[ SECRET POST #2941 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2941 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.
[Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag]


__________________________________________________



03.
[Fire Emblem: Awakening]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Hannibal, Richard Armitage]


__________________________________________________



05.
[The Hobbit]


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.
[Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures]


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.
[Doctor Who]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #420.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This. Romance aside, she still came across as a Mary Sue to me. Especially knowing that she was deliberately invented for the movies. I'm not necessarily opposed to that in theory, but she had to be the awesome, beloved and sought after voice of reason who is friendly and pretty and amazing at everything? She didn't have a single flaw. And the elves ARE isolationist, that comes up later, being an important thing and all. And her befriending dwarves kind of reduces Legolas's role. And what happened to Legolas's character because of her is painful, and yes, Legolas is the more important character (being canon and all).

[(Anonymous)]

+ infinity

Not only that, but all of her plotline is just shoe-horned in there. If you cut it out completely, no one would notice because it doesn't tie back into the main story at all. I get PJ deciding that he needed to add more women to Tolkien's original sausage-fest, but he might as well have named her Tokeniel. It would have been super easy to gender-swap some dwarves or, hell, it's not as if Thranduil did anything besides be catty, covet some jewelry and ride a giant elk. Make him Legolas's mother and be done with it.

[(Anonymous)]

That would have been far worse from a 'fidelity to canon' point of view. Which I happen to care about.

IMO at some point you just have to realize that you're adapting something that just doesn't have any female characters. There's only so much you can do to make up for that.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, no one besides other dwarves can tell the men from the women anyway, the bulk of the dwarves are interchangeable if you're actually sticking to canon, and not one part of the original story is dependent on whether or not generic dwarf #9 has a stalagmite in the cave. Seriously, if PJ had made Nori a female dwarf, how would that have changed the story?

[(Anonymous)]

If the female dwarves were totally indistinguishable from the male dwarves, I agree that it wouldn't affect the plot, but it also seems to me that it wouldn't be much good as female representation.

I don't know though! The Tauriel interpolation just seems like a better option, in that it leaves the original plot to be what it is (well, except for the other changes Jackson made). Then again I think the best option would just be to adapt the damn thing and let the chips fall where they may.

[(Anonymous)]

I think we've got different ideas about what counts as representation and also about what counts as mangling the canon. Throwing in a superfluous plotline for Tauriel the sparkly lady elf who kicks ass, falls in love with a dwarf, and helps thaw Thranduil's cold, cold heart so that he can bond with his son again is about as far away from respecting canon as you can get without turning the whole story into a High School AU. And you don't need to point out that women are women to have it count as representation unless you're looking for back pats. Representation just means that you've got women who exist to be something other than victims or love interests doing their thing. And, much like real life, a lot of times their thing isn't really any different from the men's thing. I don't do my job in a girlier way than my male counterparts do, do you? But my Tauriel equivalent would be leaving everyone memos on pink, sparkly post-its while making an epic speech by the water cooler about being true to herself and listening to her heart.

[(Anonymous)]

Again, to be clear, I don't think the Tauriel option is really all that good. I think it's a better option if your only criteria is whether or not it's canon.

I guess there are, basically, three qualities that we're talking about here: how accurate to the actual Tolkien book the film is; how good it is as a film; and how good it is in terms of representation. And I don't think they're closely related. I think the Tauriel option is better than the female dwarves option in terms of canonicity, because you can just totally ignore it and pretend it never happened. But it's clearly worse in terms of representation and film quality, because it is dumb, and sucks. Conversely, the female dwarves option would be way better in terms of representation, and probably about the same as the all-male dwarves & no Tauriel option in terms of film quality. But it would be way less canonical, because it changes shit that's actually in the book. Personally I would prefer the option that is closer to the book but not as good in terms of representation (all-male dwarves, no Tauriel). But I can see why someone would feel differently.

& for what it's worth I do agree with you about representation. I'm just not sure that it would be seen that way by everyone, or that working female dwarves into it works out automatically. There's at least a bit of difficulty going on there. I agree it would probably be better all told than Tauriel though.

[(Anonymous)]

If you go with the Pratchett assumption that all dwarves are referred to using masculine pronouns and accept that male and female dwarves are interchangeable, there's no reason to think that half the dwarves aren't female. They're just being played by male actors since all dwarves look male anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

Just changing some of the dwarves (some of whom don'T even have a lt of lines in the book, if at all) into female dwarves and just run with it instead of making a big deal out of it would have changed the plot less than the Tauriel thing did AND it would have been a better case of representation. Having female dwarves kicking ass alongside the male dwarves without anyone making a big deal out of it would have been much better than the same old tired "super special kickass lady who turns into love interest" trope they used.

[(Anonymous)]

If they had done that, the movies would have been getting at least as much shit for not pointing out that the dwarves were female, I think.

I don't know. I think it's a fundamental difference of opinion here. Because for me, representation is hugely important in the aggregate, both in terms of equality and just in terms of, you know, quality. But I don't believe that has to apply to every individual work. If they had made a version of The Hobbit that had no female representation at all, that wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. Some things just are that way. And after all, if something with no female characters is worth adapting in the first place...