Why Can't Gay Dwarves Get Married in Middle Earth

[pegkerr]

Now THIS is interesting. . .

An article in Salon here by Katherine Glover discusses trying to balance the needs and requests and desires of players of a role-playing game with the overarching intention of the original author of the source material for the game (in this case, J.R.R. Tolkien).

I can vouch for my stepbrother -- he's a big supporter of equal rights for the gay and lesbian community. But when the issue of gay marriage came up at work, he voted against it. Same-sex marriage for U.S. citizens is one thing, but same-sex marriage for gay dwarves in Middle-earth is quite another.

Nik Davidson is a game designer at Turbine, the Westwood, Mass., company producing "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar." The game has been in beta (a test version) since September, and during discussions of new features for the game, which was officially released Tuesday, the design team wound up in a heated discussion over what restrictions should be placed on marriage. They debated not only gay marriage but also marriage between members of different species. Finally, the game's executive producer settled the matter by pulling the entire marriage feature. Read more

It's particularly interesting, considering the huge number of slash fanfic writers who love the Lord of the Rings universe and some might presumably like to play the game. But although I, too, strongly support gay civil rights up to and including marriage, I gotta think I would probably have made the same decision that the game designers did. That surprises me a little.

Perhaps it's because, being a published author myself, I give extra (perhaps too much) weight to authorial preferences/intentions.

Thoughts?

Edited to add: Of course, it should be pointed out that if the object is to adhere to authorial intention, the computer game itself probably would not be invented at all: Tolkien used a typewriter and probably would have preferred quill and ink. I'll bet that he would have regarded personal computers with suspicion, if not outright loathing, as indicative of modernity, which he rather hated.

Comments

[mjryan.livejournal.com]

I think authorial intentions should play a role in situations such as this. If it is a game sanctioned by the estate and tied directly into the books then the characterizations of the author should be paramount. I find it amazing that the subject even came up. I'm all for gay marriage rights in real life but LotR is a fictional world. Our political correctness shouldn't play a part.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

It came up because this isn't just a single player game. It is a game intended to be lived-in -- played for years, by thousands or millions of people. It's not so much political correctness, as that there *will* be in-game marriages between men and women, dwarves and hobbits, and if they implement a feature to incorporate marriage there will be a firestorm if they then restrict those marriages.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

I meant to say between men and between women there :o

[mjryan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Wouldn't allowing a man to marry a man, or a woman to marry a woman, change who the character fundamentally is, as the author intended? Wouldn't it be the same as deciding, in your game, you wanted frodo to be an african american woman? I think that being gay or straight is as much a part of someone as their skin color and gender. It can't be changed. I think the same should apply to fictional characters in situations such as this (for profit, sanctioned material). Slash is for fandom, IMO.

[megancrewe.livejournal.com]

I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine with this sort of game most (all?) of the players would not be playing specific characters from the book (like Frodo), but a made-up character in the vein of the book (a hobbit, an elf), living in a world based on the book. So it's not so much about changing a given character's sexual orientation, as whether the author would have approved of any characters in his world having homosexual marriages.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. Tolkien's intent or not, I actually find it hard to visualize a world with no homosexual relationships, sanctioned or not, when it happens even in wildlife. But the main characters obviously weren't involved in those.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Actually, when we did Lord of the Rings in a university class on fantasy literature, one of the topics we discussed was homosexual subtext.

My notes are long, long gone, but there was something about Tolkien having described Legolas and Gimli at the end of the book using a 19th century code word (something like "traveling together") that implied a relationship, like the term "Boston marriage" for a lesbian relationship or "tempermental" for a gay man.

I have no idea whether the professor was correct or not. (He himself said it was "ambiguous.") But the question has been raised been critics before, so I thought I should point it out. There probably isn't a novel in the past two hundred years with mostly male characters where a critic hasn't put together an argument that certain characters are gay.

[leiabelle.livejournal.com]

Here's the passage you're thinking of, copied from a Tolkien Wiki because I am too lazy to go get my book.

We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter.

It's certainly ambiguous, but certainly allows for the suggestion of a more-than-friends relationship. If you take the "also" (in the third sentence) into consideration, the argument for a relationship is even stronger, since the word implies that the desire to see Galadriel is an *additional* reason--not the main reason--that Gimli went into the West.

That said, I strongly suspect that Tolkien would not have been in favor of gay marriage, but that passage has always made me wonder a little. And I'm not even a slasher. :)

[leiabelle.livejournal.com]

Eep, I should've said, "the passage *I think* you're thinking of", since you may well have been talking about a completely different section of the book! >_<

[megancrewe.livejournal.com]

In which case, I should add, I think serenya_loreden makes a good point--better not to have official marriages in the game for anyone, and let everyone do whatever they want unofficially. :)

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

Ah, but because this isn't a single player game, you are not playing members of the Fellowship.

Ok, here's how things work. In a game that's single player, you'll play one (or more) members of the fellowship and replay their actions. Or, you'll have the option of being, say, Sauron. Or if it's "battles of middle earth" you'll be directing one side or the other, but you aren't an individual character. In all of those instance, I agree, authorial intent MUST be taken into account. Frodo is a male hobbit, not a female dwarf. Legolas doesn't hook up with Aragorn (even though it sure looked that way in the movies :o ).

Since this is a multiplayer game, no player can BE Frodo, or Gandalf, or Bilbo Baggins, etc. Instead, you are a hobbit, Man, elf, or dwarf who is peripherally involved -- for instance, I've met Strider at the Prancing Pony, and been sent by him on tasks in and around Bree and the Shire, and he's mentioned that Underhill hobbit he's waiting for. But I can't BE that Underhill hobbit.

So, my hobbit happens to be a minstrel who likes to farm and cook. And my (wo)man is a fighter who makes her own armour and goes off to kill orcs and goblins a lot, and she's killed her share of wights in the Barrow Downs. But my hobbit won't be tossing a ring into Mount Doom, and my elf won't be marrying Legolas.

Which means that there is really no reason I couldn't roleplay my elf falling in love with my husband's dwarf, or his dwarf hooking up with my male dwarf.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Can you point to some parts of the book wherein it is crystal clear that Frodo is straight, out of curiosity? I don't recall Frodo having much in the way of sexuality at all.

[vass]

Our political correctness shouldn't play a part.

Political correctness. Did you mean respect for difference? Politeness? Courtesy? Mercy? Generosity of spirit? Something like that?

Let me list some other things that might be too 'politically correct' to include in a Tolkien game, depending where you draw the line:

- women fighting, unless dressed as men
- women taking up as much as 50% of the population
- humans with dark skin fighting on the side of good
- women as Rangers

I don't expect you meant it that way, but... I don't mean this as a lecture or reproof or something, just... I would like you to understand that when you say "political correctness shouldn't play a part," what I hear is "I want this game to be a nice safe haven where I don't have to deal with the issues of people disadvantaged in this society, and that desire of mine is more important than the wellbeing of those people."

Women, queer folk, transfolk, disabled folk, people of colour, have to work harder than people who don't fall in one of those groups, to engage with something like Tolkien. Creative fannish activities such as role-playing and fan-fiction and fanart can be safe and healthy ways of doing that work, of making a place for themselves in Middle-Earth.

The less healthy way, the way all women are brought up to read literature, of course, is to imagine oneself into the white, blue-eyed, blond, straight male characters and identify with them. One could argue that there's nothing wrong with that, that it's normal to stretch oneself by empathising with people from different situations. I say that it's only healthy so long as it's something everyone's encouraged to do, and not just some people most of the time; and so long as the person being asked to do the stretching doesn't have to feel like making that stretch is the only way they *can* belong to the fictional world: like there's no place for them if they don't.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Sing it! Well said!

[mjryan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt because I didn't mean 'political correctness' in any mean spirited way. I agree with everything you wrote 100%.

Where I think we might differ is that I don't think that art should be changed based on how our world view has changed since the creation of said art. Or, if Tolkein's intention was to not include gay, transgender, etc in the world he created then it shouldn't be included in a sanctioned, official LotR game. Let me say here that I have no opinion or knowledge one way or the other as to what Tolkein's intention was. Maybe his view was well known, but it isn't known to me.

[qwyneth.livejournal.com]

Wow. You absolutely nailed it.

[trogon.livejournal.com]

We can disagree, and clearly do here (largely because I think letting people play arbitrary characters, who were not featured in the books, is far enough from the books that "characterizations of the author" is a meaningless concept in this case), but can I ask that you not refer to my civil rights as "political correctness"? Thanks.

Certainly Tolkien did not include any gay characters in his books -- he was also writing in the 1940s, when attitudes in general were much different than they are today. Had he stopped writing after _The Hobbit_, which as you may recall featured no female characters, would you argue that allowing female characters in a Middle-Earth game would be contrary to author intent?

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

I’ve been playing online games (MMOs) since 99, and am currently playing Lord of the Rings. I’m ambivalent. In general, in-game relationships and marriages are strictly player-done. Support from the game itself usually involves: being able to purchase in-game items that are wedding related, such as dresses, rings, flowers, and so forth; having surnames changed by a Game Master to match; and on occasion having a GM conduct the ceremony. In the very early days of Everquest, my first MMO, GMs would even do server-wide shouts announcing a marriage, and I saw at least one that was a trio (2 women, one man). I also knew of one marriage between male and female characters, where the players were both straight men (as the one playing the female said, the other character was the only man s(he) would ever love). As it happened, I met my husband in EQ, and our avatars wed before we did.

Actually implementing a wedding feature is a good bit rarer, and for good reason – the game developers really don’t want to be seen as either supporting or restricting traditional or non-traditional marriages. After all, in EQ I knew more then one High Elf who wed a Dark Elf, despite being mortal enemies, or Kerran (cat) who wed a gnome – just think of the children! I like the adoption feature that LotR incorporated, and plan to utilize it, but I think it is just as well that they didn’t implement a comparable marriage feature. It’s just too political.

While authorial intent is all well and good, and I appreciate that they tried to hew closely to Tolkien’s vision, I’m already pretty damn irked that I can’t play a female dwarf. I think that as a game, especially an online one, with monthly fees, intended to be played for *years* that there has to be some flexibility between game-world versus intent, and I don’t think that they can safely incorporate Tolkien’s likely distaste for gay-marriage in the game without very negative repercussions. Thus, I think that in-game marriage should remain as it has always been – role played.

[vass]

Thoughts?

If it were my decision, I'd let people marry who they choose. Banning cross-species marriage would let out Aragorn and Arwen, for goodness sake. And there are many, many human male/female couples who are less married than Legolas and Gimli.

Tolkien's preferences do matter, I'm not saying they don't, but this game is not Tolkien. It's no *more* authentic or canonical than any other fan-written work. And it's a MMORPG. That means tens of thousands of people will be collaborating in creating this shared world. It's not *possible* to police their canonicity effectively. I'm not saying that therefore the company shouldn't make a stand anywhere, on any issue, but I don't think gay marriage is the place to draw the line.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this and your other comment above -- they were precisely what I wanted to say, and you said it better than I would've.

Any derivative work not by the original creator, to me, is fandom, whether someone is getting money for it or not.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

If I were working for that company, I think I'd just completely ignore the issue. As you say, many gamers are into slash (and as many of them are gay as in the rest of the world), so why aggravate your customer? Plus, geez, isn't gaming supposed to be fun? *g*

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

But if we go with the clear authorial intent of the original author, women have no long-term agency at all. Eowyn retires from swordmaidening to get married. Arwen is a trophy. Galadriel sits on the sidelines and observes.

A kickass woman in Middle-Earth is clearly not what Tolkien had in mind.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

And it would have killed the games market had they hewn to that vision, so they quite sensibly avoided it. As it is, I'm not the only person who is *very* unhappy that dwarves are male only. But since that is the only gender-based division in the game, I'm willing to give it a by. I've refused to buy otherwise excellent games that fell too far on the male-only/women-in-the-kitchen world view.

Honestly, the only sensible thing to do is to avoid making marriage part of the feature set in the first place. What players do in role-play is up to them.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

My point is that all of Tolkien's "authorial intent" is based on the experiences of a man who grew up in the 19th century and fought in the First World War.

If you're going to allow women to fight, then you're just as false to his vision as if you allow gay elves.

I believe in courtesy, at least, to living authors. When you're building a game based on the ideas of a man thirty years dead, you have no way of knowing how he would have adapted those ideas over time.

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

yes, that is an excellent point, and I agree. Who knows what the tales told would encompass if written now, not then?

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I missed the part of the book where Tolkien clearly specified that men could only marry women and vice versa. Was he ever so clear about it that it aught to become an issue in an RPG?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, his views about marriage were pretty clearly spelled out in some of his letters to Christopher Tolkien, although I don't have my edition of his letters here.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh. I respect authorial intent, but only as its manifested through the work itself. If he didn't say it in the text in question, I don't think it should be on the table at all. If the work can be interpreted in such a way, taking all detail from the work into consideration, I think it should go ahead. Same sex relationships, or marriage, would not go against any specific rules and regulations specified in the books, therefore, I think it should be allowed.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The original work has clear-cut inter-species marriage in it already; they couldn't exclude *that* with any legitemacy at all.

I suspect just not having marriage is the smart move for them politically; though since word has gotten out about the debate, that may not work now either.

[darkthirty.livejournal.com]

I agree with this assessment.

But on another point, Children of Hurin is really essentially an incest story, brought on by an encounter with the extremely cagey worm Glaurung. I don't suppose there are incest rules?

It's a reactionary decision, and possibly agrees with the more reactionary readings of Tolkien anyway.

[ishaa.livejournal.com]

I think everything that made Lord of the Rings great falls into one of two categories:

1. Things that went on to be completely assimilated into the fantasy genre. Beautiful elves, sullen dwarves, magic swords, treacherous dragons, slavering orcs, artifacts of great power.
   
   
2. Things that cannot be done in an MMO anyway. Deep characterizations. Plotline. A building tension towards a final climax. A 3-hour cutscene of Tom Bombadil singing. People that are dead now and never coming back, ever. ([Group] Boromir: dammit. any1 have rez?)

In other words, I have very little interest in Tolkien's authorial intent in this context. If you think the important thing in Tolkien's work is the politics and religion that informed it, make a game about that. I'll buy it. I have high hopes for video games as a Serious Art Form.

Bottom line: I've never heard anyone say "I wish there were fewer choices in this game."

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

Well, I know next to zilch about gaming -- my sister jemby is the one who would be far more knowledgable on that score -- but the question that comes to my mind is: How much do we REALLY know about Tolkien and his innermost thoughts? Not suggesting he had a Secret Gay Life, ala the tabloids (which, at my job, I get stuck seeing, will I or no), but I'm not sure the knee-jerk reactions of some fans -- "Of COURSE he wouldn't even THINK of anyone having same-sex attraction!!!" -- are warranted, either. We know what he said publicly, and what he said in the letters that survived and that his heirs permitted to be published. Even if it's reasonable to suppose he wouldn't approve of gay relationships, he surely had too much of a brain to fail to perceive that they existed; I mean, reading about the men of his generation, I sometimes wonder if half the population of Oxbridge was gay or "experimenting." ;-) And he may have been influenced subconsciously, even if his conscious intent was not to suggest any sexual connection.

Finally, I don't think male relationships of his generation can necessarily be so neatly delineated. Even without a specifically sexual component, there were still strong emotional bonds, including nonsexual displays of physical affection, that blur the lines considerably beyond our own culture's "straight-gay-bi?" market niche-ing.

[pied-piper70.livejournal.com]

I'm finally making a delayed responce to this post (5-1): I'm actually a friend of the woman who wrote the Salon article; she's a graduate student in Chicago and is working on her degree in journalism...She's also on LJ as viajes and just posted today about the responces she's gotten on the article; from her own point of view, she was a bit embarrassed how the article was edited, but most of the criticism she's getting is that it was not a "serious article"...which I think is missing the point, personally, but some folks out there think that all social problems need to be reported on and dealt with in a "real world" context, whatever that means...