the quality of the writing that makes something a faithful adaptation.

Cool. And if I gave a fuck about faithfulness OR adaptation labels, that might interest me. But I don't. As I've now said a tentative >9,000 times.

You seem to just be making up your own talking points on this instead of following the commonly accepted definition.

DEFINITION FOR WHAT, THE THING I SAID I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT AND AM NOT INTERESTED IN NOR DEFINING IN ANY WAY?

Talk to me about adaptations again, I double-dare you.

[InfiniteCharger]

You're free to hold any position, even unreasonable ones. I don't think there's a good justification for a hardliner stance like that, but you do you.

That statement doesn't even make sense as if saying Akira should be set in Japan is 'hard line'.
So I guess it wouldn't matter if LOTR was set in the jungles of Central America to you then?
It can still be Tolkien with good writing!!
LOL.

[Biomega]

That statement doesn't even make sense as if saying Akira should be set in Japan is 'hard line'.
So I guess it wouldn't matter if LOTR was set in the jungles of Central America to you then?
It can still be Tolkien with good writing!!
LOL.

Don't distort things, you plum.

I'm talking about the statement that "No amount of good writing" could make you like an adaptation in a different setting. Which is a borderline psychotic overgeneralization, and calling it "a hardliner stance" is quite frankly being kind.

[InfiniteCharger]

Don't distort things, you plum.

I'm talking about the statement that "No amount of good writing" could make you like an adaptation in a different setting. Which is a borderline psychotic overgeneralization, and calling it "a hardliner stance" is quite frankly being kind.

And it is not an over generalization to say that you would like LOTR that is set in the jungles of Central America, because of good writing!!
Your words not mine. Otherwise you are contradicting yourself.

[Xath]

One might argue that changing the color of a dress (when it has no bearing on the plot in any way) is entirely "within reason".

Book titles are usually changed for marketing reasons. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" apparently was deemed to sound too complicated and old-fashioned for US readers, so the publisher changed it to "Sorcerer's Stone" to sell more copies. One may disagree with that, but someone's got to sell those books. Authors who resist all such alterations tend not to be published authors for very long.

I am talking about the title of the book that contained information about Gillyweed that Moody planted but Harry was too prideful to ask his dormmates for help with the second task so it went to waste. Not the title of the movie/book itself.

The thing is it wasn't a dress at all in the book it's just an odd change and significantly takes away from the wizardly aspect of the ball.

[Adamas102]

So you agree that history does matter? So the fact that Tolkien described the history of the people's of Middle Earth in a specific manner regarding racial depictions should matter? Because that's what people are saying, no one has said that they don't want black people on the screen at all.

Real history that affected real people? Yeah, that can be important. Fake "history" of a make believe world? Not so much. Tolkien's legendarium isn't fucking history. It's fiction through and through.

As for Anne Boleyn, the show is a drama. An entertainment piece where actors act out a story. Not a documentary meant to educate people about history. It's about as much a "historical piece" as The Tudors was, where they let Henry VIII remain slim throughout its run to maintain the show's sex appeal (among many other historical inaccuracies which didn't detract from it being an entertaining show).

[VMSmith]

And the Hobbit movies in many ways do cross the line between being an adaptation and an "interpretation". I don't mind someone doing an "interpretation" but to argue that no matter what someone does to the story it is still an adaptation is just objectively false.

The Hobbit movies are absolutely more in the "interpretation" camp. I'd go so far as to say they are more of the "inspired by" sort of re-telling. They play fast and loose with the existing story, add hours upon hours of non-canonical story, create characters that never existed in the story and are absolutely unnecessary to the actual story of The Hobbit, simply to pad out the runtime for three movies. They weren't political-agenda driven changes, IMO, but they warped the story as they pleased to tell the story they wanted to tell, not Tolkien's story.

And those movies have been hammered ever since the first one came out, and not just by Tolkien purists. But fans of Tolkiens works overwhelmingly hate that trilogy of movies and have never been ashamed of being extremely vocal about it. It had nothing to do with skin color or gender of anyone and everything to do with the fact that they were categorically NOT Tolkien's actual story except in the most necessary of ways. Where the LoTR movies succeeded by only changing where absolutely necessary for the medium of film, The Hobbit movies failed because they wanted to tell someone other than Tolkien's story while using the skeleton of Tolkien's story.

What you are saying is blatantly false and you know it. This just shows you are not following reality but making up nonsense arguments that have no merit in reality. If the Japanse myth is about a Japanese person doing things specific to Japanese culture, which is unique to them, then how is that not relevant to the mythology? If there are a lot of mountains and snow in Europe and the people are pale because of that, then how is the mythology of them and their white skin not relevant to that mythology? If there is a mythology about people in the desert involving dark skin and the sun as part of that mythology, then how is that not relevant? How is an Ice Queen white as snow going to make sense in a desert or tropical environment where everyone is black? You just are making up nonsense. If Tolkien mythology is based on European mythology where fairies and elves or other characters are described as white or pale, then how can you argue that it is not relevant to make them black?

Reading this I think of the movie Moana, which was a wonderful film. The thought of including white people in a Pacific Islanders' tale makes no sense whatsoever and would only have served to distract from the film. There's nothing wrong with telling stories of people of specific racial/geographic origins and making the characters look like the people in those areas. It's actually amazing because it introduces us all to the diversity in the world that we may not be aware of. But, for some reason, it's acceptable to erase these people whenever they are of European origin, and none other. And when you dislike the fact that this one group of people are made acceptable to erase and must justify their inclusion in things to a standard no other ethnicity is held to and seek actual equality, you are called "racist".

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Real history that affected real people? Yeah, that can be important. Fake "history" of a make believe world? Not so much. Tolkien's legendarium isn't fucking history. It's fiction through and through.

So we're back to Brad Pitt as Black Panther being ok, then? Because you folk have argued that it makes no sense for T'Challa to be white and would be unacceptable. Mind yourself on that hypocrisy.

As for Anne Boleyn, the show is a drama. An entertainment piece where actors act out a story. Not a documentary meant to educate people about history. It's about as much a "historical piece" as The Tudors was, where they let Henry VIII remain slim throughout its run to maintain the show's sex appeal (among many other historical inaccuracies which didn't detract from it being an entertaining show).

You just have a special reason for every example of why it's ok to erase white people and promote others, don't you? In one breath you say real history is important, in the next you say it's "entertainment". It all depends on what you need in the moment to promote your racist ideology, isn't it?

[Adamas102]

So we're back to Brad Pitt as Black Panther being ok, then? Because you folk have argued that it makes no sense for T'Challa to be white and would be unacceptable. Mind yourself on that hypocrisy.

Yeah, if you're ignorant enough to not understand that even though Wakanda is a fictional location it was a deliberated decision for it to be representative of African peoples and cultures as an advanced technological civilization in a continent that was raped and pillaged by predominately white colonial powers then maybe you'd think it's hypocritical to say that a white person being the main representative of said fictional nation doesn't really work.

Alright, now this part is reeeeeally important, so even if you ignore the rest of my post then at least let this part sink in:
So, you do realize that all the actors in the Anne Boleyn series are British as well, right? Even though it's just a drama it's still kinda part of their history, too. Do black British people not really count as British in your eyes? You want to talk about racist ideology, well here it is because this is a blatant attempt to forever keep minorities as second class citizens. Born and raised in Britain, but forever "wrong" to be cast in anything even resembling historical drama for their home nation. They'll always be too Indian, or too Jamaican, or too Ghanaian for you and all the other assholes in this thread trying their best to argue that this entirely fictional world should remain racially "pure". THAT is racist ideology.

For another example to bring it back to RoP, Sir Lenny Henry, born and raised in England, has been knighted by the queen and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to British drama and comedy, but certain shitstains in this thread would still say he’s unfit to EVER play a fucking hobbit because in their narrow minded view Tolkien only dedicated his fictional works to white England…

You just have a special reason for every example of why it's ok to erase white people and promote others, don't you? In one breath you say real history is important, in the next you say it's "entertainment". It all depends on what you need in the moment to promote your racist ideology, isn't it?

First off, I'm not going to fault you for not having read all my other posts (I certainly don't read all the posts in this thread either), but I've said multiple times that I have no problem with all the elves, hobbits, and whatnot in this show being played by white actors. No problem. When I say that the skin color of these fantasy races is irrelevant to the story, that goes all ways. If the cast is all white, fine by me. If the cast has some people of color, fine by me. If the cast is all people of color, still fine by me. Now on to my next point...

Seriously? Erase white people? The fuck are you smoking to think having a bit more representation here and there in stories that aren't racially relevant is ANYTHING on the level of things like the blackface, whitewashing, caricaturing, and stereotyping that went on for generations in a concerted effort to disenfranchise and marginalize minorities in media. Go read a goddamn history book on racism in media before you spew out any more overly dramatic, incredibly ignorant bullshit.

[Nerovar]

And I'm not saying it is. I'm sure there's lots of issues. My point isn't that skin color is the ONLY issue, it's that it's given SPECIAL ATTENTION for no apparent reason considering it's a cosmetic detail like a gazillion others (in most cases) but while all those get handwaved away with not a care in the world, this one does not.

That doesn't mean there aren't other problems, but this debate - as you yourself said - is about this particular one.

Sure? And I've already given you reasons why this might be the case so why are you bringing this up?

And yet I'm sure you have NO PROBLEM with other minor details being not "the way Tolkien describes it". If he describes Erkenbrand's shield as red and it's grey in the movie, does that really bother anyone? If someone's horse is described as piebald but is actually dapple in the movie WHO THE FUCK WOULD CARE?

Clearly it's NOT about perfect accuracy, because some things are more important than others - and I want to question why skin color is suddenly so important, when on a narrative level it's basically as relevant as a horse being dun or bay, and nobody ever cries foul on THAT.

Well, it is more important on the level of world building because it is incongruent with what people know about the history of middle earth and it's ethnic groups. A mistake like getting the colour of a shield or horse wrong is not indicative of anything beyond that immediate thing. But if you see a character played by a POC actor walking around in Rohan you might question "does he have some ties to Harad?" because while not explicitly important to the narrative, race still exists in terms of world building and POINTS to other things like allegiance, heritage etc. whereas the colour of a shield does not. Now this is of course not necessarily true for everything. Changing a character's hair colour could be just as important in some cases.
It's the same thing with having female characters that (for all intents and purposes) act as male even though they live in a gendered society where women have a different position from men. Gender (like race) points to other things in a setting like that so breaking that mold without any sort of explanation will naturally be perceived as a jarring deviation because it makes the world seem less genuine.

Why is historical accuracy more important in a HISTORICAL setting than in a fictional one?

Tough one.

You're repeating the truism but you're not engaging with the point. When the author treats his fictional world as if it is history in order for it to have the internal consistency required for the reader to engage with it as if it was 'real' why engage with it differently? This is basically the distinction Tolkien makes between a successful secondary world and one that "failed" and thus requires willing suspension of disbelief.

You do not know anything about Japanese history, do you. The racial makeup of Japanese society was a MAJOR theme all through the Sakoku periods and beyond. It became a national obsession in the Meiji period.

No and I don't very much care when it's immaterial to the point. I qualified it with pre contact with Europeans and said without racial antognisms as we know them. So what's the point of this quip? Desperate to look smart?

But sure, let's humor the ill-informed take: no, in a narrative that ACTUALLY doesn't involve any of that, I have zero problems with diverse casting. Bring out your black and Asian Romans or whatever. Don't care. A Chinese actor playing Julius Caesar bothers me not one bit more than a German one doing it, unless the narrative makes it matter.

Except that wasn't the question. I didn't ask if you would be okay with a black/chinese Julius Caesar. I asked if you think that it would be unreasonable for other people to take issue with it.

When it comes to the actual structure and dynamics of narratives, yes, absolutely. Most people know fuck all about narratology.

What's wrong with that? You wouldn't trust Johnny Random to explain to you how a nuclear reactor works, yet somehow everyone is equally qualified to dissect the sociocultural complexities of a narrative? Get real.

Not what we were talking about. You don't need to study literary science to know if a fictional world is adapted in a faithful way. A layman doesn't need to know what the word "diegesis" means to figure out that there are no cars in middle earth. Does this mean they will understand if e.g. the Christian themes of Tolkien are being respected? Not likely. But that's not what we were talking about.

But that's not what your original response said, at all. NOW you're actually quoting, before you were just making shit up. Also, I did not equate things simply like that; and to portray it as though I did is some serious bad-faith arguing. If you want to quote (which I encourage) do it correctly. I could take some statements you made, too, and just put a = in between to make you sound like a buffoon.

Feel free to rephrase it then if you think I'm mischaracterizing you.

I'm fine with people just admitting they don't like something. I'm all about honesty in that respect - what I have a problem with is people PRETENDING they have good reasons when they don't. If you just want to say "I know it doesn't matter for the story, but it bothers me that there's a black person in there", by all means. You do you.

I'm not the racism police. I'm just pointing out when people portray certain points to be what they don't seem to actually be.

You can totally hold the position of "I don't want to see black people in my fantasy because I don't like that", with all the consequences that come with it.

You're not the racism police. You're just trying to railroad everyone who takes issue with this deviation from the original setting into admitting to be racist "with all the consequences that come with it". Come on, dude.

It'd be great to get something more than "it's just jarring, idk man", because that is - again - just saying "I know it doesn't matter, but it's bothering me" which is exactly what I'm getting at: people's biases at work.

I'm just asking to clarify: You think the gender swap example would be okay then and people disagreeing with it would be merely do so based on their sexist biases?

I'd suggest you read the sentence again, because that's not what I'm saying.

I'm not saying "no one has a problem WITH ANYTHING BUT skin color", I'm saying "there's a great number of problems nobody has a problem with, but they DO have a problem with skin color". Those are not identical statements, because I in no way exclude OTHER problems also being relevant, like you're trying to make it sound like.

This is the whole Instagram meme where someone goes "nobody has a problem with oranges yet somehow they hate kiwis" and your reply is "SO YOU'RE SAYING PEOPLE ONLY HAVE PROBLEMS WITH KIWIS? WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO HATE LEMONS, YOU IDIOT!".

I have to respond like this because you present this as a very vague generalization. I don't know which deviations you are talking about that "nobody" cares about but I'm pretty sure for every single one you can find people complaining in some forum. As to why it receives more attention, I think I have already answered that above.

I have a problem with commercial exploitation of virtue-signaling, too; especially if it's used to gloss over poor quality. But me hating the exploitation of diversity doesn't mean I hate diversity, and I like to be very clear about how those are, indeed, very distinct problems that can't just be conflated.

Cool. Neither do I. I very much like diversity when it suits a setting. However, it's not a requirement or even a moral necessity for me to force it onto fictional worlds that aren't really compatible with it.

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Your last post has quotes which are falsely attributed to me but belong to @InfiniteCharger

[Adamas102]

Well, it is more important on the level of world building because it is incongruent with what people know about the history of middle earth and it's ethnic groups. A mistake like getting the colour of a shield or horse wrong is not indicative of anything beyond that immediate thing. But if you see a character played by a POC actor walking around in Rohan you might question "does he have some ties to Harad?" because while not explicitly important to the narrative, race still exists in terms of world building and POINTS to other things like allegiance, heritage etc. whereas the colour of a shield does not. Now this is of course not necessarily true for everything. Changing a character's hair colour could be just as important in some cases.

The implication being that too many people are too ignorant to see a POC without automatically assuming that they don’t belong, regardless of context. I mean, which Harad are we talking about anyway? The literary one that was more inspired by Ethiopia, or the Arab version from the movies? Or does it not really matter because anyone with lighter skin than “fair as silver and snow” is just going to be part of the faceless horde of “other” anyway?

That also kinda falls apart when the people of color are playing elves, dwarves, and hobbits (decidedly NOT human characters that should not at all be confused with Haradrim by people familiar enough with the books to even know who Haradrim are to begin with).

I very much like diversity when it suits a setting.

See my post above for why this argument is a dangerous one to use since it strips identity from a lot of people simply for not being the right skin color.

This is just drama and entertainment, after all. The literature and history aren’t being erased, nor do the demographic breakdowns of ages long past need people like you to stand up for them.

[Biomega]

Sure? And I've already given you reasons why this might be the case so why are you bringing this up?

Because YOU ASKED.

Well, it is more important on the level of world building because it is incongruent with what people know about the history of middle earth and it's ethnic groups.

Based on what, the three times skin color is mentioned in passing? You have one reference about "dark humans" in the East, and suddenly ANY dark human ANYWHERE could ONLY have come from the East?

That's exactly how racism works, friendo.

You're repeating the truism but you're not engaging with the point.

Which should be a clue. Apparently it isn't. Mull it over some more, you'll figure it out.

No and I don't very much care when it's immaterial to the point. I qualified it with pre contact with Europeans and said without racial antognisms as we know them.

You're trying to create a situation that didn't exist, and was never real. The point here isn't "to sound smart", it's to show you that you KNOW FUCK ALL about the topic, and that's why in your mind your ludicrous concoction makes sense - when it doesn't to anyone who's actually familiar with what was going on.

THAT'S THE POINT - to show you that you're doing nothing but construct fallacious illusions of a history that was never the way you want to make it out to be, and only SEEMS that way to you because you're approaching it full of bias.

Except that wasn't the question. I didn't ask if you would be okay with a black/chinese Julius Caesar. I asked if you think that it would be unreasonable for other people to take issue with it.

Since you're apparently not capable of abstraction: no I don't think it's reasonable for other people to take issue with it, UNLESS it's relevant to the narrative in which case I take issue with it, too, and so should others.

Not what we were talking about. You don't need to study literary science to know if a fictional world is adapted in a faithful way.

I'll throw the "not what we're talking about" right back at you. Faithfulness of adaptations is a red herring. It's meaningless because ALL adaptations differ, and it's purely about how. This is about much more complicated issues than "the dress is red in the book but blue in the movie", which to most average people are not going to be either easily accessible OR immediately obvious.

QED, really.

Feel free to rephrase it then if you think I'm mischaracterizing you.

You're changing MY words, and then you want ME to go and rephrase what I said?

That's pretty bold for someone who goes black people = just jarring to me, don't know why don't know how, just are.

You're not the racism police. You're just trying to railroad everyone who takes issue with this deviation from the original setting into admitting to be racist "with all the consequences that come with it". Come on, dude.

If there is no good narrative reason, then demanding that certain skin colors not be present IS racist, yes.

Not sure why that's a big problem, but I guess for some people skin color really does just create visceral responses they're not ready to deal with.

I'm just asking to clarify: You think the gender swap example would be okay then and people disagreeing with it would be merely do so based on their sexist biases?

If there is no narrative reason, then yeah it would just be bias. If it doesn't matter to the story, then swap away. And if you have a problem with it, you better have a GOOD reason, and "I have no reason I just don't like it" is EXACTLY what you said: a sexist bias.

I have to respond like this because you present this as a very vague generalization. I don't know which deviations you are talking about that "nobody" cares about but I'm pretty sure for every single one you can find people complaining in some forum.

Really? You think any complaint has validity just because ONE person SOMEWHERE complained about it at some point?

But sure, let's humor the bad-faith take anyway: what I'm talking about are minor cosmetic details that practically no one ever notices: hair color, eye color, someone being an inch too tall or too short, someone being a few years older or younger, someone not having crooked teeth, whatever. Cosmetic shit of no relevance that is broadly accepted as a quotidian deviation from the original of no relevance, except that it fits the EXACT SAME claims of "not faithful to the original" that people use to argue against skin color.

However, it's not a requirement or even a moral necessity for me to force it onto fictional worlds that aren't really compatible with it.

And the entire argument boils down to which settings really AREN'T compatible with it, and which settings are, but people make up bad reasons to claim otherwise. Like somehow a black elf means people are confused about whether or not they're evil, and that's not racist no no no it's all IN THE TEXT.

[Nerovar]

The implication being that too many people are too ignorant to see a POC without automatically assuming that they don’t belong, regardless of context. I mean, which Harad are we talking about anyway?

This has nothing to do with people being ignorant. If anything, you're the one who is ignorant of the history and peoples of middle earth.

The literary one that was more inspired by Ethiopia, or the Arab version from the movies? Or does it not really matter because anyone with lighter skin than “fair as silver and snow” is just going to be part of the faceless horde of “other” anyway?

That also kinda falls apart when the people of color are playing elves, dwarves, and hobbits (decidedly NOT human characters that should not at all be confused with Haradrim by people familiar enough with the books to even know who Haradrim are to begin with).

Ignoring that the appearance of Elves is explicitly described, this would only shift the problem. Why would Elves and Dwarves living in the same parts as Men look "diverse" when the appearance of Men is tied to geography?

See my post above for why this argument is a dangerous one to use since it strips identity from a lot of people simply for not being the right skin color.

I'm sorry but if you think it is dangerous that some people expect actors to roughly represent the look and feel of a certain time period or fictional world, you have lost the plot. It's not any more racist than me (as a dude) not being able to play Catherine the Great is sexist.

This is just drama and entertainment, after all. The literature and history aren’t being erased, nor do the demographic breakdowns of ages long past need people like you to stand up for them.

I don't know who you are talking to. I never claimed that anything is being erased and I'm not standing up for anything except my own preference when it comes to being faithful in portraying secondary worlds.

[InfiniteCharger]

Reading this I think of the movie Moana, which was a wonderful film. The thought of including white people in a Pacific Islanders' tale makes no sense whatsoever and would only have served to distract from the film. There's nothing wrong with telling stories of people of specific racial/geographic origins and making the characters look like the people in those areas. It's actually amazing because it introduces us all to the diversity in the world that we may not be aware of. But, for some reason, it's acceptable to erase these people whenever they are of European origin, and none other. And when you dislike the fact that this one group of people are made acceptable to erase and must justify their inclusion in things to a standard no other ethnicity is held to and seek actual equality, you are called "racist".

Streaming is a global phenomenon and these services are in almost every country around the world, yet they don't hire and promote that many artists and creators from all over the world to make new content. In their minds, they still believe that European centered stories and programs, including those from the Americas, are the gold standard for entertainment for everyone around the world. Therefore including non Europeans in those stories, when they literally shouldn't be there, is just pushing European culture and history as the default for everyone and not really about promoting diversity. Sure, I can go watch Korean fantasy shows on streaming or Chinese fantasy shows where diversity isn't a prerequisite, but those shows are mostly just licensed from those countries not truly created by the streaming services in house.

Therefore, given that, adapting a fictional story set in an a world based on African culture and history is not a priority. Because they know that most of their money comes from European and American audiences and would rather take the lazy route of randomly including black folks in European stories to get a wider audience. That means they don't see the need to adapt any of the numerous stories, myths and legends based in Africa or even Native American ones because they feel it is too niche, for the cost. Because in reality the idea that somebody needs to see themselves in these stories based on their skin color or other attributes is something mostly made up by the executives, social justice degree employees and leftist academics. That has never been true in real life, but that is why they put so much effort into marketing this stuff a certain way to make it seem more important than it really is. For them, being able to change Tolkien then becomes the holy grail of such made up "achievements" as if it is special and important to anyone but themselves that they changed characters for this reason. It is only important to them because it represents a very lofty achievement in European fantasy literature and therefore as part of indoctrinating everyone into seeing European culture as the pinnacle of creativity, they need to inject these things into it. Not to mention it is simply lazy because they know Tolkien is already popular so they can spend less time and effort than actually creating something new and diverse from scratch. Which results in this idea that you only to see yourself in European culture and history no matter if your history and culture is not from Europe. And that is as offensive in many ways as what they claim to be "fighting" against.