Also to your first point, I needed to know what her current stance was and the rational being used to do what I could at comparing.
All the points about the series are interesting, and they all ring pretty true. As I recall Tolkien had similar racial vibes in his works. Nothing I realized until someone pointed them out.
TBH the whole house elves thing always made me uncomfortable.
The thing about the House Elves is, she introduced the concept in one book without thinking too much about. Fans then asked her for details and instead of taking the easy route and saying that Slavery is Bad, she doubled down and said that it was perfectly fine. She tends to have petty responses to criticisms and questions. In one book, she introduces Time Travel and fans asked why the following book didn’t have time travel, so in the next book, the fat kid knocked over the table that had all the time travel on it, so no one could use it again. She also wrote a whole book about an author who was being bullied on social media.
Tolkien used his fantasy races as metaphors for real life races/ethnic groups, but was fairly kind to them, considering his time. IIRC, Dwarves were repressive of Jews and while it doesn’t look good that the Dwarves greed for gold was their downfall, a deeper read, it was specifically a certain king that lead them to their downfall and not a trait of the race itself. I’m not a Tolkien head, so I might be getting some wires crossed.
Excellent response, thank you.
Also to your first point, I needed to know what her current stance was and the rational being used to do what I could at comparing.
All the points about the series are interesting, and they all ring pretty true. As I recall Tolkien had similar racial vibes in his works. Nothing I realized until someone pointed them out.
TBH the whole house elves thing always made me uncomfortable.
The thing about the House Elves is, she introduced the concept in one book without thinking too much about. Fans then asked her for details and instead of taking the easy route and saying that Slavery is Bad, she doubled down and said that it was perfectly fine. She tends to have petty responses to criticisms and questions. In one book, she introduces Time Travel and fans asked why the following book didn’t have time travel, so in the next book, the fat kid knocked over the table that had all the time travel on it, so no one could use it again. She also wrote a whole book about an author who was being bullied on social media.
Tolkien used his fantasy races as metaphors for real life races/ethnic groups, but was fairly kind to them, considering his time. IIRC, Dwarves were repressive of Jews and while it doesn’t look good that the Dwarves greed for gold was their downfall, a deeper read, it was specifically a certain king that lead them to their downfall and not a trait of the race itself. I’m not a Tolkien head, so I might be getting some wires crossed.
Yeah I’m not a huge Tolkien person either. Enjoyed the movies, struggled through the books.