and there was much rejoicing

[glass_icarus]

First Deadline has been made! *\o/* (Okay, am a bit nervous about PDF previewing failure but I did check the online form about 230947 times, so.) Time for a celebratory linkspam, haha.

» some overdue fanspam
+ Check out the Merlin lexicon, risingsunpub!
+ zahrawithaz wrote some Morgana meta!
+ I have spent shameful amounts of procrastination time devouring Guide Me Home, a gigantor Ursa/Hakoda fic. >.>
+ Also, Disclosure will never stop being hilarious. Mai/Zuko complementary failboats, ahahahahahah! &hearts
+ game on: Mai vs. Iroh in a pai sho showdown! Also Mai/Zuko cuteness, hahaha.
+ rs_small_gifts has begun posting, yay!

» foodspam (now I want a food carnival!)
+ deepad: Doodh se Dhuli
+ vi: gross, weird, inedible
+ Jha's Lunar Year's End! AWESOME. &hearts
+ troisroyaumes: Seven things

» +1: Via deadbro, Keeping Hobbits White since 1937 made me laugh and laugh, but also prodded me into some thoughts regarding racebending.

See, I never expected to have a place in Tolkien's world, or in any white European fantasy land (which isn't always quite the same as generic fantasy land). I'm not saying that chromatic people haven't been erased from these fantasies, just that many mythologies built up around worlds full of elves and dwarves and fairies and goblins and whatnot read to me as specifically white European, intentional or not. I grew up with them, but I grew up knowing that they didn't belong to me, that those worlds were ones in which I had no part.

Part of me wonders whether this is a failure of my imagination, or perhaps a side effect of growing up surrounded by white-dominated media; I've only just started asking "why not?", after all. Racebending something as coded-white as Arthurian legend would never have occurred to me without Angel Coulby as BBC Merlin's Guinevere! But in the end, I personally am less interested in carving out chromatic spaces in white European mythologies. I would rather re/claim the stories that aren't explicitly coded, the blank "universal" narratives (e.g. superheroes or space explorers or cops-and-robbers capers), than expand upon the ones that were never mine to begin with.

Comments

re: racebending elves

[suaine]

I have to admit: since somehow the dominant narrative of these stories is so thoroughly white, straight and male (and *English*), I am always, always surprised when I read further about the actual historical facts on which that "European" fantasy is loosely based. Europe, almost any part of actual Europe, is nothing close to that English gentleman fantasy, and was never like it even though those who held the power and told the stories (still do, really) would have us believe otherwise. I actually do believe that changing these stories is important, certainly a good thing. You would not believe how often I have made an :O face as I researched relevant bits and pieces for writing projects in Merlin and my original projects and realized how diverse Europe's past actually was. It's a little sad that all we think of now is Legolas in a blond wig and Strider in a tavern.

I think I actually blame the first post-Tolkien writer generation. Tolkien wrote a story he liked, tailored to his own sensibilities and worldview. The people who began to use his work as template - and there is a clear relationship between anything elf, dwarf or orc as we understand it today and Tolkien's body of work - are the ones I truly blame for taking up the whiteness with it. Because I honestly don't believe it's an integral, immutable part, even of faithful Tolkien hommage.

Re: racebending elves

[glass_icarus]

True; and I would definitely be interested to see people run with the historical multiculturalism! It's just not something I can personally do anymore, because the years I spent consuming Tolkien-derivatives/etc. burned out most of my love for those stories. Now they mostly make me tired. :\