what news of the mark?

Like, listen. Listen, okay. The moment I learned they were making Galadriel's character revolve around needless revenge over a man (her brother who is currently happily traipsing across Valinor because that's how death works for elves) I was already mad enough to never touch RoP with a ten foot pole

But this? Taking one of her most iconic lines and attributing it to Sauron? I am livid.

The real Galadriel, the book Galadriel, was always an ambitious woman. She left Valinor to rule a realm of her own, to shape a land the way she thought right. She watched her male relatives do shit and was like "I can do better" and that's what she did

She was driven, intelligent and gifted, she was one of the greatest things that ever happened to the elves, and it all came from herself.

But now they changed her story. This Galadriel isn't traveling Middle-earth to find a place for herself, she's traveling it to avenge a man who doesn't need avenging. And then Sauron pops up and tells her she could be a queen "stronger than the foundations of the earth"? The line she originally said about herself?

The way this is all set up makes it look like a man planted the idea in her that she could be a queen, a man tempted her into becoming a queen, and then continued to tempt her until she refused the ring.

Her whole thing in the books was overcoming the temptation of power and choosing what was right and good. But it wasn't the ring that she needed to beat, she needed to overcome the desires and ambitions inside herself that the ring was using against her

She was her own greatest enemy and she won.

But now they made it all revolve around a man. A man gave her the idea, a man tried to tempt her, a man is who she quotes when she's overcoming temptation...

Do I really need to spell out why the story of a woman whose biggest enemy is herself being changed to so heavily focus on a man's effect is bad? Do I really??

The only elf looks like an elf in the rings of power is Arondir.

Fight me.

No no see Arondir is actually just Elrond in disguise. Blond Elrond is a lie by Big Bland White Men to sell you more bland white men.

I’m really tired of posts defending the Rings of Power showrunners that are like, “But they love Tolkien! You may disagree with their approach, but they really do love Tolkien!” like… no they do not. Nobody who claims to be able to write “the novel that Tolkien never wrote” (the sheer arrogance of that statement ) can claim they love Tolkien. Nobody who chooses to release their stupid TV show on the day that Tolkien died can claim they love Tolkien. I mean, Jeff Bezos claims to be a LOTR fan too. Does that make him one? Of course not! It makes him a stupid idiot with zero sense of irony or shame. If you want to defend these people, go ahead. But trying to defend them by saying that they love Tolkien’s stories is not persuasive. And it’s not a secret that Bezos asked for his own version of Game of Thrones, and that’s why this is happening at all. There’s no love for Tolkien behind this project.

Adding to this by saying: Amazon’s “representation” is actually something else—tokenism. Tokenism is the phenomenon wherein a character of color/queer character is added exclusively to prove the project is not bigoted. It is insidious and lazy, and should by no means be counted as any kind of representation—not even bad representation.

Can't wait to see how Amazon tackles a society focused on making the rich richer over the quality of life of its denizens

By saying “this is a society at its peak” of course

Really the most frustrating thing about the discourse surrounding the show right now is how anyone with any legitimate criticisms about how they’re representing Tolkien’s works is being overshadowed by a bunch of racist assholes screaming about “pc wokeness”, which delegitimizes any actual critiques because it allows anyone to just point at people who criticize the show and say, “If you hate this show you are just racist” and that is the death of intelligent and respectful debate. 

99% of criticisms I’ve both read and written about the show have mainly been to how they’re fucking with the lore, how the only female Dwarf character we’ve seen has no beard whatsoever, how two out of three of the Elven characters we’ve seen have short hair, how they’re completely rewriting established characterizations by having Elrond be “politically ambitious”, how they’re adding original characters where they really don’t need to, and just other things like that. The vast majority of us do not give a fucking flying donkey turd about the cast being POC. 

If you know anything about Tolkien at all you would know that racism and sexism have absolutely no place in the fandom, whether you’re strictly a movie fan or strictly a book fan or a combination of both. 

I mean it’s not like the character arcs of Legolas and Gimli was literally a commentary of how fucking stupid racism is or anything

And if you’re one of the assholes who is complaining about how they’re “trying to shove their PC wokeness down our throats” you can fucking fuck right back off to Mordor you fucking knob head because you are not only ruining this for the rest of us (even those of us who are against what we’ve seen of the show so far, you’re ruining it for us), but you have proven that you do not understand Tolkien at all. 

You are literally the reason that people think Tolkien is racist. 

Fuck right off, and go die in a goddamn hole. 

"they just want to be visually distinctive and not a copy of PJ's aesthetics"

ok fine, if that's all. Show me one important (1) Elf woman with short hair then. I'm talking buzzcut, not a bob. I'll wait.

Anyway, there are ways to do short hair that look like they occur in a culture with somewhat of an attachment to hair (thank Tolkien's Victorian throwback hair fetish for that). US marine cut/econ major/tik tok elvis isn't it. If you take something distinctive away you have to add something sufficiently creative in its stead.

Also still waiting for an older actress to be cast as an Elf, as it seems age-blind casting for ageless beings only applies to men so far. Interesting how that choice to make it look 'distinctive' just happens to make it more generic. Almost like they're trying to appeal to a large audience fresh from GoT!

"let people enjoy things"

I am, to my deep regret, incapable of stopping you or anyone from enjoying things (or there would be no superhero franchise or HP adults in existence at this point). And I enjoy hating on the show, so how about;

let people (me. ♥️) enjoy things (hating on the amazon show).

hope that helps.

listen I hate the first thing with the passion of a thousand burning stars but BOY do I love the witch-king AU