Fantastic Beasts: The Question of What the Hell I just Saw
- Thread starter PsychedelicDiamond
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Its more about the whole controversy that spawned from that one author since a whole bunch of news sites reported on this. And I worry abotu the message this controversy will send.Hawki said:
From what I can tell from a quick search, people are pretty incredulous about the idea. I'm not even sure if the author's being serious.Samtemdo8 said:
Thing is, with the original depiction of orcs, you can point out racist overtones if you're so inclined, but no visual adaptation of LotR I can think of has ever depicted orcs as black skinned with red lips or whatnot. So that aside, orcs in LotR are orcs - they're evil. They exist to be killed by the good guys.
And even if the TV series bombs, I'm not too worried. Lord of the Rings already has a stellar adaptation, a sub-par one won't tarnish its legacy.
It's a really valid complaint, you know. This isn't just an excuse to ***** about Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was an intelligent and educated man. He vocally rejected Apartheid long before it was abolished. But that doesn'the mean any criticism about Lord of the Rings should be dismissed on principle. Tolkien depicted Middle Earth's various races in ways obviously inspired by real human cultures. And he chose Orcs, a species of designated evil henchmen, in a way reminiscent of how people in Tolkien's days envisioned various primitive tribal cultures. Why do you think rightists still use them for their shitty memes about migration?Samtemdo8 said:
That doesn't make Tolkien a racist or LotR a work of reactionary propaganda. But it'd be a major mistake for anyone adapting his work to ignore these implications and never address them. There are literally hundreds of hacky fantasy writers just copying Tolkien's races verbatimely without ever thinking about their implications. Or, even worse, doubling down on them and just turning them into unambiguous stereotypes of real human cultures. The Elder Scrolls series gets pretty close to that sometimes.
How do you address it then?, because there are no Orcs in Middle Earth acts in anyway like say Thrall from Warcraft:PsychedelicDiamond said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H-thX7BUz8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1SdVC2mrz8
There's plenty going against a Silmarillion adaptation already.Samtemdo8 said:
No, not really. The human cultures are obviously inspired to some extent from real and imaginary cultures (e.g. Numenor = Atlantis), but what real-world culture do elves come from? Dwarves? Goblins (as distinct from orcs)? Ents? A lot of these things already existed in folklore before LotR. Hobbits are a key exception (Shire = England), but even then, in-universe, hobbits are implied to be an offshoot of Men.PsychedelicDiamond said:
Except, what implications? What implications can you get from elves and dwarves and goblins that weren't already there in the original folklore?
Also, implications can be generally taken from anything. FFS, I've seen My Little Pony discussed in the context of immigration.
Even if we're talking about orcs, any implications are usually tossed aside. Orc culture in LotR is effectively defined as "the lack of culture." They're artificial creatures created to serve a dark lord. There's no real-world equivalent to that, and when orcs are transported into other fantasy works, they're rarely depicted visually in the way the books describe. So either you can get:
-Orcs = Orcs (e.g. Warhammer)
-Our Orcs are Different (e.g. Warcraft)
-Orcs in All But Name (e.g. Wheel of Time)
I'm not going to list every fantasy setting that has orcs, or a stand-in for orcs, but usually they'd fall into one of these three categories. And by extension, those races rarely correspond to any real-world culture because in scenarios 1 and 3, orcs/not-orcs don't have any real culture at all.
That's the thing about orcs. Like zombies, you can use them as morally umambiguous enemies without having to worry about all the stuff you'd have to consider if you had, say, humans as enemies.
IDK. Invading a country isn't merely an argument of individual sophistication of the individual occupying soldiery. It does come down to a sheer capability to manage an occupation. There simply isn't enough wizards to have a wizard on every intersection, there isn't enough wizards to simply handle the bureaucracy inherent.Hawki said:
If wizards were on Godmode, they wouldn't be hiding from the world. Moreover, their societies wouldn't look like late 18th, early 19th century hellholes.
Say what you like, a wizard like Harry Potter will die from a bullet. There's no indication he's somehow immune to lead injections. Honestly, I don't see why the UK government doesn't just smuggle high explosive devices into Diagon Alley and claim the explosions were just 'meddlesome magic'. It's what I would do. Wizards invaded London, likely killed scores of people (in the movies the death count would have to be in the high hundreds, if not almost a thousand) ... they have routinely proven themselves inept at controlling the situation. If they won't get their shit together, I'd force them to, or kill many of them trying.
Plus I would make the moral argument that any society that allows something like an Azkaban Prison is probably a society that shouldn't exist and is an incredibly dangerous one to suffer its persistence.
The Potterverse isn't exactly something that fits into a modern setting, precisely because Harry Potter being from the 'Muggle' world simply serves to be escapism fuel for a young reader who might otherwise be perturbed by a high fantasy setting entirely alien from our own. Sure, being a 'Muggle' serves as a plot contrivance of why 'Voldemort is bad' ... but then again, it's never really explained why. Wizards are fucking idiots.
I'll take not being able to use magic if when going to war someone hands me an F88 and modern military communications and command hierarchy rather than a piece of willow and .... mmmmmhrmmmhrmmmm? Basicallyt if the most advanced communications wizards are capable of is amassing in a circle and wearing masks to protect their identities, I feel like it's going to be a very short war between Muggles and wizards.
Not only that, but I fail to see why parents would send their kids to a place like Hogwart's to begin with. I mean it's child abuse by proxy.
And of course the answer to that is simple... it's not important. The idea of the Potterverse existing coterminous with our mundane reality is simply that it's easier for young readers to digest and less alienating to them than something like Forgotten Realms. Even in terms of other high fantasy settngs set for kids, there's obligatory 'parallels' that serve as communicating pop culture symbolism and social constructs that they've likely internalized by adjuncts to our own world.
Like something as innocuous as a Godzilla reference ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5h4qj2rJk
I get that Harry Potter isn't technically high fantasy given that it's supposed to be happening in our world and time, but when the world of 'Muggles' just serves as a literal contrast in the same way popularized constructs of Western Medievalism (that were birthed by romanticism born in the 16th and 17th centuries no less) serve to ground things like Lord of the Rings... the existence of the contrasting element is not important.
I missed this ... sorru, how is this persuant to our discussion? Tolkien's ideas of orcs were stupid and pointless. They were non-descriptive. Tolkien's ideas of orcs from that single letter unattached to the fiction he wrote altogether could not be emulated without;Samtemdo8 said:
A: Merely interspacing your own ideas of 'racial beauty'.
B: Being blatantly wrong.
And when I say blatantly wrong it is entirely that. From that whole two sentences he describes orcs would be impossible and highlight merely the casting producers and agents own racial prejudices trying. It is a moot point because it would be nothing but racist. Once again, I'm going to ask based on Tolkien's descriptors how you would hold a casting call for orcs. And whatever answer you gave would be blatantly wrong.
LotR orcs are precisely fine as they are in all the works that have adapted them. Green skinned, pasty grey, etc ... they do not need racist charicatures born from a person's own racial prejudices they imagine.
I admit I even dislike how Orcs looked like in the actual LOTR movie, barring few exceptions, like the Uruk Hai Orcs under Saruman look far more "Orc-y" for me then other Orcs in the movie from Mordor which to me look like a bunch of goblins:Addendum_Forthcoming said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXPRxmHk6Q
Question though, do you find this particular painting of a Middle Earth Orc a racist one?
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/File:Frithjof_Spangenberg_-_Orc.jpg
This one was from Tolkien Gateway's art gallery.
For starters, orcs are bow legged and somewhat shorter. Uruk-Hai were a special breed that 'walked straight like stout menfolk'. Your idea of orcs is precisely because that's how other works have adapted them.Samtemdo8 said:
Not particularly, mainly because I don't know what the artist was actually trying to communicate. It could be any one of an incarnation of adapted works of 'orcs' throughout time.
And you can easily have this painting of this Orc with pale, pink, brown, or greenskin. But to me this is still how I imagine Orcs in Middle Earth should look like.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Its the protruding tusks you see. Without that, you are just a beefy human with unsuall skin tones.
.... Wait a minute, first you were complaining that people like Jackson didn't translate 'orcs' well because of a blatantly racist charicature of people on Earth ... but now you're complaining when they do decide to keep various vagaries of their descriptors like how they were bow-legged, impish things that scuttled in dark places?Samtemdo8 said:
'Orc' means a whole lot of things in LotR. It isn't just one group of monstrous hominid-like beings. I mean 'trolls' (Olog-Hai) are sometimes called 'orcs'.
'Orc' is to your idea of them what 'Hominid' is to our idea of humans.
Ok let me try my best to untangle this WHOLE thing and I am saying this with 100% honesty.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
I am not a fan of depictions of Orcs in Middle Earth as seen in the movies and the Shadow of Mordor games because none of them look like the Orcs I am familiar with in settings like Warcraft, Warhammer, Elder Scrolls, and Dungeons and Dragons. And I would not mind if the Amazon TV show makes the Orcs look like consistant variation of these:
https://i.redd.it/zqnkgp9jayvz.jpg
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/4/43/Orc-5e.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20171010153900
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/1/1c/Legends_Orc.png/revision/latest?cb=20150619004929
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11114/111140972/3534011-orcorc.jpg
But I still want them be portrayed as the evil horde they were conceieved as, not one ounce of symphathy or morally grey orcs at all. Tolkien's Orcs are evil henchmen armies under the thrall of an evil Dark Lord.
They were Elves originally but irreversably corrupted by Morgoth into Orcs and Goblins.
But that's not how they were described in the books. In the books Frodo and Sam managed to disquise themselves and enter Mordor precisely because a 'large orc warchief' was still smaller than your average human. I've been recently playing Shadow of War, and I like the fact that many of the 'captains' are pretty all over the place. Some are weasly, some are your size and stature, others taller.Samtemdo8 said:
That being said, Jackson's interpretation is closer to the source material than all your preconceptions. Precisely because, as you say, they're visually more menacing. Even Shady-Mordy/Shady-War-y take liberties precisely to increase the visual tension of Sir Murdersalot is more often than not alone and facing two or three captains at once in brutal extended melee combats... and a lot of that tension is directly harnassed by that preconception of size = threat.
Precisely because Saruman's Uruks of Isengard are on a whole a different breed to Morgoth's warhost.
It's actually one of the biggest things that I dislike about Tolkien's 'legacy' is the fact that other producrs of content have arguably done more for and with concepts of high fantasy than Tolkien would have ever imagined or been willing to... and yet people pretend as if he was as if some literary great because ... why?
Most people at least admit that Lovecraft wasn't all that good, and it's more his ideas concerning humanity's relationship to (and meaninglessness in the face of) an unknowable future and cosmos. Rather than, you know, what he personally contributed in terms of his craft.
Well at the very least I wanna see an Orc that looks like Garrosh Hellscream or Grimgor Ironhide in Middle Earth.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Except wizarding society manages to function without having to rely on Muggles.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Like, okay, if wizards wanted to enslave Muggles, the slavemasters would be outnumbered by the slaves many times over, but if your (in this case Grindlewald's) plan involves genocide of the majority of Muggles, the issue kinda solves itself. Muggle society is erradicated. Wizard society thrives. What few Muggles are left are a non-issue.
Yeah, sure, but consider everything a wizard can do to stop or evade the bullet.
They'd have to actually be able to find it first.
Oh, I'm not doubting that. Wizarding society is pretty draconian in a lot of ways, what with how Harry's trial progresses, not to mention that casualties seem to be a thing on a semi-irregular basis (e.g. the Triziard Tournaments).
Um...
Okay, I don't get why timeframe is that relevant to the Potterverse. You could apply the same story to the modern day easily.
Also, Voldemort is just as bad to fellow wizards as he is to Muggles. Voldemort is bad for a lot of reasons, and has the benefit of characterization as to why he is the way he is.
If this was a straight out war, sure, but wizards are good at hiding. We're still in Afghanistan, and the Taliban don't have the ability to apparate or cast invisibility spells, or generate magical fire that can't be put out, etc.
First of all, those orc pictures you show aren't even consistent with each other. Second of all, you're aggrieved that orcs don't look like orcs that came after? As in, the original doesn't look like the spin-off?Samtemdo8 said:
But anyway, the orcs of LotR are generally meant to be squat and ugly, attacking in hordes and winning through weight of numbers. That's at least implied in the books, and in games such as the tabletop game, Battle for Middle-earth, and various other games, that's the case as well. Does any of that sound like something out of Warcraft for instance, where your average orc is 6-7 feet tall, where orcs win through individual strength rather than weight of numbers?
You can get the occassional Azog, but they're more the exception rather than the rule.
In terms of influence in the fantasy genre, I can't think of any author that's had more influence than Tolkien.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
That's not a comment on the quality of the works in of themselves, but for better or worse, fantasy tropes can be drawn back to LotR - even if some existed beforehand (elves, dwarfs, goblins, etc.), it set the modern template for them. Now, a lot of fantasy (least in books) has moved away from those tropes in recent decades, but I can't see any evidence of new tropes being created. For instance, ASoIaF is very influential. But how many works have used it as a template in the same way? Even something as influential as Harry Potter was only as influential in that it added to the YA genre, but not many of those series use HP as an actual template (compare something like Hunger Games to Harry Potter for instance) in terms of setting or tropes.
Yeah, see, the key about genocide is it needs to be one of two things. Either intentionally slow as to be written off that it's not happening (Saudi occupation of Yemen and starving the entire Western half of the country) or incredibly fast that there can be insufficient time to plan an intervention e.g. Rwandan campaign. Though there is arguments this was a class 'purge' as opposed to ethnic cleansing given that the divides between Hutu and Tutsi are entirely manmade constructs of European colonialism as to artificially stratify the populace.Hawki said:
When the plan involves all of muggles everywhere, such an elabourate scheme can't be slow, nor sufficiently large to be quick ... and all it would take was for one wizard to say; "Uh, various Muggle governments? yeah, you have a problem..." I mean he destroys a whole bunch of things... but frankly world governments seem to be doing next to nothing. After such an attack, people would be beheading wizards left, right and center, and not without good cause, because none of them seem to be actually properly informing authorities about this literal magical, mass murdering tyrant who ranks up there with a Prince Asaka in deserving a firing squad and never actually getting one.
Assuming they know it's coming. Wizards can swat away spells flung at eachother, doesn't stop them dying to them. Once more, the time period we're talking about is one of world war. Where skilled soldiers exist and the mobilization of economies is sent to gearing and creating militaries from every corner of the Earth to fight air, land and sea.
Sure, wizards can stop a bullet ... questions arise whether they can stop a 14 pounder AT field gun from a kilometre away.
A wizard might be able to strike from anywhere, but it still takes an army to win a war. For every wizard there might be a thousand soldiers. It's kind of like an Order 66 problem of that the Jedis basically allowed a Sithlord to harnass the industrial capacity of three quarters of a galaxy and untold trillions of subjects to create a military to which was visibly to fight the Banking Clans but in truth the mobilization was simply to create an army to which could both meet the Jedi and conquer a galaxy.
It really is a case of there simply isn't enough hours in the day.
Muggles could ostensibly simply outbreed the means by which wizards can match the means to kill them. And if wizards are dedicated to fighting a pitched battle toinflict the heaviest casualties they can, they are setting themselves up to fail ... because all it would take is one soldier to kill one of them for every 100 that may fall. It's kind of like the Battle of Hogwart's ... in order to actually win Voldemort needed his pitched battle. ... and suffice to say, for wizards to win, they're going to need multiples. Each one wearing them down by attrition.
The thing is muggles would win if they merely created a world governing body designed to exterminate any person displaying magical abilities to deny the enemy recruitment. We can simply wait for wizards to die ... all while targeting their friends, their homes, their industries, known associates (muggle or otherwise) ...
All it would take is one wizard to actually become turncoat. Whether because they recognize that the targeted slaughter of muggles is unconscionable, or simply because they are being coerced by ransoming the safety and wellbeing of a muggle or otherwise they are uniquely connected to, or simply because of greed and being offered something in exchange. Such as amnesty for them and their family.
Or, say, how about a family member who has had their child suffer at the hands of other wizards perchance? Maybe they want vengeance on the wizarding world?
The thing is, muggles in the books are incredibly tolerant creatures. After a Paris or a London, I would be quietly orchestrating with world leaders if sufficiently empowered to stage a secret war against wizards. I would have their known associates kidnapped. I would raid their businesses. I would surveil their movements. I would set them up for targeted assassination. I would create secret bureaus that specialize in technologies and training to counter and destroy the 'wizarding threat' ...
And who the fuck would disagree with me fter a Paris or London?
I don't claim to be a nice person, but I certainly don't consider myself as if alien to the world I was brought up in. That being said, muggles in the books and movies seem to be incredibly blaise about the wizrding world. Oh sure, we'll let our kid study at Hogwart's ... what's the mortality rate of students there again? 10%? Oh well, clearly my child should go there.
Letting wizards do their own thing is bad for everybody. They need oversight... and if they aren't willing to create it, muggles aren't bad for forcing it upon them. It's kind of the unicorn problem of MLP's universe. Right up until Cozy Glow, every major, Equestria-ending villain from within the pony population has been unicorns.
Every. Single. One.
I'm thinking Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns is merely a front organization for spying on potential threats. Which would be incredibly plausible if it also didn't house and train some of them.
Wizards seem to be the same way, but then we're meant to pretend as if these hostilities towards muggles come as if from nowhere.
Precisely ... I mean if it wasn't Voldemort interrupting the TWC and was, instead, a government agent sent to check 'concerning reports of gladiatorial conflicts' would we necessarily think it was a bad thing? How about instead of a Delores Umbridge it was said government putting Hogwart's on notice for flagrant OH&S violations and failig to observe a basic duty of care within the profession of pedagogy?
What legitimate 'parent' worthy of that title would send their child to such an institution?
If Harry's foster parents were; "Look, Harry. Both your parents died because of these wizards. They weren't even forthright with details to the authorities in order to pursue the case to a close. I lost a sister because of these people, and I don't want to lose my nephew as well. You're all I have to remember them left. And for that reason I never want you to associate with these people. For your own safety, and because of the nefarious circles that have kept you and us from seeking justice for your parent's brutal slaying."
Would that be bad?
Of course not. It's what an actual parent should be.
The timeframe is relevant because it cements in the mind of a possible young reader of a character that (at the time) was roughly as old as they were. That it happens in today's world provides additional escapism fuel for the yung reader, rather than reading about a character born in the 'endtimes of the Third Age of Middle-earth'.
Arguably it's the dysjunction between lore-heavy fantasy vs. lore-heavy high fantasy.
MLP gets around this by aping modern superficialities and with stuff happening either now, or most of the background lore centred '1100ish years ago'. Big fight between the three tribes, settlement of Equestria, first Hearth's Warming, a whole lot of bad stuff, Celestia and Luna raise the Sun and the Moon, more bad stuff happens, Celestia raises both Sun and Moon, and 1000 years of 'peace'.
It takes about a page to fill out a chronology of really important stuff, and you can gloss over MLP's lore. High fantasy setting, because it is utterly unassociated with the history of our planet, but not exactly deep with lore. Which is fine... because lore is secondary to character dynamics. I'd rather have good character dynamics rather than 'good' lore. Anybody can make lore. It is the easiest thing in the world to make 'lore' ...as it's pure exposition and nobody expects it to be anything but. It requires no talent beyond memory of other stuff you've written, and it requires no talent for allegory, prose, or pacing.
Hiding is fine with me. In fact that would be my objecive. If I was a hypothetical 'Grand marshal' of a world coalition against wizards, my objective would be to stop wizards operating in plain sight while pursuing them in a shadow conflict. Plenty of soldiers will die, by that's less becoming of my abilities to prosecute a war than if wizards were brazenly and openly targeting cities.
If wizards are left only to their hiding spots, it means I've already won ... it's just a matter of time 'til I capture or destroy the lot of them.
They need to sleep, they need to eat, they have loved ones I can jeopardize, industries I can cripple, recruitment means I can interdict, and they seem very capable of betraying their own... I can use all of these things as well as a world geared up for global conflict at my fingertips to prosecute a sustained campaign of wiping out any organized resistance they might be capable of mustering and spreading terror amongst their ranks.
This assumes Step One isn't to place the Muggle governments under magical mind control, something Voldemort was absolutely attempting to do in the later books since its mentioned there's members of the Order constantly watching the British Prime Minister for such attemptsAddendum_Forthcoming said:
IDK ... is there enough wizards to do that with every politician out there? Moreover, the Imperius curse can be resisted by people of incredible will. So arguably many of the command structures fighting a war against wizards, suitably driven to the goal of ultimate victory from a personal basis of fighting enslavement, may shrug it off. Plus Imperius ends the second the wizard who cast it dies.Palindromemordnilap said:
So first of all you need a wizard who can cast the spell, then you have to have said wizard get close, then said victim has to fail to resist it, and the wizard also has to survive the attempt, and you have tens of thousands of targets worldwide. After all, if you're talking a global war, you don't just have one head of state you need to control. Moreovcer, fear of such things may inculcate an environment of immediate prejudice towards any politician that seems to have had a sudden conversion from fighting.
Arguably the most suitable targets would be 3 and 4 star generals ... but then again, many of these people would be suitably powerful minds. Say what you like about the military, it does inculcate an environment of personal strength and conviction. So if anyone were to routinely resist the effects of the spell, it would be these vetted people who are in charge of the active co-ordination of soldiers to destroy the threat.
Compare and contrast that to entirely mundane ways of non-magical brainwashing, and I think muggles have the upper hand in creating sleeper agents. After all, muggles just need to break the mind of one wizard to get to others of their kind for every thousand of commanders and cabinet politicians they have to target in turn.
It really is a 'numbers thing'.