Tag: awesome anons

SoJ is such a comfort read for me, even though antisemitism is on the rise and there’s real upsetting topics in the fic it’s different than when gentile writers just make Jewish characters suffer, it’s not grimdark because I have faith you’re not going for needless torture porn and there’s hope.

❤ ❤ <3!!!!!

Thank you, kind anon! This is…wow. It’s so nice – I know these words are probably inadequate to express how over the moon I am. 😀 I have this weird soft smile on my face and I keep pausing so that the words come out right.

Possible spoiler: no, I don’t go for needless torture porn. Theo, Bill, and the rest are going to have a much happier ending than in canon. Honestly, I think they’ve earned it.

Agree, I think RA did want Thorin to be a character people could empathize with, but the entire narrative would have to be changed. I’m confused by your stance, is the character good, or because most of the fandom still sees him defined by gold, there’s no salvaging it?

Here’s the thing.

I have a hard time believing that Thorin himself, of his own volition, actually did anything wrong. He was cursed – by hereditary severe mental illness, a dragon, or both (I lean towards both). Smaug was the causative agent of the war and Smaug fucked with Thorin’s head, much more explicitly in the movie. I see Thorin as an inherently good person who was thrust into horrific circumstances, not a raging, gold-sick Dwarf who split his time between greedily counting his money and playing the berserker.

The Hobbit movies didn’t do enough to rid the antisemitic theme of the book. When the majority of humor about the character of Thorin Oakenshield is about how he’s a dick and obsessed with gold, then it’s the common opinion, so it did not do enough. I am tired of Jewish coded obsessed-with-riches fantasy characters.

Yeah, this. (But if they’re going to dick around with Jewish-coded fantasy characters, they should at least cast Jewish people. Non-white-passing Jewish people.)

If you disagree with how the narrative portrays Th orin you get accused of thinking he’s perfect, no I think he’s still a good character and his flaws do not need to result in death, and I’m with you on not thinking he needs to spend his entire life and afterlife just self-flagellating. I don’t agree with that being the only way to do good after making mistakes, and that he’s the “bad one” in the story. Sry for blowing up yr inbox, yr just the only one I saw who shares my feeling!!

Thanks again, anon! 🙂 Feel free to blow up my inbox anytime.

Ia with your points about the Hobbit movies but I think they were too inconsistent with the gold sickness. i read it that Th orin acts differently under it than the established moments in AUJ, but since most of the fandom sees him as discourse character status instead of good and most jokes about greed, I think that’s the common reading so the movies didn’t do a good enough job with the antisemitic undertones. It’s too ingrained and not enough folks want to think about it. So, conflicted :/

“Discourse character status” is a really good way to put it. Those who hate him see themselves as rightfully excoriating a horrible, greedy, abusive character (he is none of these things) who only got what he deserved (wrong). On the other hand, those who like him see themselves as infallible saints who treat a canonically mentally-ill character as a combination of their pet and a way of saying that they’re not ableist, even if they’re mentally ill themselves. On either side, the only way of “redeeming” Thorin is to have him essentially debase himself on his knees, begging forgiveness from anyone that he directly or indirectly affected through the dragon sickness and curse. Usually this is done through years of brooding and grief. Come on, now.

I completely agree with everything you said.

Idk if you ever answered this but how do you feel about the Hobbit movies vs. the book and what do you think they did better and what didn’t they? I’ve seen the flaws discussed but it tends to be more about the CG or other decisions, but I never saw anyone talk about it from a Jewish perspective so I’m curious.

Oh, good one.

Better:

  • Fleshing out Thorin specifically and Dwarves in general – the anti-Semitic undertones are a lot less there
  • MORE BAGGINSHIELD SUBTEXT
  • Going farther into Bard’s story vis-a-vis the Master of Laketown
  • Pretty, pretty, pretty wargs ❤

Worse:

  • The Dwarves are played by white guys. If you’re working with a species based on Jews, then cast Jews.
  • They made Thranduil more appealing than he should be, considering how gross of a person he is and how much he contributes to the poverty of Laketown if you examine the subtext.
  • Thorin and his nephews still didn’t get to live. 😦