Thread by @maxgladstone

Love this thought. Especially since so much of post-Tolkien fantasy, especially commercial fantasy, strongly misreads Tolkien imo...

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Just for example (and stealing this point from a good friend here), Tolkien tends to get used as a shorthand for "it all turns out all right, destiny is fulfilled, good guys win, and suffering is minimal"

Which, like. Neighbors. No.

Must be missing the part where the destined hero is at best a distraction, AND the scruffy underdog protagonist reaches the final test... and fails it. Miserably and completely.

A series where the elder darkness is undone by the single most abject character in the series... in a moment of total capitulation to the power that broke him

And then, oh good, the elder darkness has gone away, and taken all immortality and magic and the grace we've grown to love with it, that's um

a mood

but at least our plucky underdog protagonists can return to a
*handed card from offscreen*
home totally ravaged by second-order effects of the war they've just won, not to mention rampant industrialization, betrayed by their former neighbors

but no worry they fight a guerilla resistance, then spend decades rebuilding and winning the peace, which Frodo at least gets to enj-
*handed another card*
godDAMMIT

I mean yes, sorry, never mind, enjoy while slowly suffering from a wound that does not heal, and the fact that he has been forever marked by the bearing of the ring, and (though Tolkien doesn't discuss it much) the knowledge that, when the chips were down, he wasn't strong enough

and even Bilbo who's from a much nicer book still asks about the ring

But hey, Sam makes it home at least

And all that's left of Galadriel in the West is the hair she gave to Gimli

*pant pant*

I mean, Tolkien gets a lot of well-deserved side eye and direct confrontation for a lot of really good reasons. Women's roles! Depictions of PoC! And the genre's been wrestling with those, to good effect.

It's a sign of the changing times that, as more women-led fantasy is written, I'm able to revisit LOTR as a story specifically about the way men relate to one another on long journeys

Which is *what it is depicting*. Specifically that. It's not about a women's group, or a mixed group. It's about men walking together. And as that, it's brilliantly observed.

And there's nothing wrong with those stories. There is something wrong when "we" (and it's always good to ask who the we is in sentences like that) confuse them for all stories, or the only stories with value. As happens all the time.

So, more women-led fantasy, more women IN fantasy, more discussion and more work and more criticism, moves Tolkien away from the false universal and into the glorious specific.

I think the racial issues in the text don't fare so well. And that's of course deserving of discussion, critique, and analysis.

But, with all love and respect for the David Eddings-meets-Quentin Tarantino school of fantasy, Tolkien is not "happy endings good guys win."

I can only imagine Tolkien answering such a characterization in words analogous to one of the great stylists of our age:

"Now you wanna run around talking bout guns like I ain't got none
What you, think I sold 'em all?"

Thank you for your indulgence as I finish a long ranty thread about Tolkien with a Dr Dre quote. Now I'm going to go make some soup.

Take care of yourselves. Work for the liberation of all sentient beings.