Seeing now legendary creatures becoming the new planeswalkers feels so gimmicky and manipulative. In particular ones like Olivia Voldaren in random planes now as a cowgirl almost feels like Universes Beyond within Universes Within.
As a Spanish descended latino (my maternal surname is Álvarez) I don't mind the conquistadors being vampires. Actually it's a great flavor win if you think about what a vampire is and what they represent. And even though they are clearly bad guys, they are still really cool, though I hope they throw some pacifist/sympathetic vampires into the mix, just like not all spaniards who came to America were bloodthirsty murderers (the conquest wasn't just a military campaign, it was a mass migratory moveme t and people fromall walks of life came here). Finally, as a spanish speaker, the name Clavileño is kinda funny/awkward sounding, like clearly it was people who don't speak spanish who came up with that name.
And this is why Tolkien explicitly made the distinction by using "English" instead of "British". So yeah, I agree with you that we should not use the term "British" when talking about Tolkien's purpose for his mythology. He actually had a great admiration for Welsh, even modelling one of his languages after it: specifically one of the elvish languages, that is, of the faeries that lived on Earth and spoke a Celtic-inspired language before the Anglo Saxons or Germanic colonizers, represented by the Rohirrim (who are also now African according to WOTC) arrived to take over their lands.
See now how context matters when it comes to Tolkien's worldbuilding, and hence how off-putting this decision by WOTC is?
Yeah, he used Welsh as the language of the people who are dying out and destined to fade away and be replaced by the English. Nothing suspect there. Great "Respect."
All I see is a couple of sassenachs using a nationalist project to erase celts to complain about dark skinned people being in their fantasy card game as some of the heroes instead of only the hordes of mordor. You're not just regular "keep the blacks out of my euro myths" supremacists, you're odious roundhead cromwellite christian types who want to erase all of non-christian europe.
I'm Scottish. There was Scottish culture, Welsh culture, Irish culture but England (and Great Britain as a whole) lacked a unifying mythology.
And who said it needed one? Who benefits from "unifying" the UK as a imagined whole where there's no conflict or diversity?
It's a shame that this thread will probably get closed because of our opinions and not because of this explicitly insulting poster. First off, you undermine your own points by insulting people who never insulted you or anyone here. Second, you assume a lot of things in your post with no basis. I'm not christian. I'm not even religious. Tolkien wanted to create a mythology that did not explicitly include Christianity. All I've done is explain without insults why I disagree with a company's decision, to which you answer by insulting not only me but a whole nation (to which I don't belong to; I'm not even European nor white), calling me and English people "two faced liars", sassenachs (whatever that means), roundheaded, supremacists, cromwellian and even accused me and another poster of wanting to "erase all of non-Christian Europe". Like, please look at what this person is saying. This is insane.
Funny thing is, I don't think there's been a recent literary project that has gotten more people into Celtic mythology than LOTR, lol
PS: the "fading of the elves" is a sad thing in the books, even the movies manage to capture that. You're reading both Tolkien and my posts in bad faith, which does not help your argument.
The most important thing is he wanted a Mythos for Great Britain, a culture and history for us.
So he stole a bunch of German culture and Nordic myths. Typical Anglo-saxon thievery.
Saxons were Germans and settled in Great Britain. Significant number of Vikings did so too. Both contributed to Great British culture and mythology.
What "Great british culture and mythology?" Did you not just say that there was none? Typical Anglo-Saxon two-faced lies. Buncha rejects run off and colonize the celtic isles and they think they're a brand new people native to albion.
You have no idea what either Anglo or Saxon means right?
If anglo-saxons still viewed themselves as anglo-saxons we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now they're the "english" and they think they comprise the whole of britain just because of a handful of bloody, incomplete conquests.
And this is why Tolkien explicitly made the distinction by using "English" instead of "British". So yeah, I agree with you that we should not use the term "British" when talking about Tolkien's purpose for his mythology. He actually had a great admiration for Welsh, even modelling one of his languages after it: specifically one of the elvish languages, that is, of the faeries that lived on Earth and spoke a Celtic-inspired language before the Anglo Saxons or Germanic colonizers, represented by the Rohirrim (who are also now African according to WOTC) arrived to take over their lands.
See now how context matters when it comes to Tolkien's worldbuilding, and hence how off-putting this decision by WOTC is?
The most important thing is he wanted a Mythos for Great Britain, a culture and history for us.
Citation needed as I highly doubt Tolkien was under the impression that Britain lacked those things.
"Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion."
Just a reminder that, right now, you can go play this game which is entirely devoted to LOTR (so no Gandalf fighting Megatron fighting Teferi) with art by this same artist, with the exception that it respects the original source material. And before you say it, it can be played solo/co-op, so no need for a "local meta".
For the record, Andúril being literally on fire I also think is ridiculous. Also I won't get into nitpicking Faramir who appears slightly darker in some images and paler in others as I also think that's a bit cringe. But Aragorn, Galadriel, Éowyn and Théoden being straight up Black? Nah dude.
The reason why people focus so much on the skin of the characters as opposed to Andúril and Barad Dur having those ridiculous floating bits is because the characters are the soul of the story. We are human, we crave connection with the characters themselves most of all, and the characters we are seeing are just not the characters we already knew from the book. That's why it feels so weird. It's like someone telling you you are going to meet your uncle who you hadn't seen for years and they present you with someone that isn't just older, or heavier, or thinner or has a different hair color or more wrinkles, but someone who was just born different. Someone who you know is just not and never was the person you knew. It's weird and manipulative.
The reason (as far as I'm aware) is that systematic racism against non-white people existed in the past and still exists today, so all media with a predominantly white cast has to be cleaned of that blemish through incorporating people of more ethnicities to make everyone feel included. The other way round it's fair game because those ethnicities have traditionally been pushed to the sides and deserve more attention. It's not about the internal consistency of the setting, but reflecting real-world ideals and issues.
So basically White Guilt. Maybe it's because I'm only part White, but I always thought and probably always will think that is pathetic.
I suspected this was the reasoning, but when it comes to representing a dead person's work who came to have such a huge impact both in fantasy media as a whole and as an aesthetic rescue of European culture from the shambles it was left in after WW2, I fundamentally disagree with it.
Don't get me wrong, if you actually like this or don't mind it, more power to you. I won't deny you the ability to enjoy something. There are certainly franchises that I don't care so much about (for example, Star Wars) where I wouldn't mind raceswaps because there is almost no historical inspiration for the character's culture. But the thing with Tolkien is that it's a particularly purist-populated fandom, and one in which the historical inspiration for the peoples and languages matters a huge deal, not just to fans but to Tolkien himself when he wrote it. The Rohirrim are analogous if not straight up Anglo-Saxons who speak Old English. Sindarin was modelled after Welsh and Quenya after Finnish, because this whole world was inspired by Norse, Germanic and Celtic myth and history. Just because it was the "first", that doesn't mean that Middle Earth is a "generic fantasy world", and thinking that is greatly ignoring the work and sources that went into Tolkien's work and whose fans greatly respect. As I've said elsewhere, Wizards knows exactly how this works, and they've done it numerous times. There is a reason Tetsuo Umezawa is not White or Black: Kamigawa is a Japanese inspired world. There is a reason why the people from Kaladesh look Indian, the people from Naya and native humans of Ixalan look Mesoamerican, and so on and so forth. Well, Middle Earth also falls under that category, and that makes me wonder: why are people from those planes kept fairly homogenous, but when it comes to only Northern European inspired worlds, like Kaldheim and Middle Earth, they feel the need to "diversify" them? Where are the Black people of Kamigawa and Tarkir? Where are the East Asian looking people of Ixalan? I'm not even trying to be sarcastic, I would actually love an honest answer.
Why do people think it has to be either Peter Jackson or... whatever this is (like Phyrexian Barad-dur?). There's like 3 different LOTR card games that precede or deviate from the movies and are not as garish as some of these. Look at the LCG, MECCG, or the new War of the Ring card game, etc
It's a shame that this thread will probably get closed because of our opinions and not because of this explicitly insulting poster. First off, you undermine your own points by insulting people who never insulted you or anyone here. Second, you assume a lot of things in your post with no basis. I'm not christian. I'm not even religious. Tolkien wanted to create a mythology that did not explicitly include Christianity. All I've done is explain without insults why I disagree with a company's decision, to which you answer by insulting not only me but a whole nation (to which I don't belong to; I'm not even European nor white), calling me and English people "two faced liars", sassenachs (whatever that means), roundheaded, supremacists, cromwellian and even accused me and another poster of wanting to "erase all of non-Christian Europe". Like, please look at what this person is saying. This is insane.
Funny thing is, I don't think there's been a recent literary project that has gotten more people into Celtic mythology than LOTR, lol
PS: the "fading of the elves" is a sad thing in the books, even the movies manage to capture that. You're reading both Tolkien and my posts in bad faith, which does not help your argument.
And this is why Tolkien explicitly made the distinction by using "English" instead of "British". So yeah, I agree with you that we should not use the term "British" when talking about Tolkien's purpose for his mythology. He actually had a great admiration for Welsh, even modelling one of his languages after it: specifically one of the elvish languages, that is, of the faeries that lived on Earth and spoke a Celtic-inspired language before the Anglo Saxons or Germanic colonizers, represented by the Rohirrim (who are also now African according to WOTC) arrived to take over their lands.
See now how context matters when it comes to Tolkien's worldbuilding, and hence how off-putting this decision by WOTC is?
You have no idea what either Anglo or Saxon means right?
"Also – and here I hope I shall not sound absurd – I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with English; and does not replace what I felt to be missing. For one thing its 'faerie' is too lavish, and fantastical, incoherent and repetitive. For another and more important thing: it is involved in, and explicitly contains the Christian religion."
Frodo and Sam are white. Arwen too, as well as Gimli and Legolas.
The reason why people focus so much on the skin of the characters as opposed to Andúril and Barad Dur having those ridiculous floating bits is because the characters are the soul of the story. We are human, we crave connection with the characters themselves most of all, and the characters we are seeing are just not the characters we already knew from the book. That's why it feels so weird. It's like someone telling you you are going to meet your uncle who you hadn't seen for years and they present you with someone that isn't just older, or heavier, or thinner or has a different hair color or more wrinkles, but someone who was just born different. Someone who you know is just not and never was the person you knew. It's weird and manipulative.
So basically White Guilt. Maybe it's because I'm only part White, but I always thought and probably always will think that is pathetic.
I suspected this was the reasoning, but when it comes to representing a dead person's work who came to have such a huge impact both in fantasy media as a whole and as an aesthetic rescue of European culture from the shambles it was left in after WW2, I fundamentally disagree with it.