It’s Iimi! Ancient Geek Warfare

People fight viciously over various fandoms. (What’s the best way to start a fight among Tolkien fans? Say “The Eagles should have flown Frodo to Mordor.”) Because these things are about fiction, it might seem like we could just dismiss it as unimportant. But the thing to remember is, we can sin against charity in fighting over fiction just as much as we can fighting over real life. That’s the danger of… Ancient Geek Warfare

Preliminary Notes:

This is a comic about Catholic moral obligations in avoiding rash judgment Iimi herself had no interest in is not taking sides in the lore fights, and is simply asking, “is that really true?” in the face of blanket accusations about the motives. Making a universal claim can be contradicted by showing even one example of something that goes against it. 

If you want to see my personal opinions about Rings of Power, see the post-comic notes. 

Post-Comic notes: One of the tricky parts in doing this comic was avoiding bogging it down with debates about different fandoms. That’s both irrelevant to a Catholic themed comic and going to be boring to people who don’t care about that particular fandom. For example, I don’t care about Doctor Who or Game of Thrones. I wouldn’t care to read a comic debating it. So, I mentioned a few of the most famous ones and tried to make the arguments apply to real life moral obligations.

 

The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture is a reference to the manga series Genshiken.

If you’re really curious about my thoughts on the parts of Rings of Power I could force myself to watch (it’s irrelevant to the Catholic moral discussion), I’d say this:

I don’t think the creators get it. Even if you set aside questions about whether the racial makeup of the cast fit in with the lore (something I stopped thinking about almost immediately), the characters were either entirely uninteresting or entirely unlikeable. Also, it had the problems with bad story, and boring pacing It probably could have completely dropped the Harfoot plot, and completely revamped or removed the character of Galadriel.

The problem is, they tried to create an original story in Tolkien’s universe without the talent of Tolkien. None of us have that, of course. But this didn’t feel like Middle Earth. So, we got something I thought was boring where the only thing of note is the background (which was impressive).

I think the problem in general is: many people no longer trust Hollywood to tell a story without an agenda. Regardless of whether that fear is justified or not, if they see a race, sexuality, or gender swap, these people suspect something is being pushed.

And, as Iimi pointed out, that can be rash judgment too.