Fellowship of the Fans

General - What is a "Reinterpretation" and/or a "Retcon"? (11/19/2020)

What is "The Difference between Revisiting, Reinterpreting, Retconning, and Retroactively Ruining Stories?" I am currently looking over an essay written by Aaron Kilgore for Salt and Iron: Season Writing and seeing how that applies to Rings of Power, and if one hasn't figured out yet, the title of said essay is in the question.

"For better or worse, there may come a time when the author decides that something in his work bears a second, critical look."

And right there you have one of the problems with Rings of Power. It's not, first and foremost the author who is deciding that his work needs "a second, critical look", it's the cast and crew. The cast and crew aren't even the current copyright holder, nor are they the person who purchased the rights to said copyright. They're some random individuals who thought they could somehow do Tolkien better than Tolkien, who was constantly putting his work through that second, critical look, but that second, critical look—that's something Tolkien was known for, and it's why The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are the only works he published for Middle Earth that he published within his lifetime.

One of the major questions which has arose because of this is, "what right do they have to do this?"

The cast and crew have been very open with the fact they feel it is their right to readdress the balance, to retcon whatever they want, to reinterpret whatever they want, and anyone who objects to what they do are in fact "patently evil" which is what the showrunners said regarding those of us who don't fall in line with this idea that it is their right to retcon and reinterpret whatever they want to.

But where does this right come from?

First and foremost it's a case of "we're in charge now, deal with it", yet in saying this, just because someone is in charge doesn't make them right. In fact, if you have to tell someone to just deal with it, high chances are you aren't in the right in the first place. But effectively, the person who's in charge is wielding their power of being in charge to oppress anyone who disagrees with what they're doing, or in the very least they're trying to do so.

Which—while fandom has now become a more acceptable thing, it is still in some ways not an acceptable thing. So should it be any surprise that those outside of nerd culture would want to take over nerd culture and put those gross nerds in their place? Or in the very least, that's some of the train of thought going on with a lot of these IP that have "gone woke", with some actively admitting they get a pleasure out of bullying the nerd, because in their mind all nerds are male, and all these male nerds are virgins, thus it is the job of an outside force to put ever "incel" in their place, because in their mind every nerd is an "incel," which—

There's no getting around the fact it ignores the existence of us female nerds. It also ignores the fact there are plenty of nerds who are happily married as well as nerds who aren't married yet aren't virgins. And you've got the ones who aren't married and are male vigins who aren't "incel" despite what certain people would like everyone else to believe.

The other thing is, in fanfic circle I've seen certain people try and preach about what they would do if only they could be in charge and what they want isn't to improve the given IP—it's to make the IP to their own personal liking, while often not listening to those of us who point out that what they call bad writing isn't bad writing, that what they call sexist isn't sexist, etcetera, etcetera.

So when one of them does get their hands on the IP, of course they're going to brag about how they're in charge and everyone else should just deal with it, not understanding that people can deal with it by simply not supporting a work that trashes a beloved IP. There is this thing in fandom where certain people like to hold what is or isn't canon over the heads of everyone else, yet what this person doesn't understand is that them being in charge of the IP, of making content for that IP—that doesn't make them in charge of deciding what is or isn't canon.

The ultimate person is that original creator, always and forever, with the copyright holder coming in second and then those who purchase the rights to the copyright from the original creator or current copyright holder coming in third. These people—they're simply people hired by that third person, who can be fired once a contract runs out, if they step out of line in a way that breaches their contract, or even if the firing is justified by a company needing to cut expenses, which because of inflation a lot of companies are doing. And when they're done, what they've done can be sidelined to the category of "that was never canon" very easily, and that's if it wasn't being done already.

Of course, the second argument being made is that Tolkien was wrong for—gasp—not including strong women in his work—for not including people of color.

Which instantly tells me they've never gotten into Tolkien, because Tolkien's work is actually well known for real strong female characters, rather than this fake strength that Rings of Power gives Galadriel. And lesser known—Tolkien did in fact have POC in his work, but one of the things actual Tolkien fans have called Rings of Power out on is not focusing on this group. Goodness knows I though Disa was from this group rather than a Dwarf princess as she turned out to be, because I saw her close up and you can't really see a beard, if it's there at all.

But for all their talk about diversity, they decided to white wash the actual POC people in Tolkien except for their super amazing healer. Yup. Bronwen's people aren't white—they're POC, but before you think, "you mean the evil dudes", Tolkien actually made it clear that this group wasn't a bunch of evil dudes, that they simply lived under an evil regime they had no control over. But no, POC enslaving POC doesn't exist according to those "going woke", so let's erase that narrative from Tolkien and pretend it's because Tolkien made POC people evil.

And that, right there is the problem with Rings of Power. Those working on the series didn't have a real understanding of Tolkien, often taking his writing out of context, but there was also a definite agenda for pushing an allegory, something Tolkien said he hated.

To end this, I'll quote something else from the essay. "These four avenues offer something in the way of opportunity for enrichment, but they likewise carry the potential for results more destructive than enjoyable or edifying." And there is nothing enriching about Rings of Power and the reinterpretations/retcons they've made, but they've major audacity, the cast and crew, to say they've the right to reinterpret/retcon whatever they want without any form of criticism regarding their reinterpetation/retcon choices.