Importance of white representation in fiction

[Farm Boy]

That one is on my keyboard. Chill guys.

I was trying to figure out why that one sprung to mind. But, sure, of course!

Spoiler :

 

[NovaKart]

I guess this might be a similar view to that of the HP fanfic author who continues to use broken French in a particular character's dialogue. She's a native French speaker so there's no excuse for it, but the author doesn't think her readers will notice (I despise the "audience is too stupid to know the difference" excuse for sloppy writing).


Did I not state that I have not read LOTR, have not seen the movie, and so I neither know about nor particularly care about hobbits? Apparently they're short people who live in weird little houses and one of them had to go on a quest. Nobody expected him to be brave, but he was. That's the sum total of what I get from this.

Much of Renaissance art was commissioned for political purposes, to draw connections between biblical figures of ancient times with rulers of then-modern times (any time in which an individual person lives is "modern" to that person). Michelangelo wouldn't have painted a ceiling just because he felt like it. It was a job.

As with anything else I've read that is essentially a storybook because it tells stories (even people in churches refer to them as stories), it is my place to imagine the characters as I see fit. I just don't happen to particularly care what these particular characters look like. For instance... the actor who played Joseph in the first production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat I saw was a dark-haired man. Many years later I saw another production, in which Joseph was played by a blond man. Peter Danielson, in the Children of the Lion novels, depicts Joseph as having red hair. The hair color doesn't matter; in the instance of the rock opera, the only critical things are that Joseph be able to sing and act, which both productions provided, and that the depiction in the novels be mostly sympathetic, but with a flaw or two so he doesn't come across as boringly perfect. That was also accomplished.


We have had this argument numerous times, and I've stated that I don't want to get into it AGAIN. You know my position. I know yours. Neither of us will change our mind. I do have another argument I could make, based on RL happenings in my province, but this isn't the thread for it.

It amazes me you’re so into fantasy and you’ve never read Lord of the Rings.

 

[warpus]

To be fair it takes like 7 years to read the part of LOTR that describes one of the bushes they pass on the way to mordor /s

 

[NovaKart]

To be fair it takes like 7 years to read the part of LOTR that describes one of the bushes they pass on the way to mordor /s

The Hobbit isn’t that long and if someone reads Harry Potter fan fiction with 300+ chapters and dresses up in medieval themed clothing for events it just seems surprising to me to never pick up a copy of the Hobbit or LOTR over the past few decades.

I know Harry Potter and LOTR are very different but then I also know Valka has read Dragonlance.

 

[warpus]

I don't find it that surprising, people tend to gravitate to their own nuanced likes and dislikes and those don't always cleanly align with genres or whatever.

 

[Ajidica]

It's incorrect to assume I like LOTR. I haven't read the books, nor have I seen the movies. I can't imagine ever wanting to. I have a vague idea of a few of the characters via pop culture references and a vague idea of some of the actors who were in those movies.

HERESY!

We don'ts likes it much, do we precious?

Easily some of the best fantasy writing out there, up there with Gandalf's fight with the Balrog, but I can't find a narration of that.
EDIT: Text works

The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm.

'You cannot pass," he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.'

The Balrog made no answer. The fire in it seemed to die, but the darkness grew. It stepped forward slowly on to the bridge, and suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its wings were spread from wall to wall; but still Gandalf could be seen, glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.

From out of the shadow a red sword leaped flaming.

Glamdring glittered white in answer.

There was a ringing clash and a stab of white fire. The Balrog fell back and its sword flew up in molten fragments. The wizard swayed on the bridge, stepped back a pace, and then again stood still.

'You cannot pass!' he said.

With a bound the Balrog leaped full onto the bridge. Its whip whirled and hissed.

'He cannot stand alone!' cried Aragorn suddenly and ran back along the bridge. 'Elendil!' he shouted. 'I am with you, Gandalf!'

'Gondor!' cried Boromir and leaped after him.

At that moment Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud he smote the bridge before him. The staff broke asunder and fell from his hand. A blinding sheet of white flame sprang up. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog's feet it broke, and the stone upon which it stood crashed into the gulf, while the rest remained, poised, quivering like a tongue of rock thrust out into emptiness.

With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled about the wizard's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. 'Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone.

 

[lymond]

Hey @Valka D'Ur ..I might suggest watching the movie Tolkien. I think it a nice little biopic/romance myself, but it will give you some insight into who he was as a person before he really started writing the novels. Might pique your interest a little into reading Hobbit and LOTR.

Then read Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles

 

[warpus]

I started watching Tolkien but just couldn't get over the bad casting, like come on everybody knows Tolkien was an 8 foot tall albino night elf

But honestly, I don't know why I stopped, I should probably finish watching it

 

[Berzerker]

Jon Stewart does a podcast and a few weeks back he was criticizing Harry Potter, apparently Gringott's Wizard Bank run by goblins was playing on a Jewish stereotype. Stewart said it looked like JK Rowling employed Jews from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

[RobAnybody]

@Valka D'Ur...I'd also bet you'd enjoy watching the movie Tolkien. To be honest, I also bet you'd actually enjoy LotR, either the movies or the books. But the movie mentioned above, about Tolkien's life, /\, I bet you'd like that. Just fwiw.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Hey @Valka D'Ur ..I might suggest watching the movie Tolkien. I think it a nice little biopic/romance myself, but it will give you some insight into who he was as a person before he really started writing the novels. Might pique your interest a little into reading Hobbit and LOTR.

Then read Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles

The Hobbit pales compared to LOTR; she should start with the Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit can wait.

 

[aelf]

And in the end it is the East asians who get the shaft in Hollywood after all - and nobody's talking about that for some reason

Nope, that's kind of the point. People are so intent on having white actors for most if not all roles that you can't even hire non-white extras because "muh suspension of disbelief." Just because the work was written by a white man or is supposed to be have a medieval European setting (arguable for some works like Wheel of Time), which constitutes almost all mainstream fantasy works today.

In fact, as I've brought up earlier, East Asian representation is deeply flawed in terms of getting the actors with the right ethnicity/language to portray the characters accurately, but no one seems bothered by it. Apparently because no one is expecting 100% accuracy, but the line is somehow supposed to be drawn at skin colour. So, yes, some people are too obsessed with skin colour, but it's not just Americans, evidently.

Also, 'woke casting' is basically the catchall term for everything people dislike these days:

 

[Snowygerry]

(...)
In fact, as I've brought up earlier, East Asian representation is deeply flawed in terms of getting the actors with the right ethnicity/language to portray the characters accurately, but no one seems bothered by it. Apparently because no one is expecting 100% accuracy, but the line is somehow supposed to be drawn at skin colour. So, yes, some people are too obsessed with skin colour, but it's not just Americans, evidently.

US Americans, followed by the Brits have narrowed the issue down to skin colour yes, as if any "black" person (or "person of colour" as they like to say) can "represent" any other "black" person, and they are all the same as long a certain proportion is kept.

That seems strange to us here in continental Europe, I can distuingish on sight a Brit from a Frenchman from a German for example - and skin colour has nothing to do with it.

As others I notice when a different nationality tries to portray a Belgian in a movie for example - be it a "black Belgian" or a "white Belgian"

Overall we can say that Brits and US Americans are grossly overrepresented in popular fiction, no matter their particular colour.

 

[aelf]

Overall we can say that Brits and US Americans are grossly overrepresented in popular fiction, no matter their particular colour.

Well, yes, true enough. But among them white people are still way more represented and that seems to have formed people's expectations that almost everyone they see on screen is going to be white.

 

[Snowygerry]

The mentality filters through here also - check out this story for instance :

Dutch poet declines assignment to translate Gorman's works | AP News

“I am shocked by the uproar around my involvement in the dissemination of Amanda Gorman’s message, and I understand people who feel hurt by the choice of Meulenhoff to ask me,” said Rijneveld, who writes poetry as well as novels.

As if a "black" Dutch poet could more accurately translate a US poem than a "white" Dutch poet ?

 

[Gorbles]

@warpus - this seems a bit of a letdown given the great post you replied with, but I've read it and appreciate it! I don't really have any followup thoughts at this time.

Actually, I do have a small thing. In the Witcher, some controversy has come (and if originally sincere, hijacked by white nationalists regardless) over the casting of Fringilla and to a lesser extent Yennefer. I don't have that much familiarity with the books or the games, but their ethnicity seems to have exactly zero bearing on the plot, so I have trouble as accepting said controversy as sincere in the first place.

As if a "black" Dutch poet could more accurately translate a US poem than a "white" Dutch poet ?

Stories like this are normally just optics, it's more out of respect for the author of the original material.

I mean, there can be cases where the cultural context is shared by association of the demographic, and not the geographic location (in that matter perhaps a black Dutch poet could do it more justice), but I don't know enough about the situation to say whether that may or may not be the case. I'd just say to keep an open mind that it might.

 

[Snowygerry]

(...)
Stories like this are normally just optics, it's more out of respect for the author of the original material.

...

When Obama was just elected he came to Belgium to visit a war cemetary - waving friendly to locals,

one West-Flemish woman remarked he was nowhere near as black as on TV

 

[EnglishEdward]

The Hobbit isn’t that long and...

The Hobbit pales compared to LOTR; she should start with the Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit can wait.

I read the Hobbit when I was younger before they'd made the films.

But I gave up on the Lord of the Rings itself.

I just found it too dense in detail of his imaginary world for light reading.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Fine, since I didn't actually bring it up

I brought it up... by asking you about God being a redhead female, in the context of trying to get you to understand why I didn't think the race of hobbits was something that could be "correct". So the whole tangent was my fault, and I was trying to help end it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I... agree? Fifty-six. Albuquerque.

We're done.

It does make sense to me that the sensibilities of the audiences need to be kept in mind as well, but don't you do that by casting actors that fit the characters?

Sometimes you get lucky and get actors that fit the characters already, but much of the time the actors have to learn how to fit the characters.

As a "for instance"... Take the Star Trek episode "The Naked Time" when the various crew members start acting drunk because they're infected by a virus. There's a scene in which George Takei turns up shirtless, with a fencing foil, convinced he's D'Artangnan. Before that script was finalized, Takei was asked if he knew how to fence.

As he said in interviews, any sensible actor will always answer such questions as "Do you know how to _____?" with "Yes." And then they take a crash course and learn how to do whatever it is, whether it's fencing, riding a horse, speaking with a particular accent, or whatever. That's what Takei did. Now it's part of the lore of that character that he likes to fence and harbors a secret wish to be a bold swashbuckling hero like D'Artangnan and the Musketeers.

What makes a good casting decision? I feel that I am not really academically trained to put forth detailed ideas about this, but I can speculate. I'd have said the same thing if you asked what makes a good screenplay - I have thoughts and ideas, but in the end screenplay writing is probably much better analyzed by an English professor or... somebody who has experience writing screenplays I guess. I can imagine how writing a screenplay might go down, but there's probably all sorts of nuances I am not seeing, and all sorts of dimensions to the process that I am not appreciating. So yeah, I could say that you need a protagonist, a climax, a crisis, yadda yadda, but there's probably well understood dynamics here that can be much better summarized by an expert (and not me).

I wouldn't ask an English professor to critique a screenplay unless I wanted an academic critique rather than a dramatic critique and assessment if it was something that could be produced and that audiences would like. My high school English teacher was good at teaching Shakespeare, but I have no idea if she would have the ability to produce or direct an actual performance.

It's not enough to write the lines. You also need to think of the physical movement each character makes, and their entrances and exits. Sometimes what you put into the script can't be done for various reasons. As an example, we had to make a number of changes to Gypsy and Peter Pan - two productions for which I was head of the props crew and knew that some of what the script called for and the director wanted would be impossible, for logistical reasons and for legal reasons and for safety reasons. Substitutions had to be made, and lines had to be slightly altered to accommodate the substitutions.

There is no way in hell I was going to risk anyone's safety by having arrows flying over the stage, because we couldn't guarantee the safety of the crew or any cast that might be in the opposite wings. Ditto fireworks. I was relieved to be able to tell the director that we couldn't have real fireworks in one of the scenes in Peter Pan because I'd asked the fire department about it and they said an emphatic NO. The substitution worked well enough, and while the audience would have oohed and aahed over the fireworks, the building could have burned down. So I think I was right in that situation.

Having said that, this is not a prelude to me getting out of answering the question. I guess I've never really thought about it in much detail though. If an actor works very well for the role you can just.. feel it? They fill the shoes so well you just believe that they are the character and not an actor. Jean Luc Picard is totally believable as a character, but I don't really know if that's an example of good casting? He is supposed to be French and he speaks with a British accent. How to analyze that? You could make up a background story for uhh the Federation enslaving all French people or uhm something a bit more believable about Picard's family being somewhat mixed and maybe some sort of upbringing in some posh British school for the bald. I don't know. In the end in this case I don't think it matters. Picard just works so well and the actor is so good. It works very well for the story and I think that's the main thing for me. The accent thing was too minor to stand out too much in the end.

Patrick Stewart could pull off a decent French accent when required, and as a classically trained Shakespearian actor, he's among the elite of English actors. His character having a French name and an English accent didn't bother me any more than it should bother someone that an anglophone, with an "English Canada" name would be resident in Quebec or vice-versa. I just assumed that at some point Picard's father or grandfather or great-grandfather (would have to check Memory Alpha to see if there's any information on this) decided to move the family to the UK or if that part of the world has a different political/linguistic configuration in the 24th century than it does now.

It's been years since I read any TNG novels, so I don't know if any of the pro novelists ever dug into the Picard family tree and figured out the TrekLit version of why the family background is French yet they speak and act more like typical English people. Frankly I find TNG too boring to bother finding out if any fanfic author has written about it. And at any rate, while I like Patrick Stewart as an actor, I really don't like Jean-Luc Picard because of his myopic "humanity has evolved past the desire for material goods" claptrap. Clearly humanity hasn't, and TNG, DS9, and Voyager (series that are all contemporaneous with each other) are full of examples. Picard's assertion is refuted in the very first episode, when Beverly Crusher uses Federation credits from her "account on the Enterprise" to buy one of the most hideous bolts of cloth I've ever seen.

How much do ethnicity and gender matter here? IMO it depends on the story. If you are making a movie about medieval Poland it would probably be best to cast all white actors, although it would not be out of place to have some Mongolians there too perhaps, and you could probably easily get away casting somebody from the Middle east or what have you. In the end, if the actor is skillful enough, if the makeupwork and the costumework were put together by a competent crew, and if everything "feels" right, then it's good. If it doesn't feel right, then it's not

There's a science fiction series by Leo Frankowski, about the adventures of a 20th century Polish man named Conrad who accidentally time-travels to the 13th century. It's spring, he goes to buy seeds for his mother to plant in her garden, and before going home, he stops for a drink in a bar. One drink leads to more, and eventually he gets drunk enough to fall down a flight of stairs. When he wakes up and stumbles back outside, everything is different. It's winter, nobody is around, and he's freezing and needs shelter (he's not dressed for this weather).

He eventually meets a monk, and they end up at a castle. Conrad finds out that not only is he no longer in the 20th century, but the year he has traveled to is about 10 years before the Mongols are due to invade.

Well, yikes. What's he going to do? He can't get home, he knows what's going to happen... and I'm not going to say anything more, because if you decide to check this series out, you won't thank me for spoilers. The first novel in the series came out during the time when I was with the SCA, and we took turns borrowing it from the library. Eventually I decided to buy my own copies. I highly recommend it, since it's a time travel story that inspired me to do research on the real history of that time. The first novel's title is The Cross-Time Engineer.

In most movies ethnicity doesn't really seem to matter. I mean, if you are making a movie about an African-American man in jail, then you probably shouldn't cast a white guy. That doesn't feel right at all and it doesn't make any sense. Both ethnicities would have a different experience in an American jail (and with the legal system) and that needs to come across in the character, otherwise the story falls apart.

Sometimes it does work out if you cast against what the story calls for. For example, Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption was not supposed to be black. But the director decided Freeman would be fine in the part and they adjusted the dialogue a little to explain why his nickname was "Red" (the original character was red-haired and from Ireland). I haven't read the novel this movie was based on, so I don't know if the change affected the story very much.

I've written too much, probably. Characters are the most important part for any story to me though, they drive everything. For me everything else is secondary. The characters, their personalities, and the interactions between them, and the drama and other interactions that leads to.. That's the story. The spaceships, the giant worms, the space colonies.. that's all secondary. It's important to get right too, but if you don't have interesting characters & relationships between them, then the rest doesn't matter - your story sucks already. Sadly this is why I dislike the Mars trilogy. The characters are all copies of the same person and feel like cardboard cutouts. Yawn.

Kim Stanley Robinson was the Guest of Honor at one of the SF conventions I attended, waaaay back when. I hadn't read any of his books at the time, so I didn't bother attending his readings or panels. If I had a time machine, that's one of the things I'd change regarding SF conventions. I'd also have made sure to attend the panel hosted by both Frederik Pohl and David Gerrold. That one would have been fascinating.

You're right about the characters. It's a sad fact that for all the adventure Ben Bova packs into his Grand Tour novels, he couldn't write a decent romance to save his life. It's like as soon as a woman walks into a room, you know she's going to end up with the lead male character. The only time this doesn't happen is with the Jupiter/Leviathans of Jupiter and the Saturn/Titan novels. In the first case the male protagonist is already married and doesn't cheat (though he's attracted to the female protagonist) and in the latter case, the male protagonist is such a jerk that he ends up with none of the women (who all pair off with secondary male characters).

The second reason I decided to novelize the computer game King's Heir: Rise to the Throne - after the "what happened next" reason, which is the primary one any fanfic writer does sequels - is because of the characters. I want to know them, what makes them tick, why they acted as they did and why they didn't do things they could have done. For instance, the bonus chapters in the Collector's Edition show that the villain who murdered the King is in the dungeon. Immediately I wondered WTH he's doing there, and why he's even still alive. In the 11th century, you don't go to jail for killing a king. You'd get executed, by whatever method the new king decided. Evidently at the end of the main game, the new king (the Heir) didn't decide to execute this guy, even though they know he's guilty.

Well, my story fixes that. After the events of the bonus chapter, Badrick doesn't cool his heels in the dungeon. He gets executed, and I have the new king go through a period of soul-searching to figure out just how he's supposed to balance wanting to rule justly and with mercy yet deal decisively with his enemies (Badrick also murdered his father and tried to kill him, too - a hat trick of killing three generations of the ruling family, 31 years apart). To help myself figure this character out, I've written years' worth of prequel material plus an alternative version of the story that goes into some dark places psychologically with some of the characters. Where it ends up will hopefully balance everything out so he has flaws but not to the point that he doesn't realize this and that he has to work at not becoming the sort of ruler that would in turn be the target of assassins.

The game developers laid the basic groundwork for the character. I'm taking it and expanding it in directions they never thought of, and fleshing out the other characters in the game and creating still more to make this a fully-realized story. The game itself suffers from "Bonanza Syndrome" - adult sons living with their father, none of them married, no other women in the family (not even a maid or cook).

Well, I gave them a housekeeper/cook, and female family members, friends, potential wives (ladies at the court), and characters of all walks of life and a variety of jobs and professions. I'm not relying on D&D-type stereotypes, but rather I'm doing actual research.

There are several YouTube channels that are excellent resources for this research, and I've begun to build a new section of my personal library with reference books on the history of this time period.

I'll wrap this up by mentioning Liet Kynes. When the casting was first announced, I was skeptical. I thought Fremen society wouldn't have allowed a woman to be in charge. That felt weird to me. It didn't "feel" right, but I wasn't really sure. I needed to see it.

When I saw this character in action, I was convinced. This Kynes felt more like Kynes than the one from the 1984 movie. It just "felt" right. So whatever DV saw in the actor to cast her for the role, I have no idea really cause I'm just a casual.. but whatever he saw and pounced on, and decided to make this slightly controversial change - it worked. I have no idea what sort of considerations he made and what the thought process was, but I assume he went through some sort of academic-like process, in part using his intuition and experience and so on, and we ended up with a very solid Kynes.

I very much doubt Villeneuve approached this from an academic process. If he had, he'd have concluded the same thing I did: that women simply do not have such positions in either Fremen or Imperial society. He stated himself in interviews that he liked the actress and the excuse he used to cast her was that there "weren't enough strong female roles" in the books.

This is baloney. In the first three novels, there are no female characters who are NOT strong. The only Dune book for which he could make that claim legitimately is God Emperor of Dune. While that novel has numerous female characters, only one of them could be considered strong: Siona Atreides. The rest are weak in various ways (physically or mentally) or they're boring, and Hwi Noree is so annoying that it's a relief when she's killed off. But then just about everyone in that book is annoying (except Duncan, and even he has a scene where a modern reader just wants to kick him because of his kneejerk view of same-sex relationships between women). That book really is unfilmable, for so many reasons, and I've just discussed one of them. There aren't enough likable characters, period, never mind specific types of characters. And while there's no rule that says a protagonist must be likable, it's better for box-office profits if (s)he is likable.

And that's the thing, I have no idea how to cast properly, I don't have the education or experience. I can only "feel" the final product and tell you what I think about it after. If it feels good I'll say it's good, but if it feels off I'll say it doesn't feel quite right, or bad, or horrible, or whatever.

Haven't you ever read a book and thought to yourself, "If they ever made a TV show or movie of this, I'd want ______ to play ______?"

I know who I'd want to play two of the characters in Robert Silverberg's time travel novel Up the Line. The problem is that my choices were made many years before the novel was finally optioned, and both actors are too old now.

We've had a thread here about some sort of historical show that was casting actors of the completely wrong ethnicity for a role. Now I'm not an expert on British history or whatever it was, but that "feels" wrong to me. I haven't watched it, but that's my first impression. I know a lot more about Polish history - and my perspective is that if Jan Sobieski III was played by Samuel L. Jackson it would be amazing, but it wouldn't feel right as a historical drama. As a comedy - sure why not.

If Denzel Washington can manage Shakespeare... (actually, Much Ado About Nothing is the only movie I've ever seen him in).

In my opinion, Denzel Washington is good in this movie. Keanu Reeves, on the other hand? Nope. He's the villain of the story, but even so... he doesn't play it well.

Okay now I promise this is the end. Sorry for the essay

Not a problem.

It amazes me you’re so into fantasy and you’ve never read Lord of the Rings.

I was into science fiction for 10 years before I got into fantasy. It all happened in the fall of 1985 when a friend loaned me her copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I must have read that book 3 times within a 2-week period, just long enough to get my own copy and track down the rest of the trilogy. The rest... well, it encompasses one of my middle-sized paperback book shelves plus at least a third of the shelf of my D&D modules and manuals. Krynn is an incredibly fleshed-out game setting. The modules included sheet music for some of the songs and poems, and I transcribed some of them for the organ. Our SF club in college did a Christmas dinner using recipes from Leaves From the Inn of the Last Home; it contains everything from beverages and appetizers to entrees to desserts. One of my SCA outfits got re-accessorized and became the basis for a Dragonlance character inspired by a Larry Elmore painting - my dad even found some real feathers I could use (magpie). But unlike the typical female magic user in an Elmore painting, I was more covered up. The result was good enough that several people approached me at the Saturday night costume bacchanal and asked to take photos.

To be fair it takes like 7 years to read the part of LOTR that describes one of the bushes they pass on the way to mordor /s

Oh, good. Then I won't feel guilty about using 15,000+ words to describe Ranok kindroth Orum's trip to the marketplace in the city of Stonebridge in a Camp NaNoWriMo session I did in 2017 (he had several errands to do and got sidetracked). I wanted to write some bridging material to connect Caverns of the Stone Witch (fully novelized; that was my 2016 November NaNo project) and the next one I intended to do (Forest of Doom)... and it ended up not getting beyond the marketplace. I'll go back to this project some day. My Forest of Doom maps and charts are packed away; there's an error in the gamebook and I need to study the documentation someone did about it on the Fighting Fantazine forum.

The Hobbit isn’t that long and if someone reads Harry Potter fan fiction with 300+ chapters and dresses up in medieval themed clothing for events it just seems surprising to me to never pick up a copy of the Hobbit or LOTR over the past few decades.

I know Harry Potter and LOTR are very different but then I also know Valka has read Dragonlance.

Dragonlance novels usually come in trilogies or sextets, occasionally in duologies, and almost never as standalone novels. The canon Dragonlance novels and stories are written by Weis & Hickman, and the only time I seriously disagreed with one of their decisions was when they decided that Usha Majere was not Raistlin's daughter. She's a much more interesting character when she's thought to have a connection to him than otherwise.

There are so many other branches of the Dragonlance setting that I haven't been able to keep up with them. I'm sure there are books out there I never heard of, and I don't remember the last time I read any. But they are good stories for the most part. I ran across my copy of Dragons of Summer Flame yesterday. It's the only Dragonlance novel I have in hardcover.


Keep in mind that the 300+ chapter-long HP stories aren't written all at once. Some people have been writing and posting these stories for years, and I salute the ones who have been able to keep a regular posting schedule of once or twice a week. I think there's one that the author started 12 years ago, posted a bunch of chapters, abandoned it for 5 or 6 years, then started up again.


Dressing in medieval-themed clothing is a way of life for people who become active in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Fortunately some of my SCA outfits could double as SF costumes, with the addition or change of accessories, and I usually did try to dress medieval at conventions at least when the Calgary SCA branch did their demos at the conventions there. I had to tell my non-SCA roommates that if anyone phoned the room looking for "Freydis of Gloppenfjord" it wasn't a wrong number; that's the only name they know me by.


But as for all this and my not being into Tolkien... I did try. I babysat the neighbor's kids for a couple of years in high school, while they had their bowling nights or worked night shifts for their janitorial jobs. I'd bring my homework along and do it after the kids went to bed. And then I'd want something to read (didn't want to turn the TV on and wake the kids)...

And all there was to read was the newspaper (already read it at home), the Encyclopedia Britannica, and a couple of paperback novels. One was by C.J. Cherryh - one of her fantasy novels that I wasn't into back then, but would be in another 10-12 years; I have my own copy of that novel now. The other was The Hobbit.

I tried to read The Hobbit. I got bored inside of two pages, put it down, and read articles from the Britannica instead. I've never been inclined to try again.

I don't find it that surprising, people tend to gravitate to their own nuanced likes and dislikes and those don't always cleanly align with genres or whatever.

Yep. I got into science fiction because of Star Trek, and tried out a lot of different authors over the years. I know what I like, and don't care about others' opinions of my likes/dislikes. A couple of librarian acquaintances I met first in the SF community, and then found out they were both in the local SCA, looked down their noses because I enjoy the Dumarest of Terra series. It's adequate space opera that's predictable and formulaic to a large extent, but there were enough surprises in some of the novels to keep my interest. It's nowhere near the league of the best space opera like Bova or Cherryh (whose Cyteen books veer into hard science fiction to go along with the space opera elements). But it's entertaining enough to pass a month reading them.

It's the same with any genre. Just because I like Bonanza fanfiction and pro novels, it doesn't mean I like Gunsmoke or Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour.

The thing about assuming that all works within a particular genre are equally good can have embarrassing results sometimes. My grandmother knew I had most of the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and that was a series she'd read some of herself and liked. So when she went to the Farmer's Market and passed a stall selling secondhand books with front cover art similar to the editions of the Tarzan books I had, she bought it for me.

What she didn't realize was that it wasn't a Tarzan book at all. She'd bought me Nomads of Gor.

HERESY!

We don'ts likes it much, do we precious?

Easily some of the best fantasy writing out there, up there with Gandalf's fight with the Balrog, but I can't find a narration of that.
EDIT: Text works

Here's Leonard Nimoy's take on it:

Would you say this is a fair summary of the story?

All I know about balrogs is that there's a filksong to the tune of Waltzing Mathilda called "You Bash the Balrog and I'll Climb a Tree."

Hey @Valka D'Ur ..I might suggest watching the movie Tolkien. I think it a nice little biopic/romance myself, but it will give you some insight into who he was as a person before he really started writing the novels. Might pique your interest a little into reading Hobbit and LOTR.

Then read Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles

Mmmaybe. My next planned book purchases are to complete the Grand Tour series by Bova. I have the last 3 books to get.

Jon Stewart does a podcast and a few weeks back he was criticizing Harry Potter, apparently Gringott's Wizard Bank run by goblins was playing on a Jewish stereotype. Stewart said it looked like JK Rowling employed Jews from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Goblins in Harry Potter are commonly depicted as humorless and dealing with humans only because they have to. There was a war between the humans and Goblins centuries before, and the humans won (as per Professor Binns' History of Magic classes, which most of the kids fall asleep in because Professor Binns is a ghost and not a very dynamic speaker).

Of course the Goblins have their own point of view about this, which is why Griphook (I think it's Griphook) doublecrosses Harry over the matter of who gets to keep the Sword of Gryffindor in The Deathly Hallows. The sword was exposed to and absorbed basilisk venom, so that makes it perfect for destroying Voldemort's horcruxes... but the Goblins don't care about that. They just want the sword back, because by Goblin reckoning, anything they make, whether commissioned and paid for or not, still belongs to the Goblins and the person who paid for it can only keep/use it until they die. If the human heir wants to keep the object, the Goblins expect them to pay again.

Some fanfic writers have fleshed out the Goblins in ways that Rowling never would have done. There's a story in which Harry gets separated from his human family when he's a small child and ends up being raised by the Goblins. There's another story in which Hermione influences the Sorting Hat to put her into Slytherin because she's determined that she isn't going to be victimized by the prejudices of the Wizarding World and Slytherin is the house for the most ambitious students. Along the way she teaches the Goblins of Gringotts about charging interest for loans, gets her hands on the Philosopher's Stone and keeps it in her Gringotts vault, and tells the Goblins that "you know what to do with it". She doesn't realize until her next visit that they used the money in her vault - some 500 Galleons or so - to buy up lead, and then turn all the lead into gold. So Hermione, age 13 or so (the story hasn't progressed beyond the timeframe of Prisoner of Azkaban yet), becomes 2 million+ Galleons richer in a very short time. Since many fanfic writers use "1 Galleon = 5 pounds" as a standard exchange rate, that means Hermione is incredibly wealthy by both Wizarding and Muggle standards. But she reckons that this is an excellent turn of events, as she intends to establish the House of Granger and needs capital to do that.