The Great Tolkien Legendarium Thread

[Glass Half Baked]

Hey, did y'all know that if you own Mark hard enough, he deletes your post? I think he might secretly be J D Vance.

[Travis B.]

Hey, did y'all know that if you own Mark hard enough, he deletes your post? I think he might secretly be J D Vance.

And you're trolling.

[zompist]

Yep, Glass Half Baked has been warned previously, has decided in response to double down on the trolling, and can take a break until he develops social skills.

[/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/]

Not sure what I missed, but I won't trouble anyone with asking.

[rotting bones]

Actually, I think trying to come up with at least half-way plausible ways how a society or at least community in a world with medieval technology might end up with somewhat modern sensibilities, woke or not, and might try to defend itself against attempts by the nearest king or emperor to destroy it before it gives his subjects any ideas, might be a seriously interesting conworlding challenge.

The closest I've actually read is the Player of Games, where both the monarch and the woke society were technologically advanced. The thing is that with technological advancement, it becomes easier to argue that everyone should have more, even if leaders don't implement these policies.

Both have been done. I don't want to be the one to induct you into the world of YA fantasy¹², but a quick google search will reveal many books of, err…, questionable quality, and after you've sifted through the Hunger Games rewrites of highly variable quality, you will find some LOTR rewrites of varying quality.

¹ Teenagers from about 14–15 up to adults
² YA is a bigger market, so publishers try to put anything they can into it, so “repeats of a thing we know there's a geeky teenage fandom for” fits into that category.

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Edit: I fear none of them will even attempt Raphael's standard. The villain is almost certainly a stereotypical EEVIL villain of EVIL™, rather than a coherent character.

The two names that come to mind are The Priory of the Orange Tree and Jemisin's Broken Earth series, neither of which I've read. Jemisin's Broken Earth is explicitly said to have complex villains, but I don't remember its tech level.

[Lērisama]

Actually, I think trying to come up with at least half-way plausible ways how a society or at least community in a world with medieval technology might end up with somewhat modern sensibilities, woke or not, and might try to defend itself against attempts by the nearest king or emperor to destroy it before it gives his subjects any ideas, might be a seriously interesting conworlding challenge.

The closest I've actually read is the Player of Games, where both the monarch and the woke society were technologically advanced. The thing is that with technological advancement, it becomes easier to argue that everyone should have more, even if leaders don't implement these policies.

I haven't read that that one, so I can't comment. Should I add it to my list?¹

Both have been done. I don't want to be the one to induct you into the world of YA fantasy¹², but a quick google search will reveal many books of, err…, questionable quality, and after you've sifted through the Hunger Games rewrites of highly variable quality, you will find some LOTR rewrites of varying quality.

¹ Teenagers from about 14–15 up to adults
² YA is a bigger market, so publishers try to put anything they can into it, so “repeats of a thing we know there's a geeky teenage fandom for” fits into that category.

---

Edit: I fear none of them will even attempt Raphael's standard. The villain is almost certainly a stereotypical EEVIL villain of EVIL™, rather than a coherent character.

The two names that come to mind are The Priory of the Orange Tree and Jemisin's Broken Earth series, neither of which I've read. Jemisin's Broken Earth is explicitly said to have complex villains, but I don't remember its tech level.

I've read Priory, which is actually quite well done historically speaking², and I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite fit into Raphael's requests, because firstly, it's a retelling of St George and the Dragon rather than LOTR, and so it's (main) villain is supernatural³, and secondly because the focus is very much on the upper classes⁷⁸. The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

Wow, that ended up long.

¹ Yes, I'm fishing for fiction recommendations on a conlanging forum.
² By the standards of such things; I could nitpick endlessly, but I value the forum's sanity and I have real world vents for book rants
³ The author wrote an interesting essay on this. Please note that this is the higher end⁴ of the genre, by far.
⁴ Because this doesn't fit anywhere else, I'd like to note that from reading it, the author⁵ seems to have put thought into conlinguistics (a comment about the relative strength of the imperative in two translations of a religious formula comes to mind), but all this is done in English, and there seems to be no information about this online, unless you have a tumblr account⁶, in which case you have a tiny amount about a name or two.
⁵ No, spellcheck, not Sutherland.
⁶ I'm told the author uses instagram as well, but I can't even do a cursory check of that without making an account, and I'm not selling my soul to Zuckerberg for 90% fan art, 9.5% book news and 0.5% morsels of conlinguistics
⁷ Apart from on viewpoint character's backstory, I think? It's been a while since I read it
⁸ And yes, I count secret feminist utopia⁹-cum-dragon-killing-society¹⁰ that maintains itself in the hundreds of years between dragons by providing security to allied monarchs as upper classes. This comes the closest Raphael's question, but “be secret (maintaining this by killing anyone unlucky enough to come near) and be useful to the nearby powers” is an interesting answer
⁹ For a given value of utopia. I'm not sure I'd like to live there, but it's the least (internally) oppressive place around, even if the size makes it not really directly comparible
¹⁰ I may have just spoilt something. Oops
¹¹ There is some religious relationship meddling in one area, but is a) relatively evenly gendered¹² and b) undermined throughout the novel
¹² Which is a little odd for a premodern society, because only one side of a relationship risks pregnancy, but not completely off, given both the audience and the in book context

[rotting bones]

I've read Priory, which is actually quite well done historically speaking², and I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite fit into Raphael's requests, because firstly, it's a retelling of St George and the Dragon rather than LOTR, and so it's (main) villain is supernatural³, and secondly because the focus is very much on the upper classes⁷⁸. The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

Hasn't "dragon" been a metaphor for oppressive kings?

I don't know of any exact fits. I haven't even read the most famous works of woke fantasy. Jemisin could be a fit depending on the tech level. Of the works I've consumed, the closest fit is Shrek.

[rotting bones]

Robin Hobb clearly has woke attitudes. I'm not sure how many characters in her fiction do.

[rotting bones]

I've read Priory, which is actually quite well done historically speaking², and I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite fit into Raphael's requests, because firstly, it's a retelling of St George and the Dragon rather than LOTR, and so it's (main) villain is supernatural³, and secondly because the focus is very much on the upper classes⁷⁸. The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

The original post by alice you were responding to doesn't mention kings.

[Lērisama]

I've read Priory, which is actually quite well done historically speaking², and I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite fit into Raphael's requests, because firstly, it's a retelling of St George and the Dragon rather than LOTR, and so it's (main) villain is supernatural³, and secondly because the focus is very much on the upper classes⁷⁸. The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

Hasn't "dragon" been a metaphor for oppressive kings?

I don't know of any exact fits. I haven't even read the most famous works of woke fantasy. Jemisin could be a fit depending on the tech level. Of the works I've consumed, the closest fit is Shrek.

Yes. That makes sense in the story. You could definitely make an argument that the dragons act to the main characters just as they would to their social inferiors. Not perfectly, but there are things that make me think his was intended.

I've read Priory, which is actually quite well done historically speaking², and I enjoyed it. It doesn't quite fit into Raphael's requests, because firstly, it's a retelling of St George and the Dragon rather than LOTR, and so it's (main) villain is supernatural³, and secondly because the focus is very much on the upper classes⁷⁸. The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

The original post by alice you were responding to doesn't mention kings.

True, but “they've all been like this since time immemorial” also doesn't really answer the question, so I ignored that aspect.

¹ Okay, in world I should be saying Wyrm, but it really doesn't matter

[rotting bones]

I haven't read that that one, so I can't comment. Should I add it to my list?¹

Almost certainly yes. It is generally considered a classic of science fiction.

The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

This is how I understood "woke". If you want fiction with full-fledged class analysis, I can't say I have seen a lot of fiction in general that does it well. The only example I can think of at the moment is Ministry for the Future (probably because the dystopia thread reminded me of solarpunk).

[rotting bones]

Regarding woke fantasy, Googling suggests (apart from Jemisin) Ken Liu’s The Dandelion Dynasty and Seth Dickinson’s The Masquerade.

I've never heard of the Dandelion Dynasty. Amazingly, I've read part of the first book of The Masquerade. I've always wanted to get back to it. IIRC the MC is a girl from a socially progressive tribe that gets absorbed by a socially conservative but much more powerful empire. She decides to work within the empire to benefit its minorities or something. I didn't get very far. I don't think the tribe has a king, and the story isn't much like LOTR. AFAICT it's about an LGBT supporter who pretends to be a conservative to work within an imperial bureaucracy.

[Lērisama]

I haven't read that that one, so I can't comment. Should I add it to my list?¹

Almost certainly yes. It is generally considered a classic of science fiction.

Thanks. I'll read that then ay some point.

The main sign of modernity it's its attitude towards sex and gender, which is utopian¹¹, pretty much everywhere, and so is also useless for Raphael's question.

This is how I understood "woke". If you want fiction with full-fledged class analysis, I can't say I have seen a lot of fiction in general that does it well. The only example I can think of at the moment is Ministry for the Future (probably because the dystopia thread reminded me of solarpunk).

I don't want a fully fledged class analysis, but I also don't not want it. The objection is that all the characters are the rulers and not the ruled – I get it, because characters that can do stuff are more fun to write, and if there's a historical component then there'll be more evidence for them. It just often seems like non-main character suffering is background to rather than part of, the story.

[Ares Land]

The Broken Earth series is (insofar as 'woke' makes sense as a label, which is debatable) about as woke as possible. I highly recommend it; but it's dystopian and very bleak.
It's not clearly fantasy or science-fiction, rather blending the two genres. It doesn't feel very high tech, anyway.

[rotting bones]

More candidates I have found since then: Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdoms, Marlon James’s The Dark Star and Rebecca Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky. All of these have medieval tech, but I haven't read any of them.

Personally, I urge people to read the Masquerade. I have read it, and it's exceptionally good. It's a fantasy war where the battleground consists of economic and social systems.

The complaints I have heard about it are like: Given the level of systems thinking that went into this series, the fact that in the end, everything is controlled by a conspiracy at the top kind of undermines the story.

Whatever, man.

[Man in Space]

I'm not sure if this has been done before, or if it's even suitable for the ZBB, but... how would LotR look if it was brought in line with modern sensibilities (1) sensitively and properly, and (2) stereotypically woke?

There was a retelling of LotR (coming out of Russia because of course it did) where Mordor was simply more technologically inclined than the rest of Middle-Earth. There was a relatively recent lawsuit and the whole thing got entered into evidence (though I haven’t actually read it).

[WeepingElf]

I'm not sure if this has been done before, or if it's even suitable for the ZBB, but... how would LotR look if it was brought in line with modern sensibilities (1) sensitively and properly, and (2) stereotypically woke?

There was a retelling of LotR (coming out of Russia because of course it did) where Mordor was simply more technologically inclined than the rest of Middle-Earth. There was a relatively recent lawsuit and the whole thing got entered into evidence (though I haven’t actually read it).

This reminds me of the "Black Book of Arda", another(?) Russian project to rewrite the Silmarillion with Morgoth as the good guy who tried to liberate Arda from the tyranny of the Valar. Alas, I never saw even a part of it, only heard of it.

[rotting bones]

I'm not sure if this has been done before, or if it's even suitable for the ZBB, but... how would LotR look if it was brought in line with modern sensibilities (1) sensitively and properly, and (2) stereotypically woke?

There was a retelling of LotR (coming out of Russia because of course it did) where Mordor was simply more technologically inclined than the rest of Middle-Earth. There was a relatively recent lawsuit and the whole thing got entered into evidence (though I haven’t actually read it).

I have read it many times. It's not woke. It's Voltarian liberal, i.e. soft libertarian. I do recommend it. I might be able to find it in one of my archives if I grep the word "adiabatic".

[rotting bones]

I found it online: https://dotat.at/tmp/LastRB.pdf

[WeepingElf]

I found it online: https://dotat.at/tmp/LastRB.pdf

Thank you! Downloaded for later reading.