How We Read Rings of Power

[Bêthberry]

If folks have learnt nothing over the last forty years or so of literary study and reading, it is that how we approach a book or movie is what contributes as much to our interpretation or enjoyment of the text as the text itself. Readers don't come to a book as a blank slate,ready to be written on by the book itself. Tolkien revolutionised study of Beowulf by bringing to it expectations of poetic or narrative assumptions, rather than assumption then current that it was simply a text with which to learn a language. Toni Morrison changed that expectation when she disagreed with Tolkien over the monster, when she brought her thoughts about marginalisation to the reading.

Nowhere is this importance of how we approach a text (or movie) more true than in Tolkien fandom where the "purists" who brought deep and profound knowledge of Tolkien's texts soundly routed Peter Jackson's movies, but whose victory nevertheless failed to convince those who loved the movies. These viewers did not seem at all bothered by the fact that Jackson did not produce, as he claimed his did, a faithful rendition of Tolkien.Not knowing the beautiful and subtle intricacies of Tolkien's writing they were free to appreciate what was there on the screen and in the audio projection before them; they were a kind of tabula rasa. Some even ended up--surprise-- reading the original texts themselves and loving them. This split is being reproduced with the appearance of Amazon's TV serial The Rings of Power, where the learned loremasters of The Silmarillion and Tolkien's many epitexts are crying foul about the new video adaptation. And others unimpressed by current cultural norms (or values) are equally complaining about violations of the sanctity of Tolkien's texts and characters.

So how are readers/viewers expected to approach the series if they have any hope of enjoying it? The problem is acerbated by the fact that the showrunners and writers can use only limited material from Tolkien, not the Silm or even LotR itself, only the appendices. One approach is to think of RoP as not directly telling a story written by Tolkien but instead as adapting the history of Middle Earth and creating a new narrative around it. This won't of course satisfy the loremasters of the Silm but it might provide a way into appreciating RoP as something in its own right and not as something beholding to a previous text. Another approach is to think of RoP simply as fanfic, but fanfic usually depends upon readers' knowledge of the original in order to make its claims to success.

One of the more interesting ways to resolve this hermeneutical dilemma is instead to read The Rings of Power as alternative fiction. Here I will withdraw my own words and quote something I found on the Tolkien Society's page on Facebook by Robert Berry.

The conversation to be having about RINGS OF POWER is not one about fanfic (for this is a licensed property) but altfic. Without the rights to THE SILMARILLION the [writers] cannot have storylines that come from that property. Finrod’s death, the silmarils, even the greater history of Numenor cannot resolve themselves as that last posthumous book established them or the writers would be infringing on copyright.
Altfic comes from a point of view where history, fictional or otherwise, turns aside from its established path. To watch this show and understand what the writers are trying to accomplish under the laws of copyright we must pretend that THE SILMARILLION never existed and that all we know of the history of Middle-earth is what we know from the appendix of LoTR. But we also need to go one step further and recognize the obligation of the writers, working under copyright law, to provide us with stories that cannot be seen as similar to what is in THE SILMARILLION.
That’s a tough task for a writer; abandoning and willfully changing much of what you love from a work to keep the other, often sketchier parts you have the rights to. If [you] look at ... the show this way I think you’ll [see] just how good it is. They were given the best toys in the box but with very strict instructions on how to use them.

PS. And just to remind some who may have forgotten, I was no fan of the Jackson movies. But I am intrigued by what readers bring with them to a text, which might in fact hinder their enjoyment.

[Galadriel55]

Good to hear from you, Bb! It's been a while.

I am very much in agreement with the general idea of both points. We very much do bring along baggage of expectations to any adaptation, and it can't not colour our opinion of it to some extent. And the idea of treating the show like a fanfic has been circulated around for quite some time. For myself, this has been my philosophy to which I turn for consolation and to preserve my sanity whenever some hair-pulling article would pop up. Bit there are two buts which still won't let me rest in peace even with this more forgiving outlook.

Firstly, fanfic and even altfic is fine... but there is such a thing as bad fanfic. Perhaps I am spoiled, in the last few years I have encountered some remarkably good fan/altfic including some from the Tolkien universe, and perhaps I have high expectations even for such productions as a result. But while the degree of canonical faithfulness can be somewhat flexible, good storytelling is still good storytelling, and there has been enough to make the storytelling of ROP very questionable.

The other aspect of it that really gets my goat is the pretense of being the real thing. "The book Tolkien never wrote", true to the letter of the lore, etc. No. If you are an adaptation, especially one that so clearly exists around the published texts rather than depicting the text itself, and one which simultaneously presents itself as a new and improved and modernized version - don't pretend to be the real thing. Just admit that you're an adaptation loosely based on an existing fantasy world, and acknowledge that world respectfully. You don't see other fanfics or altfics parading as true depictions. And on some level I think I would feel a lot more kindly towards the show if it presented itself with more humility and with more respect towards the source material - not even in the on-screen choices, but at least in their PR campaign. But you can't simultaneously claim to be connected and faithful to source material and be so alt; you can't tap into a fanbase by deliberately advertising on the franchise name, and not expect to be criticized by said fans when you fail to deliver the standards set by the franchise. At the very least, much can be forgjven when an adaptation is clearly made with love, even of it differs drastically from the origonal; but they have implicitely maligned the source material and the author numerous times, because the originals were not done in the same style as the alt fic. It is not made with love, it is made with money-making schemes in mind. And yet ROP demands universal respect - if you do not like it, you must be one of those horrible narrow minded people [of which enough is said elsewhere that I won't reiterate here]! It just can't have it both ways - be forgiven for the liberties and storytelling imperfections of a humble fanfic, but also present itself as the greatest thing since sliced bread. That stuff gets under my skin.


I think I'll wait for the thirs episode to air before I start watching, based on the reviews posted on this forum, and then perhaps I can give a better response to the first and main point of your thread - what baggage seems to weigh most heavily in this endeavour.

[Tar Elenion]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

The other aspect of it that really gets my goat is the pretense of being the real thing. "The book Tolkien never wrote", true to the letter of the lore, etc. No. If you are an adaptation, especially one that so clearly exists around the published texts rather than depicting the text itself, and one which simultaneously presents itself as a new and improved and modernized version - don't pretend to be the real thing. Just admit that you're an adaptation loosely based on an existing fantasy world, and acknowledge that world respectfully.

I have been saying this months, just be honest. Instead it has been repeated gaslighting and lies from the showrunners and producers (just watch the softball Q&A with Colbert at SDCC ('we looked deep into the books and felt what Tolkien wanted')), as well as self styled Tolkien 'experts' and Tolkien 'Professors'.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

You don't see other fanfics or altfics parading as true depictions.

Well, one sees it all the time, with historical fiction. Shakespeare made his living doing it. Of course, Shakespeare was good. The writers of Showtime's The Tudors, not so much. (Or even more directly, the Bard's Henry V alongside Netflix' wretched The King). And the ROP gang, the same.

Is it possible to make an altfic adaptation and still wind up with something rather different but equally good? Well, yes, occasionally: Lawrence of Arabia has many historical infelicities but is a brilliant film nonetheless. Moving back to literary adaptations, The Shining fared awfully well-- but it took a Kubrick.

[Aelfwine]

I, for one, have watched it and enjoyed it. No, it is not Tolkien, but it has enough of a Middle-Earth "feel" to make it familiar. Others I know feel the same. Also, people who have not read Tolkien will watch it, enjoy it, and perhaps come here for information or background. Shouldn't they be made to feel welcome?

[alatar]

Hey Bb, good to see you over here!


Part of me feels for the constricted writers. But they still need to tell a good story with interesting characters.


I'm not beholden to canon; my wife's never read the Books. Her opinion is that 'ROP is all over the place.' Don't think that she was referring to the map.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I am very much in agreement with the general idea of both points. We very much do bring along baggage of expectations to any adaptation, and it can't not colour our opinion of it to some extent.

It is far more than mere "baggage". It is one's philosophical predispositions, which can often operate seemingly unconsciously but not necessarily so, that predetermine how one reads a text. Edward Said's examination of "Orientalism" is a prominent example of the conceptual framework I am referring to but the problem is not limited to post colonial studies. See Toni Morrison's playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. Other examples come easily to mind where attitudes towards the changing depiction of women really underlay the negative opinions about Galadriel in RoP--the complaints about Galadriel say more about those who speak them than they do about the depiction of the character, especially when spoken as an alleged gatekeeper of the Tolkien universe. Or when attitudes about Hollywood lead those gatekeepers to assume they know the erroneous minds of writers who all suffer from the same mindset. Its an essentialism that operates prejudicially or blindly. Another example: Professor Drout has acknowledged in his FB posts about RoP that he really cannot come to terms with film--"I am not a film person". In other words, he doesn't appreciate how the medium works; he even admits he fastforwards a great deal (but he does not tell us what triggers this fastforwarding). That means, for him--and this is my interpretation of his statement--that the standard for him is always set by the conditions of literary text rather than by how the story can be constructed by the visual/oral text. And I say this with a great deal of respect for Professor Drout's work on Tolkien.

For myself, this has been my philosophy [ie, fanfic] to which I turn for consolation and to preserve my sanity whenever some hair-pulling article would pop up. Bit there are two buts which still won't let me rest in peace even with this more forgiving outlook....I think I'll wait for the thirs episode to air before I start watching, based on the reviews posted on this forum, and then perhaps I can give a better response to the first and main point of your thread

Oh my, you are quite angsty aren't you? Will you be calling down a fatwa on the showrunners and writers even before you view any of the series? Because really you are not here talking knowledgeably about the actual TV series itself but about the epitexts which preceded it. I guess this is your statement about what you will bring to viewing the series, but it really does not tell us anything about the series itself.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

If folks have learnt nothing over the last forty years or so of literary study and reading, it is that how we approach a book or movie is what contributes as much to our interpretation or enjoyment of the text as the text itself. Readers don't come to a book as a blank slate,ready to be written on by the book itself. Tolkien revolutionised study of Beowulf by bringing to it expectations of poetic or narrative assumptions, rather than assumption then current that it was simply a text with which to learn a language. Toni Morrison changed that expectation when she disagreed with Tolkien over the monster, when she brought her thoughts about marginalisation to the reading.

Nowhere is this importance of how we approach a text (or movie) more true than in Tolkien fandom where the "purists" who brought deep and profound knowledge of Tolkien's texts soundly routed Peter Jackson's movies, but whose victory nevertheless failed to convince those who loved the movies. These viewers did not seem at all bothered by the fact that Jackson did not produce, as he claimed his did, a faithful rendition of Tolkien.Not knowing the beautiful and subtle intricacies of Tolkien's writing they were free to appreciate what was there on the screen and in the audio projection before them; they were a kind of tabula rasa. Some even ended up--surprise-- reading the original texts themselves and loving them. This split is being reproduced with the appearance of Amazon's TV serial The Rings of Power, where the learned loremasters of The Silmarillion and Tolkien's many epitexts are crying foul about the new video adaptation. And others unimpressed by current cultural norms (or values) are equally complaining about violations of the sanctity of Tolkien's texts and characters.

So how are readers/viewers expected to approach the series if they have any hope of enjoying it? The problem is acerbated by the fact that the showrunners and writers can use only limited material from Tolkien, not the Silm or even LotR itself, only the appendices. One approach is to think of RoP as not directly telling a story written by Tolkien but instead as adapting the history of Middle Earth and creating a new narrative around it. This won't of course satisfy the loremasters of the Silm but it might provide a way into appreciating RoP as something in its own right and not as something beholding to a previous text. Another approach is to think of RoP simply as fanfic, but fanfic usually depends upon readers' knowledge of the original in order to make its claims to success.

One of the more interesting ways to resolve this hermeneutical dilemma is instead to read The Rings of Power as alternative fiction. Here I will withdraw my own words and quote something I found on the Tolkien Society's page on Facebook by Robert Berry.



PS. And just to remind some who may have forgotten, I was no fan of the Jackson movies. But I am intrigued by what readers bring with them to a text, which might in fact hinder their enjoyment.

It's taken me a while to respond to this, because it's very well thought out and deserves a considered response. But I can't let it pass unexamined. Setting aside its invocation of Said,* it is a post in the main about subjective response; but what, really, is it saying? It's far too facile simply to say that every reader takes away something different from every text; that's trivially true, but tells us nothing - and it's not I think accurate to universalize the proposition to the point that every text is simply a Rorschach blot of no inherent meaning. A text- at least, any worthwhile one - has inherent meaning, that created by and intended, and, yes, sometimes unintended, by the author (and, no, the author is not dead, even when buried in 1973).

Inherent meaning, especially in evaluating whether it has survived translation into a different medium, of course operates at a more substantive level than geekish trivia, something beyond beards or melanin levels or even whether Faramir took Frodo to Osgiliath (although I think a critical mass of erroneous trivialities can be indicative of not perceiving the substantive either). I don't think that really there is any way rigorously, even loosely, of defining it; "Tolkienian" is a sort of ding an sich, never directly perceivable or describable, which may have to fall back on Justice Stewart's definition of pornography.** I think the best we can do is to view it as a gestalt. Nonetheless, it is indirectly perceptible, if only by a sort of aestheto-intellectual osmosis - rather like the surprisingly effective language learning technique of simply playing a podcast or radio programme in the background, or as one falls asleep, and subconsciously absorbing the tongue's distinctive rhythm and music. And for this reason we do need to pay attention to the - not "gatekeepers," that's an unnecessarily pejorative term - but those for whom there is valid evidence of having undergone that sort of osmosis. This would certainly include Professor Drout, as well as any of a number of well-regarded, published Tolkien scholars or "experts," but also includes those with no publishing history or paper creds but nonetheless have demonstrated even in the context of forums like this one the sort of deep familiarity which serves as an inchoate sine qua non. Simply put, there are fans, and then there are cognoscenti, 'those who know:' a term which includes most of those here.

And cognoscenti can sense quickly enough when something is simply wrong, even before we get to bringing up specific matters of lore or trivia or page refences in Letters. It's like having a friend who one day starts acting very strangely and out of character- say, like our good friend Faramir started doing in the movies. We immediately clue into the fact that he's either become mentally ill, or replaced by an imposter, Filmamir, but something is definitely wrong: "he isn't himself." And this applies to Amazon's Galadriel, its Elrond, its entire world; it's simply wrong. We can all feel it.

It is to get caught up in only a few brambles in a vast thicket of infelicities to focus on ethnic impossibilities*** or Galadriel's "gender role." To address Bethberry more directly for a moment, no I don't think it's because male geek culture is somehow "threatened" by a woman daring to tread on male territory- these after all are the same geeks who loved Princess Leia, Captain Janeway, Sarah Connor and Lara Croft. I think that lighting upon sexism**** as an explanation is little more than a rationalization, the sort which of course Amazon's cynical marketing department has been exploiting. No, the problem is that Amazonriel is not the character we know. She acts and speaks and thinks nothing like the genuine Lady of Lorien: she's an impostress. And it is made even worse because what Amazonriel does act and speak and think like is every cliched crap-fantasy Heroine we've ever seen (now with added physics-defying CGI moves!(tm))

The same goes more broadly for the entire production. It just doesn't feel like Tolkien. At all. This doesn't require a deep dive, or really any specifics at all, any more than it takes to realize that a Cardi B song is not Mozart. This has nothing at all to do with "baggage" or predisposition, but rather that odd paradox, the objective differentiation of the qualitative.
________________________
* Never a way of garnering my sympathies

** "I know it when I see it."

*** Does Tolkien's Arda include POC? Of course, absolutely. The Haradrim very clearly are. What cannot be the case is Amazon's multi-ethnic communities: something which at the technological and commercial level depicted simply would not have been possible (and that's even before getting to a queen of the House of Elros....)

****The word people actually mean these days when they inaccurately use "misogyny"
__________________

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

*** Does Tolkien's Arda include POC? Of course, absolutely. The Haradrim very clearly are. What cannot be the case is Amazon's multi-ethnic communities: something which at the technological and commercial level depicted simply would not have been possible (and that's even before getting to a queen of the House of Elros....)

Just a brief reply to this: I don't think that by casting POC as Elves, Dwarves or Númenóreans the makers of RoP are trying to say anything about the 'actual' ethnic make-up of these communities. They're casting actors to play people, regardless of what colour they're supposed to be. Sadoc Burrows is obviously meant to be a member of the same ethnic group as the other Harfoots (many of which are probably his relatives), never mind that he's played by a black actor and the others aren't. It's no different from an Afro-American or Asian actor playing Hamlet, or Kenneth Branagh casting Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Just a brief reply to this: I don't think that by casting POC as Elves, Dwarves or Númenóreans the makers of RoP are trying to say anything about the 'actual' ethnic make-up of these communities. They're casting actors to play people, regardless of what colour they're supposed to be. Sadoc Burrows is obviously meant to be a member of the same ethnic group as the other Harfoots (many of which are probably his relatives), never mind that he's played by a black actor and the others aren't. It's no different from an Afro-American or Asian actor playing Hamlet, or Kenneth Branagh casting Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing.

There I would have to disagree. Besides Shakespeare having been staged myriad times over half a millennium and directors therefore trying to outdo each other in bizarre productions so as to be "fresh" (e.g. Branagh's 30s musical Love's Labour's Lost and especially his Mikado-cum-As You Like It), not just his particular Much Ado but also Will's original are really set in a fantastical no-place that happens to use Italian nomenclature, and his mix of skin tones and accents is no more disturbing than the casting of boys as Beatrice and Hero would have been to his original audience.

But establishing a Secondary World requires verisimilitude. If this were as abstracted as an austere 60s Bayreuth production, which demands the viewer to fill in the blanks from next to nothing. it would be one thing, but Amazon have lavished money all over weapons and other props, some armor (not Elendil's), and limitless terabytes of CGI all intended to turn Numenor and Middle-earth into real places.

And if the intention was simply to provide employment opportunities to non-European actors, they could easily have cast all the Southrons as BIPOC, as a coherent ethnic group rather than the multiracial (and multilinguistic) jumble they are.

(I also don't think it was an accident that they cast the notoriously outspoken Lenny Henry as Sadoc, either. I believe fan-baiting was a conscious strategy).

[Galadriel55]

Firstly - WCH, that is an excellent analysis of the situation, well-reasoned and well-put and I think with more than a grain of truth to it. I would rep you but apparently I have been too stingy with rep-giving of late and need to rep more people first.

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Just a brief reply to this: I don't think that by casting POC as Elves, Dwarves or Númenóreans the makers of RoP are trying to say anything about the 'actual' ethnic make-up of these communities. They're casting actors to play people, regardless of what colour they're supposed to be. Sadoc Burrows is obviously meant to be a member of the same ethnic group as the other Harfoots (many of which are probably his relatives), never mind that he's played by a black actor and the others aren't. It's no different from an Afro-American or Asian actor playing Hamlet, or Kenneth Branagh casting Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing.

So I actually disagree very much with this viewpoint. For one thing, the film industry is a visual medium, and there is expectation that what is shown is what is meant to be shown, not "we show you A but you really know it's B". Some films consciously deviate from the way people "should" look, and that is acceptable if it is done with self-awareness and audience's awareness of the film's self-awareness; sometimes it is done for budget/limited casting/costume reasons (and then you play along and make belief), or purposefully for stylistic reasons (and then it is almost like a fanfic - and I want to refer to Hui's post in the Fanfic thread because that is another one I want to rep but can't, it presents the explanation for agreeable deviation so eloquently). But in this case it is not the former, RoP not being some homemade production, nor the latter - as I don't get the sense they are doing this for stylistic reasons so much as for political correctness reasons. Casting people to play people is all well and good, but in a visual medium you're also casting people to look like people; you could cast Karen Gillan to play Bilbo Baggins, and she might even do a decent impression, being a decent actress and all, but as there is nothing remotely Bilbo-esque about her appearance it would probably be a little ridiculous. Again - it would be ok for a film that is doing this knowingly in full knowledge and intent of the effect it would cause; it would look ridiculous if it was done in Jackson's films. So where does it stop? Where is the magic line of what we're going to pretend not to notice? And how do you defend that line? Furthermore, people's appearance is part not only of their individual characters, but the setting. I have always been a proponent of logical diversity - it has to make sense within the context of the setting, and then it enhances the setting. In the context of a medieval society, in a busy trade port/town, more is more. In a reclusive village which probably hasn't seen any new addition to its gene pool for several generations, less is more. Diversity that is inappropriate or disproportionate to the setting (in either direction, mind! both too much or too little of it!) diminishes the impact of that setting, unless there is in-story explanation for why that is so: what happened to get this unexpectedly different or unusually similar group of people? Sadoc's appearance stands out as an anomaly among his community. So either make the community match (so he's not the only one), or explain his presence there (maybe he was actually from another tribe but married a girl from this one and changed camps? It could be as simple as that, a line of dialogue). If the argument becomes that it's not fair for actors who are otherwise perfect for the job to be passed over because of their appearance, and a disproportionate number of roles of a certain type within the industry are given to actors with a certain background - then the challenge is to write scripts where the setting and backstory allows for logical diversity to happen, not to smear it across the script without rhyme or reason. This is not a criticism of any of the actors, but of the show-makers. But, most importantly, I strongly believe that ignoring a physical trait in an attempt at equality is creating the opposite effect; when you're not allowed to notice something, it suddenly becomes the elephant in the room. Inequity does not come from noticing physical characteristics, but from reacting to them. Teaching and promoting acceptance and equality should be about recognizing that people are different - but not letting those differences be the foundation of your judgement, or your actions. The corollary of your position that we ignore the differences that we see, even though we clearly see them, is that at best you get the awkward elephant-in-the-room situation, and at worst the conclusion that when we see a dark-skinned individual we should pretend that he is white (and that, I think, is cultural sensitivity gone wrong big time).

So, with no offense to any of the actors touched by this argument - including the aforementioned Sadoc, who I think acts the part very well - it is different. I am unfamiliar with the specific examples you give so cannot compare and contrast directly, but I've seen enough examples myself to argue the general point, I think. The film has to be cognizant of what its casting choice is achieving, and that purpose is different in every film. RoP tries to establish its settings and populations. And just like it wouldn't make sense for Moria to look all flimsy and artsy like Rivendell, or for Rivendell to be stout and stubby like the Southland villages - it also doesn't make sense for the populations to look out of place for their setting and story. So far there have been three cultures where one member stands out against the rest. My argument: either normalize that appearance, or else explain why this individual stands out. Why is this not necessarily an issue with all the other films and plays? Because establishing the setting is not one of the primary consequences of cast selection.

This is actually one of the things I was very willing to wait on before outright criticising though, because I can well believe that we will see both more characters and more backstory before the show is done, so there is some potential for this to be resolved in later episodes - and in the scheme of things it's not something that bothered me a great deal to begin with, other than one more dissonant note to add to the rest. But I take issue with the argument. If RoP is not trying to show us the "actual" ethnic makeup of these communities, then it should, and this is on the show-makers. If its expectation is that people would just pretend to see homogenous crowds when they are not so - then that is so much more disrespectful, and not the right message at all.

But, now that it's brought up and I managed to get sucked into this discussion - this is another hot topic on the subject of the subconscious preconceptions influencing the reactions to the show and/or promo material. Some of the characters do not match the descriptions people traditionally associate with Tolkien's characters of this type, and that's also caused a bit of a stir. And you can rationalize what is actually said or not said in the canon about skin colour and hair colour and all that jazz, in the end it's the fact that the appearance does not match the expectation, the mental image. And you can argue about whether it is the Tolkien schema or the broader racial differences schema that is playing into people's reactions or both - but before it could really be argued and reasoned, you get the other side implying that any criticism of this sort smells of racism, and thus no discussion is allowed on fear of evoking the R word. And I don't think that's right. I think there are more reasons to criticize a cast for disproportionate diversity than racism. In a film that tries to portray its world as vividly as possible, you can't just say "oh but this doesn't count" - because it does. In a film about ancient China, I expect to see a lot of Asian people, and there better be an explanation for any non-Asian people around. In a film set in an ancient Saxon village, I expect lots of blonds, and if there is an Asian person there - I expect an explanation. Normalizing diversity is not the same as pretending differences don't exist. So - on the one hand, perhaps we need to self-reflect on what exactly bothers us on these points, but on the other - waving away all criticism as prejudice also gets us nowhere.



Also, returning to an earlier conversation:

Originally Posted by Pitch

I really hope we'll see this yet, just pushed into the future by an Age or so.

Thanks again to Hui's posts on other threads, I think I now realize why that explanation doesn't seem to satisfy me or pacify my anger at the situation. I can roll my eyes at Elrond and Gil-galad, but Galadriel makes me most angry. And that's because in the show Gil-galad and Elrond don't yet have well-established stories, so as fan-fiction it is allowed to alter them to a degree so long as it then sticks by those alterations and nothing else. But they include Galadriel's backstory, they acknowledge it - that she is already an Age old, that she saw the death of the Trees and many battles and hardships that the "young" Elves can't imagine - they establish that she is of the older generation. And yet in character development they transpose her from an Age ago. It's inconsistent. You can't both have the canonical Galadriel timeline of events, and the fan-fic compressed timeline of her character. That either makes it seem like she was effectively in a time capsule for the First Age, because it's just not logical for her present character and behaviour to follow from her backstory.

And this is one reason I love these discussions - I feel like there are many overlapping threads at once, it's like one giant discussion being carried over on multiple threads and 3 sub-forums, and one helps better understand the other.


EDIT: Xed with WCH, who made a very similar point much more succinctly and eloquently.

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Firstly - WCH, that is an excellent analysis of the situation, well-reasoned and well-put and I think with more than a grain of truth to it.

All arguments, disagreements and diverging perspectives aside, I concur with this.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

]And this is one reason I love these discussions - I feel like there are many overlapping threads at once, it's like one giant discussion being carried over on multiple threads and 3 sub-forums, and one helps better understand the other.

Same!

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Same!

Cheers! All arguments, disagreements and diverging perspectives aside, I am very glad to see so many people here, and would not be on any other forum. ^.^