My issues with Arondir

as written by a Silmarillion-worshipping, non-RoP-watching fan of *color* (yep, I have dark skin too).

I swear on Feanor’s burning silmarils that I am not racist. Nor am I “patently evil” as Amazon seems to think all non-lovers of the series are.

I also have chosen to distance myself from trigger-inducing RoP discourse, by, well, not watching the series. For now. I’ll probably watch it, eventually.

So for now, please note that the below spew of thoughts has been vomitted out from my brain without any actual experience-based judgement. I’ve seen reviewer videos and read up on the RoP plot, and that’s about it.

So. My issues with Arondir – based on the limited information I have of him – can be grouped into three categories, as below.

Issue #1: the styling

Yes, call me shallow. And also note that I say styling here, not casting. Because the actor has a certain quality to his face (the cheekbones! the ears!) that I can definitely see as being elvish.

So they got this attractive actor… and then did him what I think is a huge disservice by styling him like some sort of fodder character in a low-budget medieval fantasy game.

Why, Amazon, with your billion dollar budget, couldn’t you have given the guy a decent wig? Okay, so maybe you wanted to avoid dreads to avoid looking too House of the Dragon Velaryon. But PoC have so many amazing, diverse, complex hairstyles – many of which include braids, like Legolas had in the original trilogy – couldn’t you have given him one of those? Just imagine this actor with flowing, long braids…

Maybe a cool headpiece (or maybe not, maybe it doesn’t go with his vibe, I don’t know) and more elvish looking clothes. But if clothes / headpiece don’t make sense storyline-wise, at least the long braids!

On that note, Elrond’s and Finrod’s hairstlyes – from the few seconds of trailer I glimpsed – also offend me. They are too modern. Elrond looks more hobbit than elf. That one scene of Finrod has him looking less noble elven lord and more fratboy drenched in beer at a party. And like with Arondir… none of this is due to the casting, but rather the styling.

I’m sorry. I reiterate: I am shallow. The change in nose styles in Shingeki no Kyojin season 4 bothered me too, okay.

But being shallow – and wanting elves to have their distinct long, flowing hairstyles, as described in the books – does not mean I am racist! And I feel redirecting any criticism towards racism (as has been happening in media around the topic) is just wrong. A misdirection to hide the actual issues fans are complaining about.

Because most book fan criticism seems to stem around larger issues (plot, storylines, character development, inconsistencies with existing lore) that often have nothing to do with race. It’s unfair to generalize all haters as racist without logically considering the crux of their arguments. I mean, some racist trolls exist, yes, as they do in any fandom. But I don’t think they are the majority. And disliking certain aspects or decisions regarding Arondir’s character does not make me racist.

On the note of distinct, long, flowing hairstyles. I have been watching (and loving) House of the Dragon, and post-timeskip Aemond Targaryen… is perfection. He is the emo, goth, pirate Legolas I never knew I needed. And he is slowly turning me #teamgreen, one screenshot at a time. Can’t wait for that episode to release so I can finally see him for more than three seconds!

Issue #2: the romance

Ok. Again, I don’t actually know Arondir’s romantic storyline. But it seems he’s been paired with a human woman named Bronwyn.

So here is my issue with that. I believe Professor Tolkien explicitly mentions there were only ever three unions of Eldar and Edain (that is, elves and humans). Aragorn and Arwen, along with the lesser known Tuor-Idril and Silmarillion power couple and proud owners of the goodest boy in Tolkien lore Beren-Luthien. So then why, why introduce a fourth?

To me, this pairing – while being far less offensive than that Tauriel-Kili-Legolas travesty – seems wholly unneccessary, and also kind of contradicts a specific fact of lore. Maybe on screen it’s amazing. I haven’t watched it, so I don’t know.

I do understand making changes to source material (or in this case, entirely inventing material) for commercial purposes. Case in point, when they replaced my beautiful elf lord Glorfindel with Arwen. Salty as my pre-teen self was when it happened, I loved Liv Tyler’s Arwen and I loved the new scene. And I understand why it was important to establish Arwen’s character strongly in that film. But nobody wanted that Kili-Tauriel-Legolas setup and at the very least if you’re going to make my prince of Mirkwood fall in love have it be reciprocated because Legolas is too hot to have his heart broken alright.

So yeah. It’s like… original character with questionable styling… put into a non-book romance. Not loving the idea of that does not make me racist / against mixed ethnicity couples, or guilty of any of that criticism-deflecting rhetoric floating around. I’m a PoC in a mixed ethnicity couple myself, I LOVE mixed couples. Just… did you have to make it violate the whole “three unions of Eldar and Edain” thing? And again, all that being said, I still dislike this pairing far less than the all-white Hobbit love triangle, so race is not a factor here.

Just saying, in case I haven’t clarified that about ten times already. I’m not patently evil, Amazon.

Issue #3: the background

Again, I don’t know Arondir’s background, beyond this – he is a Silvan elf. A Silvan elf, same as most(?) of the Mirkwood elves we’ve seen. Not Legolas who is at least part-Sindarin although maybe his mother was Silvan. But in any case, we have seen the Mirkwood elves in The Hobbit, and none of them looked remotely like Arondir. I think Lothlorein had Silvan elves too (again, Galadriel is different, she descended from the Noldor… but let’s not get into that here).

The thing is, Professor Tolkien, in the Silmarillion, gives us a fabulous background of the various elven sub-cultures / sub-races, whatever you want to call them. And there are enough here, more than enough, to have a PoC ‘race’ of elves that looks – and dresses – very different to the ones we see in Peter Jackson’s orignal trilogy. You could even give them all shaved heads to reduce the wig budget.

The Avari are out because they never made it to Middle Earth (though if we’re tossing lore in the garbage, who knows? What’s more egregious, a fourth union of Eldar and Edain, or an Avari who – many decades or centuries later – somehow made it to Middle Earth?)

But aside from the Avari, Arondir could have been one of the mentioned yet thus far unseen subsets of the Teleri… like the Nandor, maybe? If memory serves me correct, we haven’t seen any of the Nandor yet, have we? If we’re making Arondir a Teleri, why not make him Nandor (yet unseen so could be anyone!) instead of Silvan (already seen, so we have preconceptions what they look like).

You could have a whole host of Nandor elves that are PoC, and have a different culture and way of dress to the elves we are used to seeing. It would make more geneological and narrative sense, I think, and appease nitpicky viewers.

Now I know the argument against this – “this is fantasy, if we are allowed to have dragons and balrogs, we are allowed to have genetics that make no sense”.

Yes, you are. BUT in a world as developed as Tolkien’s – which goes quite a bit into depth about geneology and who is related to whom and how – I just think it was a missed opportunity. Rather than forcing diversity into a culture of elves that has, by previous beloved adaptations, been established as looking a certain way… why not develop one of the mentioned but not yet seen elvish cultures? Then you have full creative freedom to make them look however you want them too, while maintaing a sense of logic within the universe.

House of the Dragon succeeded here, I think, in making all the Velaryons POC. Rather than having, say, Rhaenys Targaryen alone cast as a PoC. I know there was backlash against Velaryon casting as well, and that their appearances do differ from Fire and Blood. But despite having read Fire and Blood – and usually being a stickler for book-to-screen appearances matching – it didn’t bother me. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the depiction of the Velaryons! Having the entire family (unseen up till now) look a certain way seemed more natural and acceptable as a viewer. And it allowed me to focus less on the dumb, nitpicky, logical stuff and more on the characters, and the actors’ fabulous performances. Plus, you could then give them all awesome wigs, which added both a sense of cohesiveness and great visuals. On an unrelated note I love Laena Velaryon and that scene with Vhagar was the most heart-wrenching but fabulous book-to-screen change, I sobbed.

Maybe I’m overthinking this (as I tend to overthink everything, in whatever I read and watch, but also in life, in general). I will say this: I much prefer well thought out diversity over diversity that sometimes feels shoehorned. And given the various sets of elves that Professor Tolkien himself penned, I think there was scope of giving Arondir a background that made more narrative sense.

Then again… this entire spiel was based on his labellling as “Silvan” on a couple websites. And maybe most viewers don’t care about the intricacies of elven geneology. Maybe I don’t even properly understand elven geneology. So.

Well, that ends my hodgepodge of thoughts about a show I haven’t even watched.

Up next is my rant on how making Galadriel a badass, husbandless, daughterless, warrior princess essentially does her character a disservice because you can have strong female characters who use other traits – such as knowledge, charisma, morality – to serve as empowered leaders, and taking away her husband+daughter and slapping her with some armor and a sword does not increase her agency and automatically make her more powerful, also, rather than empowering her based on modern standards, why not show how she was empowered within the constraints of her society, HotD does this really well with Rhaenyra, not to mention Tolkien tackles plenty of universal and timeless issues beautifully and subtly in his writing, issues based off of his lived experiences, the man fought in a war, so why do we have to give such a timeless and beloved classic such a modern and current spin, I mean I could go on about this for eternity…