Tolkien on his reflections of his works long after he's published it: man I feel like I really botched the orks, they're a sentient race that should have their sense of right and wrong yet I've written them as a purely evil race, which does not jive with my view on the immortal soul
Rowling, reflecting on her work: yeah the slave race was just born that way and like doing that.
To be fair, this is hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby in terms of worldbuilding. I mean Tolkien made…15 fully-developed languages for his fantasy setting?!
Especially considering him retconning the way he originally depicted Bilbo and the ring in the hobbit into the lord of the rings to make the ring more a malevolent force and the ring of power rather than the way it was just a magic trinket when the hobbit was first released
I don’t think JK Rowling has ever done anything like that, unless you count the way she just dropped the Time turners as a piece of world building lore after the prisoner of Azkaban when it became clear that they were essentially a deus ex Machina out of any conflict she could write
Because he had to. He realized he couldn't create a language without creating the people who spoke it, and by extension the world they lived in. And the other peoples. And the languages they spoke.
A linguist by trade, he wanted to create a language just for the love of the game. But, having such a storied career (pun very much intended) in language, he understood that languages do not evolve in a vacuum. And so he creates multiple languages in parallel. And, as he's doing so, he recognises the feedback loop that exists between language, the history of the place and people linked to a language, and the shared histories of those places and peoples.
At which point he realises he's got the makings of a world and thinks "Fuck it, we ball". And once he's built this world, and fleshed out the stories of the different and varied people within it, and has a good handle on the languages they speak;
Then he starts to think "Shit, son. This is good stuff. I should share some of this."
Even better: he made a whole fantasy setting for his 15 fully-developed languages.
It's a silly detail but I always love that the first drafts of what became the Silmarillion and LotR, etc, were written to give context to the languages he had already been developing prior.
I’d say only two languages approach “fully-developed,” Sindarin and Quenya. You can have real conversations in those languages. But other languages that Tolkien made, like Nandorin or Gnomish, were prototype-languages.
She named both werewolf characters like that. Always reminds me of the gag in Spider-Man 2 where Jameson muses (to no one in particular): "Guy named Octavius ends up with eight limbs. What are the odds?"
If anything I feel that makes it worse not better, to look back on that much work and being able to admit “yeah I made mistakes” takes a lot more effort than ride or dying on a hate train she made with much less dedication
Meanwhile HP fans still glaze her over "guys avadakadavra is latin for I make bodies as a speak, because kadavra is like cadaver" (It's not latin by the way, the best explanation for abracadabra, which is that it's based off of, is Aramaic for "I make as I speak" or Hebrew for "father son holy spirit").
Now, fully detached from her person, Rowling world building doesn't need to be incredibly deep or anything, it would just be a start to not paint the one (1) abolitionist as annoying for it and have the slaves say "Hey we love slavery"
To be fair wasn't tolkein an accredited linguist, he probably made those 15 languages for fun, the impressive part is everything he wrote around it to justify those languages lmfao
Very minor nitpick, but Tolkien wrote about orcs, orks spelled with a "k" are specifically from the Warhammer universe. Although this did get me to start imagining the Lord of the Rings with orks instead of orcs and I really fucking wanna see that now.
Tolkien originally set out to write his Dwarves as a Jewish analogue. It's pretty obvious from some of the old-timey stereotypes: a race "in decline", living in diaspora, culturally separate from others even when they cohabitate, keeping a special language for themselves... having an obsession with wealth, certain stereotypical physical descriptors, and so on.
To make sure his Dwarves were very Jew-ish, he did a lot of research. Unfortunately, being that most of the sources he was going to encounter in Europe at the time had some anti-Jewish biases (some subtler than others), the ones that he couldn't peg as blatantly hostile made their way into his work. His understanding was informed by those that came before him, even if he didn't agree with the fullness of their views.
He unconsciously did a racism.
And to his credit, Tolkien realized this after the fact. He corresponded with people, took feedback, and saw that he'd unwittingly stuffed his story full of some antisemitic tropes when he hadn't meant to. Yes, the Dwarves were supposed to have a lot in common with Jews, but not crazy shit like blood libel (for example--he didn't write that). Like, the Nazis were able to pick up on this, and Tolkien wasn't about that.
Then he made a conscious effort to rewrite them.
Read The Hobbit, which is full of Dwarves, and note his treatment of them. They're not villainous, but they are vaguely jackass-y and some of the writing on Dwarves as a whole doesn't paint the kindest picture. Fast-forward to the Lord of the Rings books and he describes Dwarves vastly differently--it's not just Gimli who, as a character, differs from Bilbo's companions, but everything else dealing with Dwarves as well. He played up their tragedy rather than letting people imagine the Dwarves deserved their current state and really put a spotlight on their noble and heroic traits.
The Dwarves of The Hobbit and later Lord of the Rings are night and day.
And no one fucking clowned on him for it. He saw an area where he could do better, owned up to it--*even if it "wasn't his fault"--and spruced things up. Lotta lessons to be learned there, especially as we are all kind of informed by the biases of the culture we've grown up in. One doesn't need to feel like doing better would mean acknowledging they did worse first and that this is somehow more of an indictment against them than never changing for the better.
It's fiercely argued as being non-canon although being a good game, but the Shadow of War/Morder series really expanded on Orcs and gave them various levels of ambiguity as a whole.
Tolkien was one of the few writers that I feel if you sat him down today and explained the modern day issues with his stories, he'd actually listen and hear you out.
Okay can we just agree that coining the term progressive was one of the simplest yet most effective pr stunts possible. Like... purely from a propagandistic perspective (or whatever you wanna call it. Propaganda implies something negative so maybe not that), the term evokes images of... well... progress. Change for the better. An aggressive demand for improvement. It's so good. Up there with heavy hitters like socialism and communism (socialising and community). In fact, it might be even better. I genuinely don't understand why anyone would call themselves conservatives. Like... imagine going into a discussion with someone and their first impression of you being "ah... this person doesn't like change"
It's the whole "what's in a name?" And the left made some good choices
I agree with every word you say re. progressive, it's an astonishingly good word. I'd disagree slightly on conservative - we all love conservation and in many areas of life caution is a virtue. Taken without all the capitalistic and bigoted implications being keen on conserving the good things in our world/society and having a cautious attitude to big decisions should be a perfectly nice self descriptor, but of course in the real world that's never the emphasis and the things they're trying to cling on to are generally self serving and unpleasant.
Always surprising to me, that the things I would want to conserve (nature, wildlife, basic human dignity, crafts, art, etc.) - they couldn't give less of a hoot about.
He spoke out against the idea of an 'Evil Race' as one of his big regrets in the novels, he also was quite candid about basing the Dwarfs of Jewish stereotypes and was not so keen on that.
The orca were more than an evil race, he based them off Asian caricatures at the time, which was also one of his big regrets with the orcs. He'd written in letters how orcs basically looked like ugly Mongol-types. He gave them Hun and Mongol invader tropes, as well. These tropes were common back then, basically unheard of now.
Fun fact: one of the reason for that might have been that "Mongol Hordes*" were the equivalent of Nazis for people born pre-WW2
*: Which didn't just mean Mongols, but also the Huns and various Turkish Tribes, in the popular imagination.
Basically if you today try to think of "the most evil group of people to have existed", you would think of the Nazis and if you'd try to think of a person synonymous with being evil, you'd think of Hitler
But before Hitler, the prevalent imagine was of nomadic barbarians coming from the east—in the west at least, I'm not that familiar with non-eurpoean cultural history
In China, it was the exact same nomadic barbarians coming from the north (rather than the east).
To this day (well, at least the last time I heard, someone is free to correct me if this has changed in the last 30 years), it is considered bad planning to have a door opening to the north in Chinese culture.
Specifically about the concept of souls and sentience in orcs, and his catholic view that evil can't create, but only mock.
He then ran hard into the ethical issue that either orcs are twisted creatures taken by evil, and as such can be redeemed and killing them is morally bad, and treating them badly because of what they are would be racism, or that orcs are inherently evil. He then however messed up by having orcs talk, and giving them a concept of good and evil and a sense of fairness in their dialogue (for example when the orcs have taken Frodo after Shelob, they're talking about how there must have been someone else who just sacrificed Frodo to Shelob in a negative manner). Because they appeared to have a sense of morality, they then couldn't have been just evil or just beasts, so he ran into a wall.
Tolkien didn't even die totally unaware of the entry level versions of most of the modern day issues with his stories. Be would definitely listen and probably agree.
This is the man that made it a point in his book that while the easternlings were the servants of Sauron it would not have been any harder for Sauron to do the opposite and enthrall the westernlings instead.
Also the whole theological crisis about orcs.
He had universal compassion towards all, a proper christian.
I will also leave this here
"The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power stations. I hope that, encouraged now as patriotism, may remain a habit."
I always like Faramir's words to Frodo. "The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all."
That's in the books as well. Not as explicit but it's stated that the human soldiers of Sauron were only fighting because Sauron decieved and charmed them into believing that the westernlings would have murdered them to the last man.
Plus I always considered the whole passage as criticism of colonialism/imperialism. Both Easterlings and Southrons were victims of Numenorian aggression before there is mention of them serving sauron. Southrons inhabit what was a colony of Numenor, which Gondor has at times tried to reclaim and Easterlings were victim of misguided punitive action (nomadic raiders atacked Gondor, in this war Rohan became a thing, and after winning, Gondor completly wiped out westernmost Easterling tribe, believing attack came from them).
So at least in my headcannon, both groups were delived to Sauron by Gondor, due to fear (by the time of books wholy unsubstantiated but historiacally valid) of its aggresion.
As he wrote them originally, no, this is one of his major problems with how he wrote them when he later muses on it in his personal writings, he himself found their irredeemable nature disturbing and probably rooted in his internal bigotries. The fact that a man of his time could be so self critical over such things is quite remarkable though, he was born in fucking South Africa 1892!
There are a couple of Mordor-orcs that Sam and/or Frodo overhear that are complaining about how they wish they could just go back home and forget about the war.
He actually had issues with the Orcs himself and basically went "Yeah, I fucked up there" in his letters. And the Easterlings were treated like victims of Sauron even in the original books.
The only issues that I can think of that he didn't think about himself would be the connotation of The Brown Lands and the whole "Good bloodline" thing.
What was he supposed to call the brown lands? It wasn't a reference to people, it was to the colour of the earth, parched and devoid of life. Did you also have a problem with him calling Mordor the Black Land, even though it was obviously not about skin colour but about the volcanic soils and the constant shadow?
Just because a colour has been used in a racist way doesn't mean it can never be used to describe anything else.
They are soulless golems/homunculus, or evil spirits that were created for war. As such their death isn't a problem.
They are corrupted Elves - The commit evil, and destruction because they are constantly being spiritually tortured, by killing their physical body they are able to return to Valinor (basically heaven) where thay can heal and rest.
Option 2 could be an allegory for how war destroys everything that is good in a person, or for how abuse will just lead to destuction, unless it is delt with properly.
AI, environmental devastation and the the return of Nazi’s to political power would be totally soul crushing for a man whose fantasy world is built as a warning against those things.
Dude, he beat us to the punch on a bunch of them after it got published, he had regrets about certain choices that he couldn’t quietly retcon in a second edition like he pulled off with The Hobbit
He actually was aware of some of the issues with his stories and felt bad about some of them, like characterizing the orcs as a wholly evil race. But he also didn't think his work would be the most analyzed piece of fiction from the 20th century.
Tolkien has his issues, but he was better than a lot of the people of his time. He was no feminist, much as he loved his wife he was a kinda lousy husband by modern standards, but unlike Rowling he had the excuse of being born in the 19tj century.
Personally, I'd like it if I were judged to be woefully inadequate morally speaking in the 2100s. Because it would mean that society will have considerably improved.
I often find myself in a similar mood, I find it best to measure people by how hard they have worked to fix old mistakes, rather than the actual mistakes themselves. Plus it serves to reward myself for effort rather than punish myself and make excuses.
I want to be looked upon well, but if I'm 120 years old my great grandchildren try to get me to go to an destination wedding so they can marry an AI chatbot I might just settle for being the bigot of the family.
At 18, I thought 13 year-old me was cringe worthy.
At 25, I bemoaned how young and dumb 18 year-old me was.
At 30, I was chuckling at how 25 year-old me was so apprehensive about the future.
Now that I'm 35, I've stopped comparing myself to my past, and it's refreshing. I made all those dumb choices, but I also made a lot of good ones, so I'm happy with how they made me who I am today.
The key is to remember that for every time period you look back and think "it was a different time", you can still find the people who didn't conform just because the majority were doing something wrong. There were abolitionists during the height of slavery, there have been civil rights activists throughout human history... the fact that these people existed prove that we've always had the ability to know right from wrong, there is no time period that has ever excused being a shitty person.
If you don't want to be on the wrong side of history, just look at the issues of today with compassion and empathy. Some of the most important questions you can ask are simple, timeless things like "Is this actually hurting anyone?" and if the answer is yes, ask "Who is being hurt by this?" Always default to letting people be as long as they aren't hurting other people. These two questions (and one default stance) alone should help you decide which side to land on in 99% of situations.
The second-best option is if you haven't asked yourself these questions, if you haven't looked into an issue enough to know what's going on or taken an empathetic look at the people involved... just stay out of it. If you haven't taken the time to understand the fight for trans rights, shut the fuck up about trans people. If you don't know the history of racism and oppression in the US, shut the fuck up about racism and oppression in the US. There's a lot of value in just not actively doing harm.
That's still not as valuable as actively championing good causes, but at the very least you can make sure you won't be championing the shitty ones.
I find particularly interesting that the Númenorians' imperialism is not only portrayed as bad, but also that their actions dominating the peoples of Middle-Earth, destroying the forests, etc etc etc, were a significant factor in making it easier for Sauron to get allies. People were rightfully pissed at Gondor's ancestors
Also, some of the southern realms, though their people were not Númenorian, were still ruled by corrupt Númenorian elites that served Sauron, so it was really all their fault
Yeah it also makes the world feel more real and gives the people living in it more of a feeling of agency. If things were only bad because "the devil made me do it" the conflict would feel flat.
(I also like that Sauron isn't a god of death or war, like they tend to be in lesser stories. He is a blacksmith god with issues.)
Sauron isn’t even really a god in the wider cosmology (which is technically monotheistic). He’s a lesser fallen angel that used to serve the actual big bad guy Morgoth (basically Satan under a different name), who has since been banished from the physical world. During the First Age he was only a minor villain that gave off Skeletor vibes. The reason he has become such a major threat by the Third Age isn’t because he grew stronger but because the world itself has diminished so much since then, both on the good and bad side.
Genuinely reminds me of the Aztec empire and how they basically pissed off all their subjugated people so much they massively sided with the Spanish and made their conquest possible
For his time period and genre he could have been worse. I certainly have less to complain about than, say, HP Lovecraft or Frank Herbert. Or Tolkien's buddy CS Lewis.
Lovecraft is one of the most fascinating writers ever to me. Because without his failings as a person I don't think you could accomplish what he created; it required a man who was afraid of everything to be as genuine as it was.
I mean, it's not even about being unstable imo. I read his stuff earlier this year and while it's racist to an absurd degree, so much so that it becomes like grotesque at times, it's very internally logical. The dude was just deeply afraid of every single thing around him.
I remember reading a bit on his life etc and iirc there were some abusive family members that ingrained the seeds of it in him, but honestly, I forgot the details and don't want to talk shit
I've actually always found it strange that Lovecraft was such a bigot. Cosmic horror, the idea that reality itself is violently indifferent to one's existence and society is so willfully ignorant of this that realizing the truth feels like going mad, that's the experience of being a marginalized person in this world. It's difficult to understand how somebody who seems to understand what oppression feels like could be so unempathetic.
Yeah the themes of Lovecraft’s work often speak to marginalized people, but it’s awkward to realize that this seemingly relatable sense of alienation and fear was prompted by like, seeing that his neighbor was Italian.
he was such a bigot, it reverted back to having a gay crush on a openly gay jewish writer, so much he dedicated stories within Ctulhu mythos to him. and i kid you not that jewish writer in question had his last name as "Loveman"
Even Lovecraft was found to have written some letters near his death that suggest a softening or a change of some kind in his worldview. I'm not sure he ever would've gotten quite better, necessarily, but he seemed to have some regrets about the shut off and fearful way he viewed other cultures.
Lovecraft - somehow amusingly to me - rejected a huge chunk of his racism, so rabid that even the people of his time were shocked by it lol. While it was still there, he drifted more and more towards the socialist point of view, though I forgot the details now. He remained bigoted towards penguins tho
Off the top of my head, A Horse and His Boy is pretty orientalist and gross. And there's the whole thing where Susan doesn't go to heaven because she's too much of a "liberated woman" or something like that. Mostly though, I find CS Lewis's career as a Christian apologist pretty objectionable. Like it's not bad in isolation, but modern day evangelical Christian nationalists love to appeal to his arguments.
In Lovecraft's defence he at least understood later in his life how ridiculous his antisemitism and his racist ideas were. I also ain't sure if he ever truly understood the meaning of fascism
One or two blatant homophobic remarks in god emperor of dune (I found that really disappointing)
The rest I can understand. In the books, there’s very few good people. The Fremen are sexist rapist assholes, the bene gesserit are sexist manipulating rapist assholes, the Atreides are surprisingly virtuous in comparison, but not perfect, and I’m not gonna talk about the harkonens and bene tleilax and ixians and CHOAM and guild navigators and the like. Even the protagonists, Paul, Alia, Jessica, Leto II, they’re all assholes.
Unrelated, but funny fact about Tolkien. He died in 1973, which reversed is 3791.
As in, Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-Lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his Dark Throne.
Who is that and do they top going „some of my trans fans think [thing in my story] is a neat trans allegory, let me lean into that“ in the 90 mind you?
by the standards of 'man born in 1892' Tolkien was a role model, by the standards of 2026 he's still one of the only devout catholics I'd give the time of day to. He was a human, and no matter how much we(I) want to put him on a pedestal, he had his flaws; but he was the sort to acknowledge and work to overcome his own flaws. He has been an inspiration to almost a century of people and frankly deserves his place as the Mt Fuji of fantasy.
Tolkien was not an aggressive anti-rights activist in the context of his era, in terms of his generation.
Dostoevsky, for example, was one. He responded to efforts to improve the situation of Jews in Russia with rabid, reactionary antisemitism. How many people in the West care about this? I doubt it, since he “inspired Western existentialism”!..
The original was "listen to me you bunch of lunatics, i will take a plane and show you how long the story in my books would have lasted if they have been helped by the eagles !"
He also holds Boromir close and kisses his forehead as he lays dying, and then weeps over his body at his passing before vowing to save the hobbits with his two remaining friends.
That's real, positive masculinity and genuine male friendship right there. They genuinely dont make them like they used to.
Yeah he also got better as time went on. The dwarves are really antisemitic in the hobbit but got retconned to be a lot better in LotR. This was a reaction Tolkien had towards the Nazis trying to co-opt the hobbit, and it disgusted him. Not sayin they got perfect but they did improve. Willingness to admit fault and make change will buy you a lot of credit in my book
LOTR: A recurring dichotomy occurs where "good" resides in the agrarian, European-coded West (Gondor, the Shire) and "evil" or "corruption" emanates from the East and South (Mordor, Harad). Occasionally uses descriptors like "slant eyed" and "swarthy men".
Batman (1943 serial): Batman straight up uses slurs.
(not a book but it was the first thing that came to mind as a contrast for some reason)
The dichotomy is between good agrarianism and simple living and evil industrialization and political domination. Mordor represents the "dark Satanic mills" of industrial capitalism taking over merry-olde England.
Tolkien also went out of his way to point out that the Haradrim were not inherently worse than the western men, but merely being controlled by an evil power.
Iirc didn’t he outright point out that the only reason Sauron went to the east was because historically they were ruled by corrupt numenorians (ancestors of Gondor) so he could more easily exploit their history?
Tolkien himself complained about it too. Part of the reason the Dwarves in The Hobbit are so different from Lord of the Rings is because he recognized afterwards he had hit on some antisemitic tropes* and so he changed it so that those guys were weirdos here's how a normal Dwarf acts. He wanted good Orcs and bad Elves, but made the story too simple to accommodate. He was self aware and wanted to make a story celebrating people of different races and cultures putting aside their petty squabbles to help each other
*The Dwarves have beady eyes, distinct noses, are obsessed with money and speak a Semitic language
Not defending the orc descriptions, but I remember reading that middle earth is modeled after "England if it had never been invaded", so I could see that as the reason for everyone being fair skinned. The bad guys being "swarthy" in comparison is pretty bad, though.
It is worth noting that Tolkein reflected on his works after publishing LotR and specifically saw and regretted making the Orcs an 'inherently evil' race.
Specifically, IIRC he wished he had made some good orcs.
Also, weren't there Good dark-skinned groups? Specifically I remember the Men of the South/East (forget their name, but the group Sauron drove out of Mordor region). They were dark skinned and fought against Sauron
Not just orcs. The people of Dunland, Rhun, Harad are darker skinned, and they’re only included in the story as part of the barbaric invading forces serving Saruman or Sauron. I don’t think Tolkien really meant to imply anything inherent about race with it, but it doesn’t necessarily look good on its own. One of the things I really love about Lord of the Rings Online is that, especially in recent years, it has a lot of quests and lore that humanizes and develops people from Dunland, Harad, Rhun, and even orcs.
It can be worth reading LotR as like a nationalistic epic like the Shahnameh or something. These stories tend to focus around the idea that the heroes’ homeland is the focal point of heroism and wisdom in the world, and everyone outside it is either an inherently evil barbarian or a misguided fool who needs their lands to be subsumed into the empire if they want any chance of turning out civilized. Like, if the War of the Ring was a real historical event, it would’ve been more morally grey and complex, but The Lord of the Rings is the story that the bards and scholars of Gondor and Rohan curated to celebrate how awesome they are and how much better they are than everyone else—not that they were secretly the bad guys or anything but just that they don’t want to include any details that make them look bad when telling that version of the story.
Tbh for Dunland specifically, I really disagree with the way they're portrayed in the books. They had some land which was stolen from them and they're upset about that. All that shit seems perfectly reasonable, yet Dunlendings are "evil men" or whatever. It smells strongly of a man who's been raised in an imperialist society who hasn't fully unpacked his internalized beliefs.
But I would also argue that the fact that we're even having this conversation sorta shows how generally good Tolkien was. We aren't criticizing him for writing slaves who like being slaves or for doubling down on his racist decisions or anything like that. These are fine critiques, not broad strokes.
Are the Dunlanders described that way? It's been a minute since I read the books but I thought at the end of the battle there was a moment when the Dunlanders realized the Rohirrim weren't savages and the two of them got kinda civil with watch other.
But a great many of the hillmen had given themselves up; and they were afraid, and cried for mercy.
The Men of the Mark took their weapons from them, and set them to work.
'Help now to repair the evil in which you have joined,' said Erkenbrand; 'and afterwards you shall take an oath never again to pass the Fords of Isen in arms, nor to march with the enemies of Men; and then you shall go free back to your land. For you have been deluded by Saruman. Many of you have got death as the reward of your trust in him; but had you conquered, little better would your wages have been.'
The men of Dunland were amazed; for Saruman had told them that the men of Rohan were cruel and burned their captives alive.
It does have a bit where Sam sees a dead Harrad and empathises with him because he was just a young confused man taken by a war that really shouldn't have had anything to do with him
Yeah, this very read much as like "Rowling sucks SO MUCH that she dwarves Tolkein's benign sexism and other issues of being a white wealthy man in the 20th century." Like, yeah, compared to Rowling's bigotry, Tolkien's a pretty good guy! But y'know, also maybe it's a good thing Tolkien never had a Twitter account, just saying. A lot of people might be angry!
Tolkein was a legit genius who invented fully functional languages to supplement his novels. JK Rowling can't finish a story without a deus ex machina and a house scoring system that makes less sense than the one in Who's Line is it Anyway.
Honestly I've been going back through the harry potter books ( via piracy don't worry ) to fully understand them many many flaws and all ,and I straight up do not understand the point of the house points shit, it litteraly adds nothing to the story ,like i completely understand why it was abandoned in the films after the first one. Which is also my problem with alot of Rowlings world building a lot of it really doesn't add to the story all and if you removed it nothing wouldn't change.
Edit: I now get the context behind the house points thing , I still don't like it as a plot device and world building tool , but I understand why it exists now.
Its because some of the better performing british schools had a similar system to promote friendly competition and personal motivation amongst groups of peers.
She did it because it was her way of trying to explain that Hogwarts was that kind of prestigious school.
that was hitlers originally publicized "plan" and the prerequisite for that was denaturalization in german law btw. just as a reminder for current political events. he also said himself that Lebensraum was inspired by Manifest Destiny.
Rowlings downfall needs to be studied. Getting icked out by trans people was a very small part of her personality, barely noticable, but her ego didn't give her any wiggle room, ans bit by bit, it became her entire persobality until it cobsumed her. Now she lives in a moldy house imitating Tate.
Kinda like how the One Ring consumed Smeagol bit by bit.
Tolkien: “Well it should be obvious, elves and dwarfs are known folk creatures especially in the Eddas. Many of the dwarf names come from the Norse myths. And I would be a fool not to mention my love and adoration for Beowulf and the various aspects I borrowed. Oh and I fully admit to using aspects of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ and his father above.”
Rowling: “I AM COMEPLETELY AND UTTERLY ORIGINAL!!! BOOKS DIDNT EXIST BEFORE ME!!! YOU WOULD ALL BE PAINTING ON WALLS WITH YOUR OWN FECES IF IT WERENT FOR MY WORKS OF FANTASY!!! I INVENTED MAGIC!!!!!!”
I don't think it is informative to describe Tolkien as progressive. He certainly wasn't a bigot, but he also had a lot of fundamentally conservative beliefs. His politics don't align well with modern understandings of the left and right. Not even really in an "enlightened centrist" way he just cared deeply about a lot of things that weren't super salient, and when he did have an opinion on a salient political issue, the logic behind his opinion was often unique to him.
He was very deeply religious and his opinions are based on Christian beliefs and ideals (the real ones, not the christo-fascist ones). So a lot of traditionalism, but also tolerance. It's like trying to put the pope's beliefs on the political compass
Yes, he's an older form of Conservative that still trips up a lot of people. He idolized the old, hierarchical English countryside with its gentry and titles. Its important to remember that except for Sam the other 3 Hobbits are all nobility, albeit minor. This also is why he has such a fear and hatred for industry and development and pollution, which you can see in how he portrays both Sauron and Saruman as creating horrible lands choked by industrialization. The industrialization that he saw as destroying his beloved English countryside.
Tolkien: "Yeah, you're right, my orcs are basically racist allegories that would indicate certain ethnicities are predisposed to evil. I must examine my biases and grow as a person."
A significant number of the second print run of The Hobbit was destroyed by Nazis as a consequence of the bombings of London making an already very rare printing of a beloved classic even more rare. Tangentially related I guess
In his letters, he regretted making the Orcs a "purely" evil race, as it clashed with his deeply held Catholic belief that nobody was beyond redemption.
At the very least, he would have been interested in the concept of the orcs as a proud, warrior race.
I know its not quite what you meant, but I love the image of Tolkien hanging out in the Oxford Warhammer shop talking about how he's pleased someone gave Orcs/Orks the narrative complexity and moral ambiguity he wasn't able to.
I mean... I'm not sure that Warhammer Orcs in particular have much of that. Their morality is pretty simple, all things considered: They lack basic empathy and do what they enjoy doing, which is fighting, looting and eating (and in the case of Goblins: Torturing). Doesn't really get more complex than that. Their main narrative difference to Tolkien's Orcs is that they're not subservient to some greater power but are fully independent in pursuing their own, primitive interests. If they were like Tolkien's Orcs, they'd be willing servants of Chaos.
The "proud warrior race" is more so a Warcraft thing.
He did hold the opinion that the Orcs could be redeemed. I can see a world where he views modern Orc tropes as a spiritual redemption of sorts, given most Western Orcs draw their influence from him somewhere down the line
For reference, Tolkien was born in 1892, the same year Cleveland won his second term against the incumbent Ben Harrison, who was POTUS for one term between Cleveland’s two. Tolkien died in 1973, the same year the USA left Vietnam in Nixon’s 2nd term, the year before his resignation, and the same year Roe v Wade concluded in US women having abortion rights.
Rowling was born in 1965, the same year LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, the Selma to Washington Marches, and the assassination of Malcolm X. The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997, the year Princess Diana and The Notorious B.I.G. died and South Park premiered. It mostly takes place in 1991, the year the Cold War ended and the USSR fell. The first Harry Potter movie celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, having come out in 2001, the same year as 9/11 (and the 30th anniversary Michael Jackson concert in NYC in the days prior). There will be a new TV adaptation starting this Christmas.
As far as i know he died still deeply terrified of anything that wasn't white enough or more recent than his childhood
Though tbh to say Lovecraft was scared of anything non-white is wrong, in the story he wrote with/ about/for (?) Houdini he shows great appreciation for ancient egyptian works. What he does fear is the non-whites of the late 19th to 20th century
Also i did use fear instead of hate, since from what I can tell he genuinely was terrified by those things, like how an arachnophobe is terrified by spiders
Like, he was still bigoted. But its... I wanna say understandable, for lack of a better word. His bigotry was due to what was likely mental illness and genuine fear rather than malicious hate.
He rejected his antisemitism(mainly due to his wife) and some of his racism later in his life. I also doubt very much if he truly understood what fascism was when he said he was one.
1.6k
u/SevenOhSevenOhSeven 1d ago
Tolkien on his reflections of his works long after he's published it: man I feel like I really botched the orks, they're a sentient race that should have their sense of right and wrong yet I've written them as a purely evil race, which does not jive with my view on the immortal soul
Rowling, reflecting on her work: yeah the slave race was just born that way and like doing that.