I am genuinely trying to understand the “Galadriel is racist” argument. Not the argument that her storyline has implicit undertones of the “White Man’s Burden” (which is, I think, a completely justified critique and definitely racist), but that she as a person is racist. Part why I’m so confused is that often, when Galadriel is accused of racism, Oropher and Thranduil are held in high-esteem. I don’t understand the jump, at least not with what information I can find in canon.
Now, the following isn’t me trying to explain why Galadriel is not racist. It’s just an attempt to show where I’m coming from with canon. I’m very open to people pointing out where my interpretation went wrong/any canonical evidence I’ve missed. I also want to emphasize, even if there isn’t canonical evidence of Galadriel being racist, I don’t want to argue against any “racist Galadriel” headcanons. I understand why people would get frustrated with Tolkien’s idealization of colonization and the Silvan’s apparent lack of agency in his works and subsequently use Galadriel’s storyline to explore what the consequences should’ve been if Tolkien portrayed colonization realistically. I won’t accuse anyone of sexism for doing that through her storyline instead of Thranduil’s or Fingon’s or what not. I’m just trying to understand why Galadriel is seen as canonically racist, while Thranduil and Oropher are not.
In case I haven’t been clear enough: I really, really don’t want to fight or negate an exploration of racism in Tolkien. It’s an important topic and beyond worthy of discussion.
“Galadriel… was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will. Of like mind with Galadriel was Fingon” – The Silmarillion
This is the most commonly accepted form of canon, so I’ll start here. Galadriel’s desire to go to ME stems from Fëanor’s speech. In his speech, Fëanor depicted Middle-earth as the Noldor’s rightful home and argued that men were the ones to keep power away from. He also acknowledges other elves “might” be there, but promises the Noldor they’ll be welcomed if there are. The Noldor had no knowledge of the Nandorin elves, Sindarin or Silvan.
As such, I struggle to see how Galadriel’s eagerness for Middle-earth is an expression of a colonist mindset. First, Fëanor’s speech may have convinced her that ME was her homeland, not some foreign territory to be conquered. Second, she was the youngest daughter of the king’s youngest (and least ambitious) son. In order to rule a land of her own, she needed land. Tolkien was writing about an idealized feudal system, where power = control of land. The above does not imply Galadriel wanted to rule an already populated land. The Noldor didn’t even know if ME was populated. Galadriel may well have assumed her potential realm would be populated by other Noldor. (After all, she was considered a leader on the Helcaraxë).
When Galadriel arrives in ME and sees that it is populated, there’s no indication that she acted on her desire to rule. In fact, she’s one of the few Noldorin royals who doesn’t set up a kingdom.
“Galadriel [Finrod’s] sister went not with him to Narthgothrond, for in Doriath dwelt Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol, and there was great love between them. Therefore she remained in the Hidden Kingdom” – The Silmarillion
After that, there’s a long silence on Galadriel’s activities. We know she spends a bit of time with Finrod, marries Celeborn at some point, and doesn’t die in the War of Wrath, but stays in ME. The next time we see her is in Eriador in the beginning of the Second Age.
“[Galadriel] crossed Ered Lindon with Celeborn and came into Eriador. When they entered that region there were many Noldor in their following, together with Grey-elves and Green-elves; and for a while they dwelt in the country about Lake Nenuial (Evendim, north of the Shire). Celeborn and Galadriel came to be regarded as Lord and Lady of the Eldar in Eriador, including the wandering companies of Nandorin origin who had never passed west over Ered Lindon and come down into Ossiriand” – Unfinished Tales
This is the first time Galadriel is described in a non-Helcaraxë leadership position. She was entering the new lands because Beleriand was kaput, not out of any personal desire. It seems she had a multiracial following from the beginning, made up of Noldor, Sindar, and “Green-elves”. These Green-elves were the Laiquendi who’d followed Denethor to Beleriand and were allies/vassals of Thingol. This was something they chose to do. They weren’t colonized by Thingol, they expressly sought him out (The Simlarillion, Of the Sindar).
Over time, it appears certain “wandering companies of Nandorin origin” became associated with Galadriel’s and Celeborn’s leadership. Given that their titles of Lord and Lady developed over time (canon doesn’t even tell us if Celeborn and Galadriel acknowledged these titles), as did their association with the Nandor, it seems plausible the wandering Nandorin companies were not there originally, meaning Galadriel and Celeborn weren’t settling in already occupied lands. But since this period in time is not extrapolated on, any speculation is really just equivalent to a headcanon.
In 700 SA, Galadriel and Celeborn moved east and:
“established the (primarily but by no means solely) Noldorin realm of Eregion. It may be that Galadriel chose it because she knew of the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm (Moria)… [Galadriel] looked upon the Dwarves also with the eye of a commander, seeing in them the finest warriors to pit against the Orcs. Moreover Galadriel was a Noldo, and she had a natural sympathy with their minds and their passionate love of crafts of hand, a sympathy much greater than that found among many of the Eldar” – Unfinished Tales
We don’t know if Eregion’s non-Noldorin elves are the same as those at Lake Nenuial, so I won’t speculate. Celebrimbor was a leader in Eregion, too. Both he and Galadriel were on very friendly terms with the dwarves. This is where Galadriel’s story gets a bit tricky, because in an early version, Tolkien had her as Amroth’s mother. I’m going to overlook this version in favor of Amroth being Amdír’s son, the most commonly accepted version of canon.
Very little is known about Amdír’s reign, other than that it ended in SA 3434 when he was killed in the Battle of Dagorlad. He was a Sindarin prince ruling over Silvan elves and was succeeded by his son, Amroth. Celeborn and/or Galadriel were somehow involved in his reign, but it’s hard to tell how.
“after Eregion’s fall Celeborn led this migration to Lórien, while Galadriel joined Gil-galad in Lindon; but elsewhere, in a writing contemporary with this, it is said explicitly that they both at that time ‘passed through Moria with a considerable following of Noldorin exiles and dwelt for many years in Lórien.’ It is neither asserted nor denied in these late writings that Galadriel (or Celeborn) had relations with Lórien before 1697, and there are no other references outside “Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn” to Celebrimbor’s revolt (at some time between 1350 and 1400) against their rule in Eregion, nor to Galadriel’s departure at the time to Lórien and her taking up rule there, while Celeborn remained behind in Eregion. It is not made clear in the late accounts where Galadriel and Celeborn passed the long years of the Second Age after the defeat of Sauron in Eriador; there are at any rate no further mentions of their agelong sojourn in Belfalas” – Unfinished Tales
I don’t know what to make of that other than have fun with headcanons. That information can fit into any conception of Galadriel’s character. All canon says is Galadriel lived in Lórien for a time under Amroth’s rule before going to live with Elrond and Celebrían in Imladris. Let’s turn to Amroth for a moment:
“Though Sindarin in descent [Amroth] lived after the manner of the Silvan Elves and housed in the tall trees of a great green mound, ever after called Cerin Amroth. This he did because of his love for Nimrodel… She would speak only the Silvan tongue, even after it had fallen into disuse among the folk of Lórien… when the terror came out of Moria and the Dwarves were driven out, and in their stead Orcs crept in, she fled distraught alone south into empty lands [in the year 1981 of the Third Age]. Amroth followed her” – Unfinished Tales
What I get from this is: Silvan elves lived in the trees, the Silvan language fell out of use during Amdír’s/Amroth’s reigns (i.e. not Galadriel’s and Celeborn’s) and that by 1981 TA, Lórien was facing the threat of orcs and their leader had taken off. A major question arises: how many of the Silvan elves went with him?
“many of the Elves of Nimrodel’s kindred left their dwellings and departed” – Legolas, Fellowship of the Ring
“It is long since the people of Nimrodel left the woodlands of Lórien” – Prince Imrahil, Return of the King
Some of the Galadhrim must’ve stayed in Lórien, but it seems a sizeable portion left. So around 1981 TA, the remaining Silvan elves are facing an encroaching orc army without leadership and with a sudden population drop. This is the context in which Galadriel and Celeborn assume leadership.
“After the disaster in Moria [in the year 1980] and the sorrows of Lórien, which was now left without a ruler (for Amroth was drowned in the sea in the Bay of Belfalas and left no heir), Celeborn and Galadriel returned to Lórien, and were welcomed by the people. There they dwelt while the Third Age lasted, but they took no title of King or Queen; for they said that they were only guardians of this small but fair realm, the last eastward outpost of the Elves” – Unfinished Tales
This brings us to their actual rule, which lasted from 1981(ish) TA to 3021 TA (for Galadriel, at least). Just a little over 1,000 years. Unfortunately, there isn’t that much information about Galadriel’s rule in Lórien. What we do know, however, suggests a certain level of assimilation. As mentioned above, Silvan elves lived in the trees, a tradition which Galadriel and Celeborn continue and adopt themselves, as seen in Fellowship of the Ring. Likewise, even though the Silvan language fell out of use before their assumption of leadership, certain elements of it were kept alive in Lórien’s Sindarin, influencing vocabulary and pronunciation.
The other apparent point of controversy is Galadriel’s use of Nenya to enhance Lórien.
“Galadriel counselled him that the Three Rings of the Elves should be hidden, never used, and dispersed, far from Eregion where Sauron believed them to be. It was at that time that she received Nenya, the White Ring, from Celebrimbor, and by its power the realm of Lórinand was strengthened and made beautiful; but its power upon her was great also and unforseen, for it increased her latent desire for the Sea and for return into the West, so that her joy in Middle-earth was diminished. [9]
[9] Galadriel cannot have made use of the powers of Nenya until a much later time, after the loss of the Ruling Ring; but it must be admitted that the text does not at all suggest this (although she is said just above to have advised Celebrimbor that the Elven Rings should never be used)” – Unfinished Tales
This comes from the version where Amroth is Galadriel’s son, so it’s hard to tell what to make of it. But since she’s seen wearing it in Lord of the Rings, we will assume she uses it at some point to enhance Lórien. (Probably starting during the Watchful Peace). I’m unsure why I should consider that an indication of her racism. If you have the power to help protect your land and people, why wouldn’t you? How does using Nenya make her racist?
Perhaps the controversy arises from her subsequent departure from ME. Without Nenya, Lórien will fade, but that would have happened whether Galadriel and Nenya were in Lórien or not. She tells Frodo that if he successfully destroys the One Ring:
“then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten” – Fellowship of the Ring
That’s true of Rivendell, as well. After Sauron’s destruction, there isn’t anything Galadriel or Elrond can do to preserve their realms. They didn’t make that stipulation. Moreover, Galadriel’s been in exile for thousands of years and has been weary for home for at least half of that. I don’t understand why her leaving had anything to do with racism. There’s also no reason to suppose that she didn’t bring many of the Silvan elves with her. It’s not as if the Silvan elves didn’t yearn for the sea, as well:
“[Silvan elves] were never wholly free of an unquiet and a yearning for the Sea which at times drove some of them to wander from their homes” – Unfinished Tales
So yeah, I don’t see the positive evidence for Galadriel-the-Character being racist. Again, maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m missing something. But then I get even more confused when people say Oropher and Thranduil aren’t racist.
“Oropher [the father of Thranduil, father of Legolas], had withdraw northward beyond the Gladden Fields. This he did to be free from the power and encroachments of the Dwarves of Moria, which had grown to be the greatest of the mansions of the Dwarves recorded in history; and also he resented the intrusions of Celeborn and Galadriel into Lórien” – Unfinished Tales
Oropher explicitly moves north to get away from the Dwarves. And/or Celeborn and Galadriel, who, depending on which canon you follow, were fleeing Eregion as refugees or not even in Lórien on a consistent basis until much later, after Oropher’s death. I don’t see why Oropher’s isolationism isn’t seen as racist, especially against the Dwarves.
Similarly, Oropher’s assimilation could (depending one’s interpretation) could be read as racistl:
“Oropher had come among them with only a handful of Sindar, and they were soon merged with the Silvan Elves, adopting their language and taking names of Silvan form and style. This they did deliberately; for they (and other similar adventurers forgotten in the legends or only briefly named) came from Doriath after its ruin and had no desire to leave Middle-earth, nor to be merged with the other Sindar of Beleriand, dominated by the Noldorin Exiles for whom the folk of Doriath had no great love. They wished indeed to become Silvan folk and to return, as they said, to the simple life natural to the Elves before the invitation of the Valar had disturbed it” – Unfinished Tales
Have you heard of the “noble savage”? Oropher’s reasons for assimilation could be read through such a lens, which has deeply racist undertones. I simply do not understand why he is put on a pedestal compared to Galadriel when his storyline contains various problematic elements, at least when viewed a certain way. For instance, his adoption of the Silvan language apparently petered out:
“By the end of the Third Age the Silvan tongues had probably ceased to be spoken in the two regions that had importance at the time of the War of the Ring: Lórien and the realm of Thranduil in northern Mirkwood” – Unfinished Tales
Secondly, the guy leads his people into war and gets a sizable portion of them killed. In the Last Alliance, Oropher realizes he can’t keep to his isolationist tendencies, but fails to provide his Silvan subjects with the adequate armor, weaponry, and training they need in order to succeed:
“He therefore assembled a great army of his now numerous people, and joining with the lesser army of Malgalad of Lórien he led the host of the Silvan Elves to battle. The Silvan Elves were hardy and valiant, but ill-equipped with armour or weapons in comparison with the Eldar of the West; also they were independent, and not disposed to place themselves under the supreme command of Gil-galad. Their losses were thus more grievous than they need have been, even in that terrible war” – Unfinished Tales
I’m not saying there’s one way to read this. I am saying that one could make an argument that Oropher’s failure here is a result of his inability to actually understand the people he’s ruling. Which may or may not be an indication of his own racism.
Thranduil isn’t exempt from a racist interpretation, either. The Hobbit literally says he has “no love for dwarves” and his guards drag Thorin with excessive roughness to his cells. Unless racism only counts against other elves, this seems worthy of acknowledgement.
But does Thranduil really treat his Silvan subjects as equals? He keeps wine “not meant for his servants or his soldiers, but for the king’s feasts only.” (Soldiers… who your family led into battle and failed to properly lead?) Do we really have evidence that the native Silvan elves are lords in Thranduil’s kingdom? After all, Sindarin is the primary language again and more Sindarin elves are known to have entered the Mirkwood after the initial group with Oropher. And, under a particular view, Thranduil is still imposing his authority on the Silvan. Would true assimilation not have been an acceptance of the Silvan elves’s form of governance?
Look, I’m not trying to argue that Thranduil and Oropher are racist. I’m just trying to highlight my confusion as to why Galadriel is apparently canonically racist while those two aren’t. I really, really don’t understand.
I would pay real cash-money to never, ever have to see again any variation of those ‘how dare they not keep the plot-point of Padme trying to kill Anakin in ROTS?!’ posts.
Years ago, one of my friends made a very cynical prediction, in saying that the very justified calls for strong female characters will result less in actually diverse, nuanced, wonderfully flawed, complex female characters with agency, and more in cookie-cutter, by-the-numbers Badass WomenTM who are only valued because they fight and they kill.
I didn’t believe it at the time, but watching what a completely OOC disaster Star Wars fans like to make of Padme Amidala, I can give credence to the above fear. 20+ years in fandoms has taught me that, as a rule, a lot of peopleare very badat working with characterization that isn’t simplified, near black-and-white. This is how you get the infamous process of Flanderization, both in canon and fanon works (one of a character’s traits overtaking the rest of their characterization, until they end up a caricature of themselves), this is how you end up with headache-inducing nonsense such as ‘female character that shows emotion and caves when under enormous pressure = Weak’ and ‘female character who is capable of murder = Strong.’
I’m glad that the whole ‘Padme trying to kill Anakin’ was abandoned early in production. Because, to put it bluntly, that isn’t who Padme is. Not even remotely. For two films, her greatest strength and her greatest weakness is, repeatedly, shown to be both her capacity for forgiveness and understanding, along with her unwillingness to resort to violence unless there is absolutely no other fucking option (and even then, murder remains a line not to be crossed). We’re talking about a woman who, at fourteen, with all the righteous anger of a monarch liberating her planet, did not shoot Nute Gunray – the person responsible for her people’s suffering, for tens of thousands of Naboo or more being sent to processing camps and a death-toll that could have likely been staggering, for such a peaceful planet. Even as a young teenager, she showed infinitely more restraint and moral fiber than the individuals who know only how to bay for blood and disguise their atavistic violence and desires for vengeance under a paper-thin maskofserving justice.
Too cruel of an assessment on my part? Watch, over the years, thousands of people write post after post after post where they go into horrific level of detail on how they want their most hated characters to die (slowly, painfully, disemboweled, beaten, butchered, brained, made to scream, tortured by the Heroes, the Good Guys) and then see identical posts getting written about real, living people and you get a crash-course, front-row seat on radicalization. And that’s the key-word here, I think. ‘Radicalization.’ That is precisely how you end up with ‘a Feminist Heroine is a woman who can kill or at least try to kill’ and an ‘an Unfeminist Heroine is one who is not capable of killing’. By making a direct correlation between strength, agency and the capacity for lethal violence. That is, fundamentally, one of the hallmarks of the radicalized mind, along with black-and-white, us-versus-them thinking and consistent dehumanization of the ‘them’ contingent, whatever it might be.
A very interesting aspect in Padme’s unwillingness to even contemplate killing Anakin is that she’s not alone among Skywalker women in thinking like that. Her daughter, the much-lauded ‘proper heroine’, also refuses to contemplate the murder of her son, echoing Padme and Luke’s words and hope, across the years (’there’s still good in him’). Equally interesting is also how often this aspect of Leia is ignored, in favor of lurid fantasies of her brutally destroying her son. Because, again, apparently one cannot be a Proper Feminist Icon without the atavistic violence and serving as a self-insertion vehicle for the audience’s darkest impulses.
I could speak further on how Padme attempting to murder Anakin completely contradicts the character we’ve been presented across the Prequel Trilogy, but others have written plenty on that (to little avail). Instead, I’ll say how distasteful I find this correlation of strength with violence and how repulsive it is to see nuanced, complex female characters reduced to their capability or incapability to kill. That isn’t feminist or even remotely good writing. That’s just projection and radicalization.
I think fantastic beasts really highlights a flaw in jkrs writing. Mainly, how the rules for her world really only work if you consider white people, and totally fall apart when you consider the same world from anyone else’s point of view.
The idea that in america you can have 0 contact with no-majs is fine, if 1. Everyone is white and/or 2. Magic is entirely hereditary. But neither or those ia true.
The movie takes place, what 60 years after slavery was abolished? What happened when a wizard was born a slave? Were they left to form an obsurial? (No, they say there hadnt been one for centuries in america) were they whisked away to the magical world and expected to leave their relatives to rot in slavery?
The movie takes place 30 years after the wounded knee massacre. What about magical children born in native communities? Are they invited to ilvermony? Do they let their communities be butchered?
What will happen in less than 20 years when japanese internment camps begin? Will witches and wizards of Japanese heritage just pack up and go to the camps too? Will they go into hiding and leave their potentially nonmagical families?
Jk seems content to act as though the Wizarding world has no racsim and instead uses magic vs nomaj tensions as an allegory. But that doesnt work when you have muggle born wizards who would be affected by racism in the nonmagical world.
And i dont think jk has ever even considered this. And it shows.
I’ve been thinking about that for a while too – I’ve seen posts floating around tumblr for at least the past year calling for a focus on things like, for example, the effects of slavery and imperialism on the wizarding world, talking about black wizards being loaded onto slave ships with their wands broken, etc. etc., and my immediate thought was “in all likelihood, none of that happened. Why would the wizards use human beings as slaves when house elves exist?”. ….And then I got to thinking “wait. The Harry Potter universe shouldn’t resemble our world AT ALL if that’s the case, should it? Even if the wizarding world is so cut off and callous that the magical community of every country that was ever colonized or invaded or whatever just did not give a shit about the human rights abuses their non-magical bretheren were being subjected to….did they ALL have their own version of the statute of secrecy? Were none of these cultures ever aware of the people living among them who could stop all the crap they were facing? Really? Were there no rogue magic-users secretly fighting back or protecting their muggle friends? EVER?”
Yeah, like, the statue of secrecy is an international agreement, but you arent going to convince me that whole societies of wizards, watching their homelands and muggle friends and family be enslaved, colonized, and obliterated just sat back and did nothing about it.
Like, MAYBE if all wizards were purebloods. Maybe. But we know muggleborns are not uncommon. Their cultures, family, and friends being massacred and they did nothing? How does that make sense at all?
You can’t even use the excuse of ‘they wouldn’t get involved in muggle affairs’ if you WANTED to either. Because Newts older brother is a war hero. And Newt worked with Ukrainian Iron Bellys on the eastern front. And if wizards helped in WWI why the heck would they sit back and be silent on all the other things mentioned here.
frodo and sam’s love for each other is literally the only thing keeping middle earth from just spontaneously combusting
No, but like, that’s literally it. Gandalf straight-up says to Elrond this Quest can’t succeed by force or wisdom, but by friendship. If Frodo and Sam hate each other even a little, Middle-Earth is doomed.
And it gets more terrifying when you realize that one of the strongest powers of the Ring is to turn people against each other, and that even if it didn’t, the Ring and the Quest still put Frodo in a psychological state where he can barely keep himself sane, let alone love anyone or anything other than the Ring. In fact, I’m fairly sure the Ring tried to persuade Frodo to kill Sam far more often than the books shows – the Ring tends to encourage murder, from what we see. Instead of listening to the Ring, Frodo somehow manages to keep in the back of his mind that he can trust Sam more than he can trust himself, and I have no idea how Frodo can resist the temptation to think his trust is misplaced.
And sure, one could say, “Oh, but Sam has to understand it, so it’s not all that bad” but you have to remember Sam is a plain, non-Tookish hobbit with no inclination or skills for adventuring around and yet he has to become the entire Fellowship. Name one thing the Fellowship did for Frodo that Sam doesn’t also do. He has to advise, guide and protect him as well as keep his hope alive and remind him of who he is. The amount of pressure he’s under is incredible, and unlike, say, Aragorn, he has no experience to draw from. Plus, Merry and Pippin tend to rely on each other, while Frodo relies on Sam, but Sam himself hardly seems to have anyone to turn to for strength. I’m not saying Frodo doesn’t support him as well as he’s able – actually, Frodo is remarkably consistent about taking care of Sam from Book I to Book VI. But what Frodo is capable to offer (see the paragraph above) is far from being all that Sam needs. And actually, in the last stages of the Quest, Sam is basically living a one-sided relationship under the worst possible conditions, and that his devotion doesn’t even waver despite that just blows my mind.
That the Quest was successful is one of the most incredible and beautiful things that Tolkien wrote. Frodo and Sam walked straight into the Land where no love can exist and managed to become closer to each other than they had been. It’s the biggest fuck you Sauron probably ever got. No, seriously. Frodo and Sam beat a Maia basically by cuddling a lot and talking about food. Like, what the fuck??? I mean, if I told you someone could write a 1000 pages novel in which a pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally, would you believe me?
It’s classic Tolkien: the surprise element (i.e. flawed creatures can be incredibly noble even under unspeakable distress) might overcome even the most carefully thought out plots devised by powerful evil lords. (See also: the entire Silmarillion, pretty much.)
“A pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally”
I would read 50 books with this premise. I don’t love all 1,000 pages, but this is the heart that keeps me rereading
Friendly Reminder that Dior the Fair, Son of Beren and Luthien, was human since he was born after his mother was granted the Gift of Men and the Valar cannot take it away.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Luthien was given mortality: whether that bound her child or whether he had the choice is unstated and can reasonably be read (or written) either way. Tuor seems to have had the rules bent for him somehow. Men are weird and freaky and outside the rules in Middle-earth and it’s a place where rules don’t seem to be absolute and can be changed : if Dior was mad to stay with Nimloth I can see Mandos shrugging helplessly and giving him the phone so he can talk to Eru personally about it.
Dior: I’M NOT LEAVING. MY WIFE IS AN ELF. WE WANT TO BE TOGETHER.
Mandos (shrugging wearily) : Oh god, it’s another of them. Fine, whatever. You talk to him, this is above my pay grade: just promise me you won’t call your mum about this.
I always thought that the Valar came up with the idea of letting Half-Elves choose whether to be immortal or not when Dior (and Elured & Elurin) died and they needed to make a decision.
As far as I remember, there is nothing in canon that indicates he must have been mortal, though it is possible – he still is ¼ Elven and ¼ Maia. Of course, whether a person is mortal or not depends on whether their spirit is human or elven. But I don’t think anyone knows how exactly spirits are “inherited”, or shaped by the identity and/or the spirits of their parents. So, I’d say Dior’s case is inconclusive.
Rian Johnson has some real problem with male maturity. He took two oldest members of the new cast and gave them storylines about boys.
Keylo is fucking 30 yo, he’s been in his edgelord-space-nazi-killer-of-innocents phase for 10 years now. And yet he’s framed as a “boy” by the narrative, starting with Snoke literarly calling him that, to showing him constantly vulnerable and emo and and cowering or having emotional outbreaks (*cough* tantrums *cough*) He was childish in TFA but in TLJ it’s actually given a sympathetic angle, he’s not “childish” he’s young, delicate and conflicted, he’s “coming to know himself” and all that bullshit. He’s also given a “tragic” backstory and is constantly shown to be somehow abused by older people (snoke, luke). Almost up untill the very end, he’s shown to be coerced/forced/influenced by the circumstances and people older and stronger than himself.
He’s thirty (30) and he’s given a tragic “coming of age/discovering oneself” story fucking 10 years too late.
Poe is 32, a commander in the Resistance, a rank you don’t just get overnight and without loads of field experience, and yet, somehow, he’s regressed in TLJ to a stage of a young, hot-headed, irresponsible buck, a kid with too much audacity that needs to “learn a lesson”, needs to mature by being put down. During the entirety of the first half of his arc, he’s not once treated seriously by neither the narrative nor the other characters. He’s treated like a disobedient child who needs to be taught a lesson. Leia, his superior officer, slaps him to punish him. Then when she gets to him during his mutiny, she just wordlessly stunts him into unconsciousness as if he’s not worth any negotiations, any reasoning, cause he’s just a stupid child. The same thing happens later when Holdo and Leia leer over unconscious Poe and say they like him cause he’s a troublemaker – they are two military leaders saying that about a subordinate officer who’s just lead a mutiny, like, they are not once treating the situation with the gravity it deserves. The whole thing is framed into a loving and wise parent forgiving a petulant child for acting out, but it’s a grown ass man, a Captain leading a rebelion against the military chain of command!
And, apart from all of the above, any “coming of age and learning important life lessons to be less childish in the future” storyline given to a 32 y-o grown ass man is completely illogical
Of course it’s symptomatic that the white vile villain is given the sympathetic, “sweet child o’mine” story and the latino hero is reduced to an agressive, irresponsible teenager.
And it’s also symptomatic that the story about being young and finding yourself somehow bypasses the characters who actually need that story.
Rey? She’s like, a literal teenager who did not really have a childhood, she’s nineteen and thrust into a completely new world. She needs to learn about it, she needs to find herself in it. Instead she’s given the tired “woman tries to safe a douchebag” trope.
Finn?? He’s just a little older than Rey, he’s just pretty recently finished his childhood years without having an actual childhood, he’s just come of age and symulteniously has just freed himself from under soul-crushing abuse. He needs a “finding oneself” story on so many levels. His “coming of age” story has so much potential angles to it, so many themes to explore! Yet the only thing he gets to know abt himself is that he’s a Rebel scum (and isn’t it Resistance scum?) but the actual road to him starting to identify with the movement is just not shown at all. You don’t actually see what he’s transitioning from, because the “personal to political” shift in his involvement is just barely sketched out.
tl;dr: rian gives teenager storylines to grown-ass men, and not actual teenagers or young people and that’s fucked up and also racist and pretty sexist, the end
I think I realized why Sauron works as a villain, at least for me.
Sauron is often seen as the prototypical example of the Dark Lord, the excruciatingly boring stock villain of classic high fantasy. He’s the dark component of a reductive black-and-white morality. He sits in a tower and wants to conquer and/or destroy everything. His tools, his servants, his lands are all foul, ugly, barren and evil. No real motivation, no personality to speak of. (Especially in contrast to the secondary villains and anti-villains in LOTR, who all have their stories and all but overflow with personality.)
Real Tolkien buffs, the ones who are buffer than me, will tell you that Sauron has an incredibly complex backstory, mostly contained in the Silmarillion, with bits and pieces all over Tolkien’s writings. Sauron has led a long and complicated life, going by various names and identities, serving evils greater than himself, getting destroyed but surviving multiple times, doing evil, repenting, faking repentance, doing evil again, going native in various ancient civilizations then contributing to their destruction, etc. If you read all the supplementary material, piece it together and fill the gaps with your imagination, Sauron is a noble, interesting, complex villain.
Very little of that comes through in LOTR itself, but I think it doesn’t need to. I think Sauron functions as a fantastic villain in LOTR exactly because we know so very little about him. Sauron has no POV chapter, except for a few paragraphs, and no POV characters ever encounter Sauron in a direct and comprehensible way. He mostly acts through proxy, his captains make war for him, his proxies speak for him. The reader never feels that his characterization is insufficient, because he *has no characterization*, he’s too far away and too high up, unknowable. Mostly Sauron is spoken of in the abstract, as the ‘enemy’, as the cause of evil, not as a specific evil person to be defeated. After all, it’s pretty clear he cannot be defeated, not in person. And when someone has a real and somewhat more direct encounter with Sauron, either via a palantír or in a vision, Sauron is too powerful to register as an individual person: he is an eye, a flame, a force, a will, a seeking attention. He is too big and too close to see as a whole, he is in your head, intruding, terrible.
So the narrative places Sauron in a context where he is either a distant menace, or an immense, incomprehensible mindfuck. Although he feels emotions such as wrath or fear, and he makes cunning stratagems, he doesn’t read as a strong clever evil person, he mostly reads as a force, as sheer power that only seeks more power. And on the whole, I feel that he *is* just that: not a person, but a power-hunger itself. It is stated in text that he’s a diminished, weakened, wounded version of himself, that during his different attempts (and failures) to subjugate others, he kept losing parts of himself, first his ability to assume a pleasing form, then to embody himself at all. I get the implication that he used to be a complicated entire whole person, and his struggle for power slowly eroded him, sanding off quirks and traits and individuality, costing him his patience for beautiful craft and his interest in beautiful languages, until he could no longer even pretend to be a fellow-person and not a *power*. Until he became an creature made of, and by, his own power. He was a person but power ate him and now he’s gone: this is the threat and the lure of the ring, which Sauron made of, and for, himself. Interactions with the ring are the closest thing we come to genuine interactions with Sauron, or to insights into Sauron’s mind – and interactions with the ring are uniformly horrifying, except maybe the one time Sam is small enough and kind enough to laugh it off. And seeing that, it’s clear that the ring needs to be destroyed, and Sauron’s power needs to be destroyed, for Sauron’s sake too. Only when he’s cut off from his power can his lost houseless spirit find its way through, to redemption or even just to rest.
TLDR: I don’t usually dislike villains who seem to seek power for power’s sake, but Sauron feels like a fantastic deconstruction of that: after all, LOTR is mostly about the risk of individual people becoming corrupted by power and becoming the vehicle of mere power-seeking-power-for-power’s-sake, and Sauron is someone to whom that already happened.
see i know that we all like to make fun of luke skywalker, hick farmer from the back of nowhere, thinking that shooting womp rats with the space equivalent of his dad’s old rifle is somehow sufficient preparation for taking down the death star; but i love the idea that actually womp rats are six foot abominations of teeth, spines & poison and bulls-eyeing them is actually excellent preparation for the rebellion. think about it: swarms of six foot rats, and some skinny kid with an outdated weapon taking them out, cool as paint. hardened soldiers whisper scary stories to each other, about the monsters who scavenge in the sands, stripping a camp of everything living in five seconds flat, and luke just saying oh, womp rats? they’re nothing. great with a bit of butter and some toast.
REMEMBER THAT HE TOLD WEDGE, “THEY’RE NOTMUCH BIGGER THAN TWO METERS” LIKE THAT’S SOME MINOR INCONVENIENCE
BIGGER THAN TWO METERS
Wedge: So, you’ve been to Tatooine
Han: Yeah
Wedge: Womp rats?
Han: Sure. Chewie uses ‘em for bowcaster practice. Kinda gamey tasting. Sandy colored fur, lotsa teeth, little over two meters…
Wedge: Luke wasn’t lying???
Luke (head inside X-wing panel, tinkering): Why would I make THAT up?
Honestly, I’ve always thought that farm work on Tatooine, unintentionally, must have provided a fairly excellent groundwork in establishing Luke’s baby Jedi skills outside of an academy context.
There are of course the aforementioned womp rats, which are both terrifying and a fantastic way to develop shooting skills.
There’s beggar’s canyon for piloting. And if Phantom Menace brought us nothing else, it actually showed us the living death trap that is beggar’s canyon. He’s not like zipping around the Grand Canyon, he’s literally goofing off in a place that killed off a shit ton of professional pod racers. So needless to say, Luke’s had a chance to develop scary good reflexes, information processing, and spacial relation skills.
The Lars’s economic status means that they had to make do with ancient, crap equipment. Luke would have learned how to make incredibly fine tuned repairs, and keep shit going forever. And sure, he never built a C3PO or a pod racer, but honestly, if he found the materials to do it, he probably would have used them in a moisture collector.
And there’s even combat experience. From what we know about Tatooine, a farm like the Lars Homestead, would have been at risk for attacks by raiders, Jabba’s goons, and any of the terrifying hellbeasts that populate that planet. It’s not like Jedi temple training or anything. But Luke definitely learned to be cool under pressure, even when outnumbered or with really old, shit equipment.
I would just like to note that in The Old Republic MMORPG (set three thousand years before the movies) the womp rats are not only two meters long, covered in spines, with teeth as long as my hand, and sometimes DISEASED
BUT THEY ALSO ATTACK IN PACKS
You think you just pissed off ONE rodent as long as you are tall? Oh no. It’s calling ALL SIXTEEN OF ITS FRIENDS
AND THEY ARE ALL AIMING TO BITE YOUR CROTCH OFF.
*THAT’S* what Luke grew up sniping to keep them away from the droids and moisture vaporators. *THAT* (and Beggar’s Canyon) is what prepared him to take down the Death Star.
Womp rats are bad news.
My favorite thing is that they are just one example of how Luke doesn’t know he’s from a Death Planet until he leaves it.
i’m just going to reblog this so you can all enjoy the excellent commentary about my space son who is equal parts sunshine and tempered death
You’re welcome! And yes, exactly–that’s what I was trying to say in the flailing about, hah. I really like TLJ, but I could live forever without another HAIL RIAN JOHNSON, HERO OF THE PROLETARIAT.
The thing about Harry Potter as a character is that he is insanely observant when he actually cares enough to pay attention. Meaning 90% of the stuff he deems unimportant flies over his head, but he makes these huge leaps of logic and intuition when he bothers to focus. Like in the books when it comes to anything relating to Voldemort or Death Eaters or People Not To Be Trusted (Draco, Umbridge). Growing up, he had to be able to see when a situation was going south long before the frying pan or Dudley’s fists came his way. But he also had to be able to ignore and tune out the constant flow of shit and neglect he was treated to.
If you think about it, for all the better aspects of Hogwarts, it still followed this same basic pattern. He had to pay close attention to the things trying to kill him (even classes took a back seat to this), but find a way to ignore and not acknowledge all the rumors and staring and people thinking he’s a prat or the heir of slytherin or a liar. I think this is why the arguments that Harry is a mushroom and notices nothing, and the arguments that he is deductively brilliant can exist side by side. He’s both. It’s also why, in my opinion, he tends to be ridiculously observant of Ginny once he starts to notice her as something important. She barely exists in the early narrative other than Someone to Be Saved. It’s also why Ginny can sometimes feel like she ‘comes from nowhere’ in the narrative. As far as Harry is concerned, she did come from nowhere. The switch in Harry’s brain went from Doesn’t Matter–Ignore to Very Important–Pay Close Attention, and BAM, there she was. Everywhere.
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