#pro diversity in tolkien

[jewish-vents]

There’s been a new wave of Star Trek fandom resurgence lately and compared with everything else happening this is such a minor complaint but I’m so angry at people exclaiming over Kirk/Spock and on the same blog posting antisemitic pro-Palestine propaganda. They’re Jewish!! The actors are Jewish [Nimoy, Shatner, and Koenig on the original show] and the characters they play are heavily influenced by that, a lot of the writers on the show were Jewish, there’s several episodes influenced by or directly about the holocaust- our culture, values, and history permeate this show and are a huge part of what makes it so great but of course ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations’ is only cool when you can post about spirk being canon and not when it comes to caring about actual real Jewish people.

I’m just so over people forgetting about Jewish [inspired] characters when they’re cool. Everyone loves to talk about how whatever goblin race is an antisemitic stereotype because yknow, they’re ugly and greedy just like those Jews, but almost no one wants to talk about positive portrayals. Dwarves from LOTR are also explicitly based on Jewish culture (Tolkien wrote about it in his letters) and knowing that you can’t interpret the Hobbit as anything but a Zionist story- but that’s not something anyone wants to acknowledge. I want people to see us in positive portrayals. I want to be able to point at these cool, heroic, intelligent, inspiring characters and say ‘they’re like me!’ without people going “Really? I’ve never heard that, I don’t see it. Are you sure? Where in the text does it explicitly say that? Well that doesn’t count”.

.

[rey-jake-therapist]

Sauron is so inclusive and pro-diversity. He saw things in Galadriel that he didn't necessarily understand, but he wanted to bring her into his plans because he figured that it could only be beneficial to the greater good.

Sauron certainly saw that it could be beneficial to *his* vision of the greater good, yeah...

It's a commun theme in Tolkien that darkness is drawn to the light. Morgoth was drawn to the Silmarils and became obsessed with them, because they symbolized this Light he turned away from a long time ago. But Celebrimbor also tells Elrond in season 1,

"They say that Morgoth found the Silmarils so beautiful that after he'd stolen them, for weeks, he could do nothing but stare into their depths. It was only after one of his tears fell upon the jewels and he was faced with the evil of his own reflection that the reverie was finally broken. From that moment, he... he looked upon their light no more.

Morgoth, at the end, refused to confront the truth of what he was, and avoided looking at the Silmarils but kept wearing them on his Crown, because he still wanted to possess them, even if their light could never become a part of him.

I think many of us have noticed that Sauron's story with Galadriel in TROP is meant to be seen as a parallel to Morgoth's fascination with the Silmarils: Galadriel is Sauron's Silmarils. He will never be able to take her light for himself, but he'll always keep trying. At some point, like Morgoth, he'll see his own darkness reflected in Galadriel's light, and will be no longer able to look at her without feeling a deep hatred of himself, and maybe, of her too.

But to come back to your point, yes, Sauron was enough aware of his own darkness to know that without an element of light in his life, he would not be able to "heal Middle Earth". It may be what will drive him to forge the One Ring, in which he will put much of himself, because he has renounced the idea that Galadriel will share her light with him willingly. I'm really anxious to see what will be Sauron's reasoning behind the forging of the Ring. There's the will to control of the bearers of the rings of power, we already know that, but what else? I've read several 'explanations', but they often are nebulous, to say the least.

[izzyspussy]

About Me!

Hi, I'm Jack! I'm 29 and I use he/him pronouns. You might know me as @/calicojackofficial - which still exists as a writing and art sideblog, now @calicoy. On this blog you'll find fandom and personal posts. Everything is tagged for easy filtering.

Top Surgery Fundraiser!

Navigation

Fandom

ofmd | ted lasso | it (muschietti) | watcher | go (good omens) | leverage | dc | marvel | star trek | jirt (tolkien properties) | taz | black sails | holmes (various sherlock holmes iterations) | music | please (thirst tag) | hc (headcanons) | otplus (polyam 'ships) | gen (platonic 'ships) | my fic | my art | reading process (internet safety, media literacy, liveblogs) | fic rec | miscellaneous horror tag

Personal

jack facts (all original posts) | jack chats (asks, tag games, polls) | ft. jack (selfies, picrews) | soc (social issues, current events) | children are people tag | infinite diversity (disability & neurodivergence tag) | rodents of unusual size (capybaras) | rodents of regular size (mice, rats, etc) | wing of bat (bats)

Content Warnings

lemon (explicit content) | lime (mature content) | orange (suggestive content) | body horror/ | zombie/ | possession/ | medical/ | poison/ | gore/ | unreality/ | fire/ | drowning/ | death/ | abuse/ | flashing/ | incest/ | cannibalism/ | clown/ | rpf/ | spinning/ | optical illusion/ | war/ | suicide/ | needle/ | paranoia/ | current events/ | eye strain/ | I tag things I'm not sure about 'ask to tag' but you can ask for anything to be tagged and I'll let you know promptly and without judgement if I can do that for you

DO NOT FOLLOW IF:

you are under sixteen years old

your main blog has a H4rry P0tter url

You might not WANT to follow if:

you are an "anti" or are pro-censorship, including for such content as RPF (Real Person Fiction), "non-con", etc. I do sometimes post this, but I'm also just generally opposed to moralizing them.

you are not comfortable viewing content about sex, romance, kink, polyamory, etc. This content will not be tagged unless it's explicit. It will not be hidden behind a cut unless it's very long.

you are not comfortable viewing fictional violence. This content will not be tagged unless I think it's particularly graphic. (I will never post real world violence for any reason.)

you are not comfortable with casual swearing/profanity, including reclaimed slurs. This content will be frequent and never tagged.

Ask & Chat Guidelines

DO send me asks about:

My WIPs, fic, and art | fandom figures I've blogged about or that you think I would like | yourself!

DO NOT send me asks about:

"Passing" | Race & Antisemitism | Wank/"Discourse" | the shitty stuff in the news | "Cis-Swapping" | Incest & Pseudo-Incest

DO NOT hit on me, send me sexual fantasies that involve me, or try to cyber with me. I'm comfortable with sexually explicit asks about fandom figures, original characters, sex/kink/relationships as a general topic, and even discussing real world experiences! But I am not "available" or a sexual object.

DO NOT call me by any pet name or title without permission.

[antiracist-tolkien]

I love fanworks of Tolkien characters where they have dark skin and it doesn't change anything, but I wish there were more works where a character’s blackness or brownness was more than their appearance.

[antiracist-tolkien]

Related post: Concerning Hobbits (of Color)

i hope 2019 will be the year we stop making sam the only dark-skinned character in fancasts or art for lotr

[lotronprimesucks]

@aristarrtled - I deleted this reply because I wanted to keep the notes on topic but I’m very happy to address your points; I think they’re important.

I don’t consider Tolkien a god, nor do I consider Peter Jackson a god. Tolkien was a supremely flawed racist and sexist white Englishman and his actual opinion of the show has nothing to do with my opposition to it. Good adaptations don’t have to follow the author’s wishes and don’t have to engage with and agree with the author’s themes, and the Jackson adaptations aren’t the gold standard of perfection. The reason I, personally, am criticizing the Amazon series has absolutely nothing to do with what JRRT the man would have wanted or with what PJ made, unless I feel like Amazon and its group of paid shills is being purposefully mean and spiteful and snide. So far that’s only happened a few times and as a result I’m not focused on it as a primary reason for opposition.

I am a leftist who is staunchly pro-union to the point of a near-complete Amazon boycott (excluding what AWS services must be used to access the Internet, and running as much adblocking and anti-tracking software as possible). I have been this way for years. I am opposed to Amazon specifically making this show and using it as a blatant attempt to get people to buy Prime memberships or maintain Prime memberships. Amazon is the true evil here, and my ire is focused on Jeff Bezos and the corporate suits. The workers, including actors and writers and the director, are not my enemy; they are doing what they can to advance their careers. Amazon itself must be challenged, and they are using something I love and care about to make people think they’re a good company.

They are also using the diversity of their cast as a shield, and using actors of color to prop up their cash grab while many poor BIPOC across the globe and across many industries are exploited by their business practices. I am not white, and my objection to the casting is that I want everyone in the show to be brown or black, and by only focusing on a few token people of color Amazon has shown that they don’t actually care about including us to the full extent that we could canonically be included. Their pivots away from focusing on diversity and representation in the marketing to focusing on book-accuracy also shows that they’ve never cared about us, the actors or the fans. I don’t believe in giving an evil corporation kudos for doing the absolute bare minimum and then hanging us out to dry at the soonest opportunity.

Finally, I am opposed to something that belonged to us, the fans, being used to make a megacorp money. I am genuinely horrified by how many people are simply accepting that one of the worst companies in existence is using OUR PASSION to make themselves look better, especially since they’re only pretending to care about diversity and representation and challenging Tolkien’s flaws.

I’m advocating for a boycott because of all of this. I’m not here for Tolkien the man, I’m not here for PJ. I’m here for myself and my own beloved home that’s being invaded by Bezos’s cash grab.

[nicklloydnow]

“Susan “the Explainer” Sontag might have seen through the Game of Thrones phenomenon — now extended into HBO’s prequel series House of the Dragon — and pronounced it “Ignorance as Metaphor.” Each show epitomizes the violence, profanity, and sex formula that HBO uses to sell its ancient-mythology programming.

HBO romanticizes the administrative state for the Millennium audience just as Sontag claimed that Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will romanticized Nazism — but without the “talent” and “art” that Sontag granted Riefenstahl. Each show is a costume-pageant version of the same decadent urban dramas that HBO peddled in The Wire and The Sopranos — guilty-pleasure nightmares of depravity favored by liberal media.

These ersatz history tales do not inform our present condition but exacerbate it. (Dragon’s presentiment of American civil war is intentionally cast for politically correct diversity.) Premiering Sunday nights, the episodes offer new immoral Sunday School lessons about the post-Christian world, teaching viewers to enjoy ruthlessness.

No doubt Sontag would have recognized that the series’ Anglophile novelty (despite rampant contempt for Western patriarchy) also plays into the inferiority complex that still oppresses Americans. Going back to medieval times (past Beowulf yet with a nod to Marsellus in Pulp Fiction), both Game and Dragon exploit the roots of epic warfare popularized in Peter Jackson’s dreadful Lord of the Rings trilogy — but based on George R. R. Martin’s bowdlerization of J. R. R. Tolkien. Now, Tolkien’s religious allegory is cheapened into secularism, meant to appease today’s politically confused consumers, thus fitting the metaphor of fascist art that Sontag expounded upon in her 1975 thesis Fascinating Fascism.

(…)

Jared Hess had definitively parodied this in Jemaine Clement’s hilarious lecture scene of Gentleman Broncos, unpacking florid, over-enunciated, quasi-sci-fi cult literature. But Dragon’s killings and birthing horrors celebrate cruelty without examining it the way Shakespeare, the Bible, or Sir Walter Scott did. So when media shills endow Dragon with wild significance, it perpetuates that unequal exchange of wills that Sontag warned would result from the production and dissemination of fascist art.

Fans of Dragon and Game, in thrall to monsters and monstrous behavior, don’t recognize how this demoralizing tendency appeals to the adolescent mindset — proving the dichotomy of power-worshipping media elites and the great unwashed binge-watchers that Sontag anticipated. This crisis prevents perfidious politicians, and authors of social disasters such as the televised J6 show trials, from ever being held accountable.

(…)

It’s unsurprising when reviewers praise Dragon because it “puts its female characters front and center like never before.” The show symbolizes the political fantasies that the leftist media forces upon the public.

(…)

All that prurience, violence, and political overreaching that HBO sells in the power struggles and sex wars of Dragon and Game fulfill what Sontag exposed as the essential appeal of fascist art, resembling “an anthology of pro-Nazi sentiments” (remember, Biden forbade the media to say “Antifa sentiments” when he asserted that “Antifa doesn’t exist”).

The tent-pole, multiverse excitement surrounding Game, Dragon, and the J6 proceedings is akin to “the vertigo before power,” a term Sontag used to describe irrational mass enthusiasm. It’s a good phrase for the illogical self-punishment of post-Obama, not-Hillary, anti-Trump America taking delight in HBO’s elaborate debauchery. Game and Dragon show us that “fascist aesthetics endorse two seemingly opposite states: egomania and servitude.””

“It's an object lesson in how not to do diversity casting, which has to be done right. If not, it's just as insulting as no diversity at all—perhaps more so. Forced and haphazard casting that changes character nuances and motivations as well as entire plot lines beyond recognition undermines both actor and viewer.

Doing diversity casting right means using it to enhance a work of fiction, rather than weaken its entire premise. Failing to do this right reduces Black actors to their skin color, rather than allowing them to inhabit a character that makes sense in its entirety.

But all too often, Black actors are cast in established franchises in a lazy way that tokenizes them for their race with no respect or credence paid to the subtext and historical and symbolic dimensions of the story.

(…)

But the truth is the exact opposite: When you're undermining a piece of history by casting a Black actor, you're making their race an inaccessible part of their character and their acting. After all, how free can a Black actor be when they are slotted into a role that was not intended for them? How much of the historical weight of a story is impacted by this "race-conscious" approach to storytelling, which ends up obfuscating the connotations and impact of race and power?

It's unnecessary at best. There exists a host of available stories that showcase Black lives through history and mythology, from Shakespeare's Othello to the story of England's first Black aristocrat, Dido Elizabeth Bell, to the slave rebellion leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. And yet, instead of creating great TV around these incredible stories, we get a lazy and desperate push to haphazardly insert people of color into traditionally European roles while dismissing those who take issue with these diversity casting choices as racist.

Haphazard diversity casting ends up objectifying Black actors, exposing them to needless backlash and hostility from confused and frustrated fans and disconnecting their race from their acting and characters.

But the clumsiness of bad diversity casting also exposes something dark about the audiences for these prestige TV dramas. In the cast of House of the Dragon, the message is clear: Your average woke, Hollywood liberal can still root for a ruling class portrayed as malignant despots, so long as they aren't all white.

It's a key feature of pop-wokeness: making it seem counter-cultural to side with the elite. Shonda Rhimes' hit Netflix show Bridgerton is another famous and recent example that features a diverse, rainbow cast of fawning aristocrats, despite being set in the Georgian period, the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These desperate attempts to foster diversity blur the lines between aspirational fantasy and historical anachronism, which makes it hard to decipher how much of the impact of a story is lost when modern preoccupations with diversity and inclusion collide with unpleasant historical, mythological and symbolic truths.

Diversity casting in deeply hierarchical narratives reveals how comfortable we are with hierarchy, aristocracy, and even incestuous Aryan-like racists—so long as it's white servants waiting on Black queens and nobles, and so long as the eugenicist Aryans aren't all white.

It's a shame that showrunners aren't challenging these classist assumptions but catering to them with their own racialized decisions, which undermine Black actors and acting as well as viewers. And it's especially dispiriting because diversity that makes sense is not hard to find and can add incredible texture and richness to a story.

(…)

The challenges with diversity casting reflect the systemic problems and glaring lack of ambition and imagination in Hollywood. It's much easier for the highly-profit driven industry to slot token Black actors into already existing franchises that are guaranteed success, and much harder to take risks and tell new stories that feature prominent Black characters and myths and that showcase the full scope of the imagination and talent of people of color.

It is possible and important to do diversity properly. But it's also fine sometimes not to do it at all, especially when the occasion does not call for diversity casting and when the choice to do so impacts the subtext and symbolic dimension of a narrative.

Diversity casting out of some warped sense of moral obligation diminishes the impact of a project and also diminishes the dignity of the actors who are being slotted into shoes that were not tailored for them.”

“Turkey is not the word. No turkey, however bloated and stupid, could ever be big enough to convey the mesmerising awfulness of Amazon's billion dollar Tolkien epic.

(…)

Let's start with the budget: a billion dollars. Let that sink in. One thousand million bucks, about £860,000,000, such a colossal investment even for Amazon that industry rumour says the brand is gambling its entire future as a film production company.

(…)

Popular culture invents blether like this to replace real religion. It's scientology for the superhero movie era.”

[ceruleanwhore]

Let’s talk about LoK’s shit worldbuilding

Technology is what I’ve seen the most people the most opinionated about, so that’s where I’ll start. Plenty of people out there share my opinion that having LoK be set in basically the American 20s is just some really shitty worldbuilding but I’ve also encountered plenty more who are of the opinion that since it’s technically possible, that means it’s good. For those who aren’t aware: just because something is technically possible does NOT make it good. AtLA is set in a more traditional fantasy world with a hard magic system where the setting, character design, and everything else are meant to feel older (even though this time it isn’t modeled after Europe). There is some technology in AtLA and what is shown works with the nature of their world and their society so it isn’t like, say, a lamppost from England being dropped right into this little fantasy world and disrupting things. The trains in Ba Sing Se are a perfect example of this with how they are operated by benders and also fit, visually, with the surrounding buildings and whatnot.

The issue with LoK is that it seems that there was no real thought around the development and incorporation of new technology in the context of the world. Instead, it’s as though they copied and pasted the American 20s in there and it’s really jarring. This would be the part where I said that just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s good writing- just because our industrial revolution was at breakneck speed doesn’t mean that having your fantasy world develop the same way is a good idea. For a little context, let’s compare this to the Lord of the Rings. Imagine that Christopher Tolkien one day decided to write a whole new four part series set a century after the end of Return of the King. So now, seemingly out of nowhere, boom, technology. Minas Tirith is basically 1920s Chicago, they have cars and stuff. And the thing is that there was a little bit of technology in LotR, just like with AtLA, so that is a fair comparison. 

Also, like I said earlier, it feels lazy with how they’re just throwing in some of these different types of technology. For example, a glove that electrocutes people with no explanation whatsoever on how it works doesn’t make sense. Not to mention, the fact that anything relies on lightning bending, which is SUPPOSED to be super fucking rare (more on that later) is beyond stupid. 

I think this reflects an ongoing issue with Korra where they clearly think that they should be trying to make things more “realistic” but either don’t realize or don’t care that in the process they’re wrecking that ‘fantasy’ feel their world used to have, which brings us to our next topic: people.

Just like how they decided to go the ‘realism’ route with a breakneck industrial revolution, they also decided to go that same route with homosexuality and, more importantly, homophobia. Friendly reminder that if you’re writing fantasy and you spice it some with some good, wholesome gay content, you DO NOT have to ruin it with fucking homophobia. It’s supposed to be fantasy, you dense fuck. It has its own problems but the Dragon Prince is an absolutely perfect example of how to write gayness in fantasy, i.e., perfectly common with zero homophobia to be seen. Writing it like Bryke did just to double down on “it’s been like 90 years since the war ended but did you know the Fire Nation is fucking TERRIBLE and Sozin is basically HITLER?” is weak, stupid, and fucking annoying.

The other thing I want to touch on is race. Basically, put whoever you want in your story and have them look however you want them to look but keep in mind that the way you do or do not introduce groups of people can affect the quality of your writing. What I mean is that with a fantasy universe like this, it’s all wysiwyg. When the gaang traveled around *the world* meeting and interacting with all kinds of people from all kinds of places in all 3 remaining nations (and showing memories of the air nomads that are now gone), that’s your chance to showcase all that wonderful diversity. By the end of the series, when their tour of the whole world is over, you should have a complete picture. 

Again, think about LotR for a second. By the end of Return of the King, you’ve encountered all the different types of men that ever existed in any of Tolkien’s writings (kinda sorta including the dunedain, and there’s even a reference or two in there with Aragorn tying that in all nicely), multiple kinds of elves, dwarves, goblins, hobbits, ents, huorns, the eagles, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, the Nazgul, and multiple maiar (some good, some corrupt). The only race that hasn’t appeared in any of this that does exist in Tolkien’s other works is the valar but, otherwise, you, as the reader, along with characters like Frodo have been introduced to each and every race in middle earth, and, frankly, the Valar can be excused because they all are in the Undying Lands (plus Manwe might have been mentioned with the eagles.) Now, compare that to LoK where, with a Rowling level of retconning, they decided to just add some more races out of nowhere with no explanation 90 years or whatever after the original series. 

I just know that, for myself, I would’ve loved to see all this included from the beginning and incorporated into the original series and the travels of the gaang. Instead, we have it so AtLA is pretty set one way and then in LoK there’s just that one random dude with an afro and then, going into the comics afterwards, they decided to start incorporating different races in a way that feels like a JK Rowling tweet (“Hermione was black all along, even though I described her in the books as having light skin and picked a white actress to play her, I swear!”) So, basically, when you’re writing fantasy, you kind of have to include everything like that because that’s how the genre works and it’s not like in normal fiction where you can just have a black character without any explanation. Once again, the difference between how fantasy writing works and things being “realistic”.

As for realism, yanking the white lotus out into the open by their ear like an errant child is so unspeakably dumb and unrealistic. They’re a SECRET society who transcend the four nations and operate in SECRET jfc. After the war ended and the old folks home was no longer fighting the Fire Nation, the rest of them should’ve been able to go back into hiding no problem. But to drag their asses into this mess just to make them like Korra’s personal bodyguards and guards at high security prisons is so fucking stupid it hurts.

So then, to finish this up, let’s talk about bending. First off, there’s the issue of how bending forms have just… ceased to exist and/or been replaced with vague yet aggressive punching. Remember when Katara had to learn all those water bending stances and there was even a scroll of them? Or when Aang had to learn fire bending forms from Zuko? Well fuck that, now everyone can just punch at stuff instead. Never been able to airbend even with what should be proper form? Try waving your fist around!

The other thing is how so many of these characters are just “so naturally gifted” and can either successfully bend well with little to no experience or casually do stuff that’s supposed to be hella difficult. An example of the first point is Zaheer who just got his airbending like 3 days prior but suddenly can fucking fly and an example of the latter would be the blood bending, just all of it. That’s kind of another thing, though, how they’ve taken these things that were special and notoriously difficult and then watered them down and made it so literally everyone can do it. You know how lightning bending was a really cool thing only Ozai and Azula, the Fire Lord and princess who are both also known to be especially skilled benders, could do? Not anymore, now pretty much any fire bender with a pulse can shoot lightning out of their fingers. Same goes for blood and metal bending.

Also, can I just say that I’m mad at how pro bending was done? The earth bending stuff with the Boulder and all that worked because that framework of wrestling is really well suited to the element. Now, it’s what I’ve been saying where it’s like ‘oh yeah we can just put all the elements together in this boxing type shit because everyone in this fucking series can bend by punching, right?’ They had an awesome opportunity here to figure out different styles of fighting sports tailored to the different types of bending and they said ‘nope, fuck you’ and gave us that shit. Or just sports, in general, based around if the people playing and benders and, if so, what type of bending they have.

The last main thing with bending though is the absolute horseshit of harmonic convergence and kinda just season 2 in general. For starters, Korra getting her bending back because dead Aang was like “here ya go” was bullshit. I feel like it would’ve been better if that had been when Unalaq got introduced as her spiritual guide and, through working with him, she eventually was able to reach Wan, see his whole backstory like we got in episode 7, and then, afterwards, she could contact Raava directly and somehow with her get her bending back. Then, afterwards, she could go back to Republic City and give everyone their bending back and start helping with reconstruction from Amon. Season 2 doesn’t need a villain and it most certainly does NOT need that dumbass ‘dark avatar’ bullshit. 

Also, in terms of the air bending, seriously, fuck that shit. If air bending is going to come back then maybe, I don’t know, after following my other advice have Korra realize that not only can she take bending away (like Aang) but she can also give it so she could just go around to all the acolytes and make them airbenders. Or, if that would fuck up the balance or some shit, have her go around and make all the people who lost their bending to Amon into a fresh batch of air benders. You can’t really introduce something like energy bending and then expect us to believe that the only way to bring air bending back is for Aang to fuck a lot and then rely on following generations and subsequent incest, plus hc is fucking stupid when you have a character who can straight up just give people bending.

Oh and all that convergence shit brings up my last point of discussion, the way they retconned and fucked up the lore. Just like with what they did with lightning, blood, lava, and metal bending, they also decided to just do everything they could with those fucking turtles. Just like with Azula’s lightning bending, the entire fucking reason the lion turtle works so well is because of how it is so rare and special and all that so once you take that away, it doesn’t matter anymore smh. For most peope, champagne is special. You know why? Because most of us aren’t out here drinking the shit by the gallon every day. So yeah, between that and the way they threw away already established lore (that was further reinforced by experiences of characters in the show) makes it just a big old “yike”. All they had to do was fanagle a bit to keep Raava and Vaatu but ditch the whole hc shitshow and just maintain the parts that are already established.

[antiracist-tolkien]

Related post: blogs with PoC content

If you want to support and promote racial diversity in Tolkien’s works, reblog creations with poc. Not just posts about wanting diversity or racism.

[ernmark]

On elemental themes

It’s very common for characters to be heavily associated with a particular element on a thematic level. But that gets complicated.

Kinds of Elements

It’s not nearly as simple as you would think. What the defining elements are and how they’re divided depends entirely on the context.

In Avatar, they use the Greek elements-- Earth (which includes metal), Water (which includes ice), Fire (which includes electricity), and Air.

In Asian symbolism, there are five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Metal, and Wood. 

In She-Ra, each of the Princesses of Power represents an element-- and those include technology, water and ice as separate elements, plants, and... I think Glimmer represents magic? or light?

In Pokemon, there’s entire laundry lists of elements, which differentiates rock from steel and ground, psychic from ghost, fairy from dragon, and fire from electric. 

In Tolkien’s mythos, Fire and Earth are grouped together as part of a single element. 

In The Magnus Archives, the elements are the various entities of fear, which differentiates between hunt, flesh, and slaughter, between insects and spiders, and between agoraphobia and isolation. 

Elemental alignments in groups vs isolation

Some characters carry a certain element as a motif without it being part of a larger thematic thing. Lup from The Adventure Zone is heavily associated with fire, but she’s largely in thematic isolation. It has more to do with her personality than with her place in the world. She can be about fire without any other elements being brought into the conversation.

Pokemon, fear entities, and the Princesses of Power are better suited to politics and balance-- because there are so many elements to start with, it gives them each something unique that’s useful in one context but not in another, it has room for dynamic rivalries, alliances and relationships. In this case, the elements are more representative of the larger world as a whole and just how diverse it can be. But because there are so many, you tend to only ever deal with a small handful at a time, rather than with representatives of the full set. 

With smaller sets, you’re far more likely to see it become A Thing. You’re more likely to see one character as a representative of each of the elements, all of which have a major role to play in the final conflict. Without any one element, the whole falls apart. (This is more doable with sets that you can count on one hand, because then you can actually give each of the elements/characters enough time to properly develop them). 

When you have those smaller sets, characters can be defined as much by being outside of the given set of elements as by their representation-- for instance, with Sokka, Suki, Mei, and Ty Lee all conspicuously non-benders in A:tLA, but we also had characters like Sparky Sparky Boom Man who didn’t fit cleanly into the established categories, and each acted as a wild card within the conflict.

What’s this got to do with The Penumbra?

In Second Citadel, we’ve got a major elemental set represented by the Three Saints of the Citadel’s dominant religion-- Saint Aaron representing earth, Saint Damien representing sea, and Saint Ferdinand representing sky. They’re very clearly a set, and they’re acting as a symbolic map for our characters in the present: Sir Angelo for Saint Aaron and Sir Damien for Saint Damien, with Saint Ferdinand’s counterpart conspicuously absent at the moment.

Notably, though, Damien and Angelo are also the most privileged and pro-establishment characters, literal agents of the government who only recently started questioning their roles in their world.

But they’re not the only elementally aligned characters in the story.

Amaryllis of Exile, The Herbalist, is overwhelmingly associated with plants-- which in this case is distinct from earth.

Sir Marc the Salamander Knight is associated with fire-- in this case, distinct from the air-aligned lightning of Saint Ferdinand’s story. 

Sir Caroline of the Southern Frosts, cold and harsh and unyielding, is associated with ice, which in this case has nothing to do with the tranquility and stillness-within-movement of water. 

Each of these three characters is marked by being outsiders to the established order, marginalized by the Second Citadel’s dogma, ableism, and xenophobia respectively. And you can see that reflected in how their elements are at odds with the featured elements of the foundational myth. 

[absynthe--minded]

what do you think about tauriel?

I.... have complicated feelings about Tauriel. a few things I want to say up front:

I am pro-women-in-Arda. I loved the idea of an original character who was an active part of Tolkien’s world, especially since in the Silm and in other writings we see people like Aredhel, and Emeldir, and Andreth the Wise, and Idril, who were clearly active parts of their world and who had important parts to play. I was thrilled to see Tauriel in cast lists for this reason

I’m also pro-original-characters, to an extent. I’m happy to see people fleshing out Tolkien’s writing with diverse elements.

that being said? Tauriel, as executed, kind of annoys me, but not because she’s a woman, or because she’s a warrior, or whatever. I’m annoyed because Evangeline Lilly took the part on the condition that there would be no love triangle, and then she was forced into a love triangle by the studio. I’m annoyed because Tauriel being the captain of Thranduil’s guard makes very little sense considering how active she is outside his halls. I’m annoyed because her romance with Kili feels very rushed, and has little depth to it, and it takes away from how important Legolas and Gimli’s bond is in LotR proper, but if it were well written and compelling I wouldn’t care about that last point at all.

I’m especially annoyed because she’s a soldier and yet we see her magically heal Kili of a Morgul wound, something that canonically only Elrond Halfelven is skilled enough to do. Also it’s stated several times in LACE that if you’re an elven warrior, if you take life, it diminishes your ability to use magic in healing. Not first aid or mechanical mundane human magic? But songs of power and other metaphysical things. She very casually broke Tolkien’s worldbuilding to pieces, and it was so poorly handled. (I will say that I liked her much more in BotFA than in DoS, but that also leaned hard into the studio-mandated romance plot)

That being said, I don’t hate her as a character. I don’t think people who like her are wrong to like her, and I don’t think people ought to harass her fans or Evangeline Lilly or anybody else. She has the bones of a good character in there somewhere, and my issues with her are entirely based on my minute knowledge of LACE and HoME and not at all inspired by her existing, being female, having red hair, etc.

[smoothshift]

The story of (and ode to) my $900 BMW E46. Long read ahead. via /r/cars

The story of (and ode to) my $900 BMW E46. Long read ahead.

https://i.imgur.com/hINwDHO.jpg

Decided to make this post after I saw the woes of the guy with the $900 Ranger. If you don't like the writings of Dostoevsky, Tolkien, and Edgar Allen Poe, move along...there may or may not be a tldr at the bottom.

I live in the absolute middle of nowhere in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. You can imagine the lack of car culture; there are as many car enthusiasts up here as there are Packers fans in Detroit. Well, I decided eventually I wanted a BMW, probably because I test drove an e46 328ci before I moved up north. I was 19, the year was 2015.

A 2001 330I on Craigslist caught my eye one day. He was asking $1200. It was a manual, had 167k miles, had the Sport Package (pre-ZHP), had a busted front bumper and crumpled hood, a missing sideskirt and a cracked rear bumper. Only one picture in the ad, salvage title. Hmm, I thought, doesn't look like the bumper was pushed back at all, so maybe it's not as bad as it looks. I called the guy and discussed the car. It ran and drove, just didn't look very good. We emailed back and forth a bit, and I decided to meet him.

Just so happened the car was six hours away, south of Grand Rapids. So next Saturday I jumped in my 2001 Sebring Coupe (what a glorious, reliable hunk of junk) and picked up my buddy Will to spot me back.

We arrived at the place, and there was the car. I think my heart did a little pitter patter. It was sitting in front of the guy's shop (he built and repaired stock cars for a living). Hood was up, and the car was running, but the idle was bouncing like crazy...sounded like a dying animal. I didn't know what was wrong, the guy didn't know what was wrong. I called a BMW dealer, got on the line with one of the techs, and basically was told that I needed to bring them the car before he could offer any advice. Great. Eventually we discovered a large vacuum leak on the lower intake boot. Duct tape fixed that problem. It's also worth noting that the headlights were in the trunk, as the guy had taken the car to the body shop after the wreck to assess it and they hadn't bothered to reinstall them. More on this later.

So then I test drove the car.

I didn't really know how to drive stick. But I winged it. Or wang it. Or whatever. Somehow I only stalled like 3 times before I got it back to the shop. I handed the guy $900 in cash (we hadn't discussed price, here again I "wang" it). He really had wanted $1200 but...we had a deal. He signed the title over. It was still a green title...the insurance company hadn't bothered to write the title off. Probably wasn't worth their time. SCORE.

Next came Phase 2 of the mission. I needed car parts. Luckily, I had been in contact with a guy in Kalamazoo who was parting out an identical 330I, also Schwartz II (AKA Model T Black), also Sport Package. So Will and I left the basketcase BMW and followed Maps in my Sebring...right into the hood of Kalamazoo. As a privileged white male, I was a little out of my comfort zone, to say the least. The GPS dropped us right outside of some kind of impound, and the cars parked outside were old 90s sedans with giant chrome wheels.

Hoo boy.

The impound gate was open and Will and I walked in where a bunch of dudes were standing around smoking. Alarm bells were going off in this country boy's head.

"Uh, I'm looking for a BMW that's being parted out?" The guys exchanged glances and then one said, "Oh I wonder if you're looking for Jose." One of them led me a couple doors down. We walked past a house where an 11 year old was casually smoking cigarettes on the porch. Then turned and walked into Jose's backyard. The big black guy rattled his screen door and he came out. "Bought a wrecked car man? I'll sell you the title for this one. Twenty bucks. Your insurance will be cheaper." I turned down his offer, no thank you, and bought $300 worth of hood, fender and bumper. Whew. We were ready to be out of there, though arguably hadn't seen any trouble, we were just rather uncomfortable there.

We bungeed the hood to the roof of the Sebring, and loaded the bumper inside. I know it took up significant space even with the back seat folded down, and to this day I don't remember how both Will and I fit in the car. But we did.

So we drove back to Wayland, where the e46 was, and bolted on the hood. We didn't want to bother with the latch, so we just took it off and bungeed it down to the bumper. We decided we had enough daylight left to drive back to my parents lived, which was around 3 hours, so we just left the headlights out. More on that later.

We were ready to embark with my "new" BMW. I pushed in the clutch, turned the key, the engine came to life. I put it in reverse, carefully feathered the clutch, and started backing out of the driveway. Oh, did I mention that the passenger side mirror was busted off? Well the passenger side mirror was busted off. IE, I couldn't see anything behind me on my right side. This was fine. I was feathering that clutch like a pro - didn't even stall. All was well until I felt the back end go down, and the front wheels come off the ground. I just backed the car INTO THE DITCH.

Will was doubled over laughing in my Sebring. I had to tuck my sorry tail between my legs, go back into the shop, tell the owner of my misdeed, and ask for help. He pulled me out, and I promised to treat the car better. I doubt he was very confident I would make it home.

Surprisingly, the first while of the journey was great. I adapted quickly to the clutch and shifter, and we made it to Subway to grab a bite to eat. And we got back on the freeway.

Well, about those headlights.

Something must have taken too long, because it started getting dark. We were hauling down the freeway and it looked like we didn't have much daylight left. I called Will.

"Hey I'm just going to hang on your bumper since I don't have headlights. Don't brake too hard, and drive careful." I've had other brilliant ideas as well, like modifying a mousetrap into a toenail clippers.

So we did, and the night came. People started flashing their lights at us, and somehow we didn't pass any cops. I think I might have been in a little hot water if we had. Finally I called Will again.

"Hey, I think we should probably pull over and see if we can put these headlights in. This is kinda stupid." So we did. I pulled one headlight out of the trunk, and put it in. I didn't bother with any hardware, just bungeed it in (bungee straps hold anything together. I'm pretty sure the USSR held together as long as it did due to bungee straps). Plugged in the light connector, and there was light. I went to turn the key...

...and it wouldn't turn.

I jumped onto Google and looked up the problem. Somehow no one else had experienced it. I was almost in tears. Here I was, stuck in my dream car at 10 o'clock at night, and I couldn't as much as turn the key. Will suggested that I wiggle the steering wheel. It worked! BMWs have really tight steering wheel locks compared to the crappy cars I had owned before. We made it the rest of the way to my folks and I ran Will home without further problems that night.

I had many adventures in that car. I named her Helga. In fact, I got a license plate that said "H3LGA." I drove that thing down many dirt roads, never got stuck! (It's worth noting that dirt roads up north are often pretty nice) Helga weathered several brutal winters, thanks to Hankook snow tires. That was the first car I ever put confidence in. I took her down to Virginia in the middle of the summer without AC. I whipped the curves of H58. I went camping and slept in the cramped backseat. I even...get this...beat stock Dodge Neons at the stoplight! I got through some of the loneliest times of my life with Helga as my friend that always was there for me. Sure, it cost me a clutch and flywheel, a CCV system refresh, several vacuum hoses, other random parts, and a differential (another story for another time) but it was SO WORTH IT. I think all in the car cost me about $4000 over the 50,000 miles/3 years that I owned it.

Last year, in the name of diversity and practicality I traded it for a beat up Honda Civic hatch. Stupidest thing I ever did. Current stable is a 1996 318ti and a 1988 535i, both manuals. I'm now addicted to cheap, old BMWs, and you can't talk me out of it.

I just deleted a thousand word rant about what happens when stupid people own BMWs. You're welcome.

Tl;Dr I bought a manual BMW for $900, owned it for 3 years, loved it, and put about $3000 in parts into it.

[ellrond]

Tolkien’s work has always reflected the world - like any great work, it can be related to the time that the reader is living in. The Lord of the Rings, consciously or not, reflected the lives of soldiers coming home from the world wars but never really coming home. His works reflected what he saw - the encroachment of industry on nature, the rise and fall of terrible powers, the ‘triumph’ of the west, etc. To say that it shouldn’t reflect is to say that adaptations shouldn’t evolve.

It is interesting that you refer to the actress who plays Dís as a ‘chick’ and take such a form stance against what she saying, when all she is really saying is that poc deserve a place in on-screen adaptations.

It’s also interesting that you say there was ‘no warrior Galadriel’, when keen readers of the histories know well that she played an active role in the migration of elves from Valinor to Middle Earth - hardly a peaceful process. While it can be argued that by the Second Age she had evolved into more of a diplomat, it certainly is false to say she was ‘no warrior’.

It’s also very telling that the article you have linked was written by an anti-abortion, pro-facist, openly racist, white American man (his Twitter is easily accessible). What is it about Rings of Power that brings out the bigotry in fans? Is it truly a case of being bothered by the deviation of canon, or is it because of the diversity of cast and crew? I couldn’t possibly draw any conclusions.

It just keeps getting worse for the Rings of Power. Here are some cast member/producer statements regarding the show.

She (the chick playing Disa) explained, “It’s their time and it’s so important and I hope many people will see this fantasy and be able to relate to it. This is a reflection of the world we live in, there are many and we are different and we will embrace and discover, and peel back, and learn, and educate, and be educated.”

This show should not reflect our world; it should reflect Tolkien's world. People also have not had a problem relating to it which is why it's one of the best selling fiction works in history. Is this show going to be preachy ("educate and be educated")? People generally don't like being preached at/talked down to and I can't see this going over well.

These cast statements echo what Executive Producer of the series Lindsey Weber told Vanity Fair back in February, “It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like.”

It seems to me that the only natural thing to do was to reflect Tolkien's world if you are doing a Tolkien adaptation. Make no mistake, this will not be an adaptation. They will not be telling his story with his characters (there was no warrior Galadriel, Miriel was never queen or queen regent, and they have more original characters listed so far than actual Tolkien characters and that alone is a huge red flag). It will be a veneer of Tolkien so thin that if you barely scratch it, it will disappear.

This is going to be very expensive fan fiction written/produced by people who don't actually seem to be fans. I love fan fic. I write it and read it. I like AUs, modern AUs, smut fics, and other things that vary quite a bit from Tolkien's stories and characters. It's cool to have fun with it and sometimes do crazy things. But, when someone buys the rights to actually use the real thing, I expect a proper adaptation. That doesn't mean you can't take some liberties and make some changes so that the material works better for film/tv, but it should not be so different as to be unrecognizable in character/theme/storyline.

If you watch this as a generic fantasy show, you might enjoy it. I'm not impressed by anything so far. The costumes/props mostly look cheap and like they came from Party City (seriously some of the helmets/armor/crowns look plastic), the elves just look like regular people with pointy ears, and the "not hobbits" (yes, Harfoots are hobbits!) look like they rolled around in dirt/trash and then decided to go on about their day.

One last thing, do you know what the show is supposed to be about based on any of the trailers that have been released? It's called The Rings of Power yet there has been no mention of rings or of their creation. Obviously as Tolkien fans, we have a general idea of what they might cover but you can't tell that from the promotional material alone. If I didn't know anything about Tolkien, I would think this is a world that had been at war, the war is now over and some people think it will be a time of peace and others think more conflict is on the horizon. Also a meteor lands somewhere. I can't work up any excitement for a such a bland, generic plot.

[antiracist-tolkien]

Speaking as somebody from a tribe that has ribbon skirts as part of our cultural wear, I would love to see Arwen wear one at her wedding. On a larger scale, I hate the tendency (largely driven by white people and by settlers overall) to insist that only certain groups of people in the text are “allowed” to be non-European, or that crafting an Arda where Eurofantasy is just one of many cultural and aesthetic influences is somehow bad because it doesn’t adhere to the coding in the text. We’re all going to approach the coding in our own way, we’re allowed to use our own lives as inspiration without explaining a direct parallel between the climate in the highlands of Dorthonion and the climate in (for example) the Altiplano.

Sometimes we just want to be allowed to exist without everyone insisting we can’t, and we’re allowed to engage with or ignore the coding in the text as we see fit.

That's great to hear, thank you!

You've hit the nail on the head. Every non-white character or influence has to be exhaustively justified, and people will always still argue that we're wrong. We never get to just exist. We have to fight tooth and nail for every piece of space that we can claw out for ourselves.

[just-some-fools]

1. Parogenic thoughtform sys

2. *Mostly* just the two in headspace (though there is A Guy who occasionally shows up)

3. I've known my headmate (Mina) existed for about four years but wasn't sure what to call him until this year

4. In a few group chats with various systems but mostly on Tumblr for A Certain Fandom

5. We heard of DID shortly after becoming plural but not OSDD/DDNOS until this year, didn't want to ID as a system for a while cause we thought DID was the only valid experience

6. Honestly not really? Sometimes we'll meet together at a cafe based off one in our hometown, there's also, like, a box to go into if you don't want to be in the headspace

7. Headmates, sysmates, or host/thoughtform

8. We use system because it's convenient 🤷

9. Having a friend to tell me when I'm on my bullshit again, building each other up, exploring the meaning of selfhood

10. Not being able to tell anyone about it, feeling invisible, identity crises, endophobia

11. 100% psychological haha

12. Switching, it's usually pretty easy and quick for us, learned how to do it this year just because we didn't realize it was possible before, it took about ten seconds to figure out 😂

13. Friends but way closer than non-sysmate friends could ever be

14. We're only out to one person IRL but only after they came out to us as a system

15. So I (Vem) basically just take the form of the body (though sometimes with different hair) while Mina has a few different forms ce takes (usually slightly taller than me with long red hair, sometimes with multiple eyes, sometimes a sort of spider like form, or just a shadow)

16. Uh, lots of things, I'm into linguistics, Tolkien, and musicals and Mina is a huge vampire nerd (hence the pseudonym lol) and likes opera and fashion, but we tend to be interested in each other's hyperfixations too

17. Studying abroad right now! It's super fun

18. Music: showtunes and Soviet rock, Lord of the Rings (Vem), red and gold (Mina), snails and wasps and ofc dogs and cats, favorite musicals are Lestat, The Last Trial, and Lay of Leithian (last two are Russian)

19. I'm (Vem) the host, basically just because I'm usually fronting and deal with change and other people a bit better, also cause I'm the original I'm a bit more accustomed to existing in the world

20. I mean we have friends and family and all like you do, Mina does have a silly nickname that people on discord call him which he's very proud of

21. Can't really remember life before plurality (like I remember but I don't know what I did in my head if there was nobody to talk to), I think I was lonely though

22. Chose to be plural because I was lonely and bored, we didn't treat each other super well at first but after both the external validation of having real friends and just growing as people I think we're a lot more comfortable with each other

23. To endophobes: we exist. To disordered systems that are pro endo your support means so fucking much to us, and to endo systems y'all are great, I love the diversity if our community and learning about everyone's different experiences.

24. If any singlets take the time to read this and are respectful that's great, thank you! Uh personal identity is SUPER WEIRD if you ever wanna just grapple with what makes your personality you then uh, go for it. Also like, we exist in the real world just aren't super open about it.

Sysmeds should not get to write the narrative about us on this platform!

Scrolling through the tags, it seems like a great deal of what's said about us on tumblr is either sysmeds trying to make us look bad or all-encompassing plural blogs that just say everyone is valid (which is great! and these blogs should keep doing what they're doing! but it would be nice to have some more frequent endo (and other) representation on here too!)

Either my tumblr algorithm just sucks major balls, or most endos, tulpas, spiritual systems and other non-sysmed-approved systems get scared off of this platform because of how many loud hateful voices there are compared to how few people there are who we can relate to. (like most of the cool-looking accounts i can relate to that i find are dead and so is my blog for the same reason lol).

SO! Let's do a thing. If you are endogenic, parogenic, a tulpamancy system, a spiritual system, a daemien, or any other kind of system that sysmeds try to silence, reblog this post with answers to these questions to tell tumblr what our lived experiences as plurals are REALLY like!

(Feel free to pick and choose which questions you want to answer, or just come up with your own and tag them under #endovoices or substitute endo for whatever kind of system you are! Also, feel free to just reblog with one answer at a time, or to just answer the questions in a standalone post; no need to credit me, I just want more systems sharing their experiences!)

1. What kind of system are you? (Describe this in any way you like. No need to use -genic or popular terms if you don't want to)

2. How many of you are there?

3. How long have you known about your plurality?

4. What kind of spaces/communities do you/did you hang out in? (Both plural-relevant and non-plural-relevant spaces are valid answers, past and present)

5. Had you heard of DID/OSDD/DDNOS before you became plural/discovered your plurality?

6. Do you have a wonderland/innerworld? If so, what do you call it, and what are some things that you and your system members do there?

7. What do you call your system members?

8. If you're plural but don't use the word "system" to describe you&, what word do you use?

9. What are some of the best things about being plural?

10. What are some of the not-so-great things about being plural? (Any answer is valid- nothing is too minor or too major to be an answer to this question.)

11. Do you have a spiritual or psychological view of your plurality?

12. Do you ever experience "switching" or "posession" or any sort of change in who controls the body? If so, what do you call it, how easy/difficult is it, and what is it like? Were you always able to do this, or did you have to learn how over time?

13. How do you and your system mates relate to each other? (Are you friends, family, romantically involved, caretakers, etc.)

14. Have you come out to anybody in real life/in a singlet space about your plurality? How did it go?

15. What kinds of forms and appearances do your system members take on?

16. What are you and your system members interested in?

17. What is your life like in the meatworld?

18. What are your music tastes? Movies? Favorite colors? Animals? List any other favorites as well

19. Does your system have a host/original? If so, what do you call them? Explain what role they play in your system

20. Do any system members have notable relationships outside of the system? Explain them!

21. If you haven't been plural for your entire life/haven't known about your plurality until later in life: what was life like before plurality compared to life now?

22. If you chose to become plural: why? What has changed since then?

23. Is there anything you'd like to say to the plural community at large?

24. Is there anything you'd like to say to any singlets reading this post?

That is all I've got for now, but feel free to add any more you want to share! Please remember to be respectful to all system types if you post, I do not support bashing or invalidating of any system types. I will also reblog with my own answers soon.

(Note: these questions are not in order of priority or importance, I just wrote them down as I came up with them. Feel free to answer out of order and skip or add whatever you want!)

Also this should go without saying but making any rude sysmeddy responses to this will just result in being blocked and totally ignored, so don't even start, there's no point. The block button is right there.

Have fun everyone!

[skelliet-0-n]

The Terrible Politics of PS4′s Spider-Man

This Spider-Man guy likes beating up criminals a little too much.

The DLC for the PS4 Spider-Man recently went on sale, so my housemate bought it, and I’ve started playing it again. Full disclosure, I love the gameplay. It seems a direct spiritual successor to the PS2's Spider-Man 2 game, and it's endlessly freeing to effortlessly swing from skyscraper to skyscraper.

But in the process of obsessively completing missions to unlock the underpants outfit, I’ve become reacquainted with how confused and abhorrent the politics of Spider-Man are. It’s largely in relation to the police, the NYPD, which has always had a fraught relationship with Spider-Man throughout his existence - comics, films, and games.

But this time, it feels utterly unlike any previous incarnation - while this relationship remains fraught, it’s only in terms of how the police view Spider-Man (only in the sense that he’s doing their job for them). Spider-Man, on the other hand, is unwavering in his adoration of the NYPD, the ‘brave boys in blue’. This is deeply troubling, for obvious reasons - Spider-Man is the point-of-view character, and in a world increasingly disgusted at the wanton violence, racism, and lack of accountability displayed by not just the US police force, but indeed police forces worldwide, it’s utterly tone-deaf.

The police in Spider-Man are best represented by Jefferson Davis, an average police officer and father of future Spider-Man Miles Morales. Davis is a good cop - noble, self-sacrificing, and community-minded. This is how Spider-Man perceives the force at large, rarely forgetting to thank those brave boys in blue for their service. Spider-Man’s internal dialogue often references the supposed friction between him and the police, but you’d never know from the actual cops in the game, and he nevertheless goes out of his way to support them.

You could argue that this is an aspirational representation - what the writers want the police to be. But there are a few problems with this. First, the police aren’t really all that great - it’s just that the immoral things they do in the real world are ignored, whitewashed. Some of them are generally antsy around Spider-Man himself, but equally, many are adoring (and of course, Spider-Man himself is similarly adoring of the police force).

The other problem with it foregoing a real-world representation for an idealised representation is the fact that Spider-Man already engages with other real-world representations. Jonah J. Jameson has forgone his role as newspaper editor to play talkback radio host, his wild accusations and angry ranting a clear analogue to Alex Jones. Norman Osborn, meanwhile, has become mayor in this story, rather like another high-profile businessman turned populist politician. So, to ignore the reality of the police force is irresponsible, given that the game already critiques existing institutions (admittedly, institutions that are safe to critique by the standards of liberal defenders of the status quo). 

There’s even condemnation levelled at the fascist paramilitary organisation Sable, which continues to overstep its boundaries, depriving people of their civil rights. Spider-Man takes the time to (with utter lack of self-awareness) shake his head at this, declare that it's not how things are done in New York - before going right back to gushing over the NYPD. In 2018, the NYPD held a transgender Latina woman overnight, charging her with ‘false personation’, misgendering her, and mocking her. If that doesn’t sound like an autocratic organisation depriving people of their rights, acting above the law, and being an antagonistic force towards parts of the community, then God knows what is.

This is equally an issue with Brooklyn 99, arguably the world’s most influential fictional representation of the police force. Again, it shamelessly portrays the police as fundamentally good, despite the inclusion of the rare bad cop. Instead, the show depicts the NYPD as being diverse in terms of race and sexuality, though if the above example proves anything, it’s that this is far from the truth. It’s not just ineffectual wishing for a better tomorrow, it’s actively creating a false narrative, one that is irresponsible in its refusal to acknowledge the harm that police forces do.

On the one hand, you could say that Spider-Man is no more problematic than crime fiction, in its black-and-white moral of order versus chaos. Superheroes and crime fiction are inextricably intertwined, are they not? But Spider-Man goes further - it brazenly dehumanises criminals (by ‘criminals’ I mean the everyday criminals, not the supervillains, who get complex backstories), reducing them not to victims of circumstance and poverty, but simply to animals that long for destruction and self-gain. Of course, Spider-Man could never give every two-bit goon a backstory, but it goes too far the other direction. Crime is some sort of malevolent force, completely other from ‘normal’ humans. Criminals are some sort of vicious, orc-like beings (and lest we forget, even Tolkien had trouble reconciling the moral implications of orcs, sentient beings who were apparently pure evil and less-than-human).

To return to Brooklyn 99, the first episode demonstrates the two lead characters (both model cops) in a race to see who can arrest the most people. Sure, it’s treated as comedy, but it’s still tone-deaf against the context of real-world abuses of police power, and presents criminals as abstracted, shapeless masses that police have to dispose of to keep us all safe. There’s not even the slightest acknowledgement of the complex socio-economic circumstances that lead many to actions that are considered crime.

45% seems way too high to me.

This article explains, better than I ever could, the dehumanisation of criminals in Spider-Man. In particular, there’s a contrast between the in-game Riker’s Island, a hive of scum and villainy, and its real-world counterpart, a prison full of disadvantaged groups, trapped by a system constructed to keep them down.

Even Spider-Man’s dialogue demonstrates this. In every crime-busting side mission, Spider-Man seems to view criminals as misbehaving children. Spider-Man’s gleeful efforts to return them to prison are jarring and distasteful, compared to real life, where revolving door prison systems keep minorities and low-income people beaten down, thanks to the serious handicap of being labelled a criminal.

Spider-Man’s tone-deaf dialogue shines through again in describing the cops. Coming across a shootout between police and escaped convicts (again presented as thoughtless marauders), he compares the scene to a Wild West setting, of brave lawmen engaged in a firefight in some urban canyon. And then there’s Spider-Man’s juvenile, faux-serious self-narration as 'Spider-Cop’. It’s ironic that Spider-Cop evokes a child’s efforts to play a cop; such a child would have, no doubt, a largely positive view of the police, thanks to media representation such as Spider-Man’s pro-police narrative.

Maybe the game exclusively presents police as noble heroes because the writers tacitly approve of their real-world heavy-handed treatment of minorities. After all, Spider-Man himself declares drug-dealing to be his 'least favourite criminal activity', and while he corrects himself to say it’s one of his least favourites, it’s very telling that he has such a strong reaction to a crime that, in the US, has largely been used to victimise minorities and opposition to the elite. During the Nixon administration, for example, the criminalisation of heroin and marijuana was used as an excuse to harass the black and anti-Vietnam communities respectively, neither of which were friends to Nixon.

As a side note, the clear association between Alex Jones and Jonah J. Jameson is evidence of Spider-Man’s uncertain message, much like the imbalance between the critique of Sable and the lionisation of the NYPD. While he starts out as a bitter, conspiracy-theorising radio host with a clear vendetta, he starts to make intelligent, sane points. For example, he starts to question the conflicting interests of Osborn, a capitalist who has been elected mayor of New York (again, an obvious allusion to Trump). He also urges citizens to fight for their rights in the face of Sable’s abuse of power - is he supposed to be a satirical lunatic, or one of the few sane voices? In a world as black-and-white as Spider-Man’s, a character like Jameson just seems confused.

To return to the point, perhaps this begs the question, what’s the right way to depict the police? Maybe, if you’re not going to take any kind of stand on the injustice they commit, you shouldn’t depict them at all in a piece of fiction, especially if it’s something fun and light-hearted like Spider-Man or Brooklyn 99. Admittedly, in the case of the latter, that would necessitate it not existing, but then, you wouldn’t write a buddy comedy about two US troops in the Iraq War, would you?

DISCLAIMER: You could say that it’s just a game, and that politics should be kept out of this. But those who say they’re apolitical really just mean they’re content with the status quo - everything is political. Especially if it depicts an organisation like the police.