Friday, July 29, 2011

What (Tolkien)Dwarves should look like

 There's been a fair bit of fluster on the interwebs of late regarding the dwarves of the upcoming Hobbit films. The controversy is the appearance of the dwarves. It may be a tad racist/stereotypical of me, but I'm a strong believer in the idea that the kind of language you speak is a good indicator of how your culture behaves, and since I once read that Tolkien's dwarven language was at least partially based on Hebrew(and given how lawful most games regard dwarves as being), I've been picturing dwarves like this:

The question we're all dying to ask: Are Dragons Kosher?
  Just TRY telling me that there aren't some serious parallels between the common perception of Dwarves and the people of Anatevka from Fiddler on the Roof(imagining the people in that film as dwarves is the only way I can tolerate it anyway). Since I'm probably going to get flamed over this post anyway, I'd like to also point out that the Dwarves from Athas(Dark Sun) act in a manner I've always imagined as pretty similar to the Jews of the old testament. Heck, they even treat their histories in much the same way as certain branches of Judaism seem to treat their Torah.
   Certainly something for everyone to think about.
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7 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 29, 2011 at 3:16 PM

    This is so true. Hilarious, but true.

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  2. MacAugust 2, 2011 at 6:50 PM

    All dwarves seem to be Scottish nowadays. Speaking as a Scotty, I like this idea much better.

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  3. The Happy WhiskAugust 4, 2011 at 4:08 PM

    I wonder what dragon tastes like ...

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  4. The Happy WhiskAugust 4, 2011 at 4:09 PM

    Probably yucky.

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  5. 2eDMAugust 5, 2011 at 3:52 PM

    @The Happy Whisk: I imagine what dragons taste like depends on the type of dragon and what they've been eating, just like with most meats.

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  6. Boric GlanduumAugust 5, 2011 at 5:52 PM

    Dragon meat? Probably tastes like chicken.

    In all seriousness, 2eDM is right: a lot depends on their diet, I'm sure. And spices. Lots of spices.

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  7. Theodric the ObscureAugust 28, 2011 at 11:53 PM

    It was a lot more than just language that Tolkien modeled his dwarves on: there were a number of inspiration points from the ancient Hebrews and medieval Jews.

    RE dragons: either creeping things that crawl the earth or creeping things that fly: both ritually unclean. A sea dragon would be kosher if it had both scales and fins.

    I found your post enjoyable and glad no one mistook it for inflammatory.

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