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rynlingTolkien and Dungeons & Dragons
https://the-artifice.com/tolkien-dungeons-dragons/
The Artifice seems to be a place where undergrads and MA students go to dump their research papers. Based on what I've seen, there's a lot of alt-right posturing on pop culture, as well as a lot of bad takes on anime like Attack on Titan. The site claims to be "peer-reviewed," but I don't know what that entails. It's also got a problem with typos.
All that being said, this is an interesting essay that gets very specific about the connections between Lord of the Rings and D&D. There's a lot of information about the history of D&D at the beginning, and honestly I skimmed past most of it. The essay starts to get interesting at the "Tolkien and Enchantment" section heading. What the author argues is that, while D&D is clearly influenced by Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's worldview runs counter to the "crush your enemies" wargame mentality of early editions of D&D. I sort of feel like this is a self-evident argument that doesn't really need to be made, but the author absolutely makes it and then closes the book.
The Peter Jackson movies were products of their time (by which I mean the post-9/11 political context is clear), and they're more than a little silly. A lot of young people in an emerging fourth-wave feminist movement criticized the movies throughout the 2010s - and rightly so! Since then, there's been a backlash to the backlash, with people who are in the same generation but now slightly older taking pains to say that the books aren't actually as weird and sexist and racist as the movies. If nothing else, it's been interesting to watch the conversation unfold.
https://the-artifice.com/tolkien-dungeons-dragons/
The Artifice seems to be a place where undergrads and MA students go to dump their research papers. Based on what I've seen, there's a lot of alt-right posturing on pop culture, as well as a lot of bad takes on anime like Attack on Titan. The site claims to be "peer-reviewed," but I don't know what that entails. It's also got a problem with typos.
All that being said, this is an interesting essay that gets very specific about the connections between Lord of the Rings and D&D. There's a lot of information about the history of D&D at the beginning, and honestly I skimmed past most of it. The essay starts to get interesting at the "Tolkien and Enchantment" section heading. What the author argues is that, while D&D is clearly influenced by Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's worldview runs counter to the "crush your enemies" wargame mentality of early editions of D&D. I sort of feel like this is a self-evident argument that doesn't really need to be made, but the author absolutely makes it and then closes the book.
The Peter Jackson movies were products of their time (by which I mean the post-9/11 political context is clear), and they're more than a little silly. A lot of young people in an emerging fourth-wave feminist movement criticized the movies throughout the 2010s - and rightly so! Since then, there's been a backlash to the backlash, with people who are in the same generation but now slightly older taking pains to say that the books aren't actually as weird and sexist and racist as the movies. If nothing else, it's been interesting to watch the conversation unfold.
