Get to Know The Fantasy Reader Tag

Hello all! Today we’ve just got a quick book tag (does anyone even do these anymore? I’m so out of the loop) because we’re in the first few days of NaNoWriMo, which is always a bit of a slog, especially if you’re a slow writer like me. Anyway, this tag has been sitting in my drafts folder for months and months at this point, so I think it’s well and truly time that I posted it.

(Also, please let me know if you’re the creator of this tag! I stole it from somewhere and my sieve brain forgot where, I’m so sorry).

What Is Your Fantasy Origin Story (the first fantasy you read)

My mum loves fantasy, so most of my earliest reading memories involve fantasy. Probably the very first books I read (or were read to me) were The Chronicles of Narnia. Obviously I loved these and I was hooked from then on, I really didn’t stand a chance, fantasy was literally introduced to me in the womb.

After Narnia, I think was next introduced to The Magician’s Daughter, a self-published Australian fantasy trilogy, How To Train Your Dragon, The Little White Horse, and Emily Rodda’s books, including Rowan of Rin, The Key To Rondo, and of course the Deltora Quest series, the staple of every Aussie kid’s reading life. When I was in my preteens, I started on the Warrior Cats series, Rick Riordan, Lloyd Alexander, Stephen Lawrence, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis’s adult fantasies.

Know The Novel: The Changeling and the Wolf

Can you believe that next month is NaNoWriMo? I’ve been doing Inktober all month so I’m not sure my brain is quite ready to kick into gear and think about a completely different challenge just yet.

But, nevertheless, I’m here to introduce (or…uh reintroduce ) my NaNoWriMo novel for 2022. I’m going to be participating in the Know The Novel linkup, which is now five years old. Absolutely wild, I remember doing it for the very first time, so that makes me feel very old now. Anyway, let’s move on!

Introducing…

If you’re a dedicated reader of my blog, you may recognise this novel as my project from NaNoWriMo 2020, known then as “The Darkest Night”. Because yes, for the first time I am actually working on an established novel rather than a brand new first draft!

However, I’ve obviously developed this draft quite a lot since I pantsed it back in 2020, with absolutely no outline or anything. So I’m taking a second crack at this story to work on it some more and hopefully get a complete second draft (that has a more coherent plot line, fingers crossed).

Anyway, if you want to check out my original Know The Novel post for The Darkest Night you can find that here, and if you want to check out Christine Smith, who created this link up, you can do it here.

Let’s get into it!

What first sparked the idea for this novel?

The first inkling (pun intended) of this story came from listening to a YouTuber (I can’t remember who it was, so sorry about that) talk about and read excerpts from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings sequel, which he called “The New Shadow”. Unfortunately, Tolkien found the story bitter and depressing (fair enough) and abandoned it 13 pages in.

The story revolves around the land of Gondor, over a 100 years after the downfall of Sauron. Aragorn is dead, and his son now rules. But men have forgotten the true evil of the time when the Lord of the Rings ruled and have grown complacent, which disturbs the main character, Borlas.

Essentially, Borlas and a much younger man, Saelon, get into an argument about the true nature of evil, and Saelon mentions that a cult dedicated to the worship of orcs (and I suppose Sauron or Morgoth by extension) is now rising. Borlas immediately concludes that Saelon is part of this cult, which offends Saelon. Saelon invites Borlas to come to a clandestine meeting that night. Borlas is one of the very last people left who can remember life before the Great Peace, as it’s known, and he believes he would be able to recognise the scent of evil, so he agrees to come.

When he arrives at his home after his argument with Saelon, Borlas steps into his house and is immediately greeted by a “dead silence”, and he smells the old Evil “and recognised it for what it was”.

And there it ends.

Obviously that was not good enough for me, so I decided to finish it.

Okay, So I Caved…

…Yes, I watched The Rings of Power.

I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t. Mainly because I don’t have Amazon Prime and won’t buy it because I strongly dislike Amazon’s business practices. But in fairness, I found myself spending the entire school holidays away from home, housesitting for a colleague of mine who was on holidays.

I come from a big family, so I’m used to getting home from work and eating dinner with my family and spending the rest of the evening all hanging out together and talking or whatever. So when I found myself living as a lonely single, without even my dogs for company, I was like…well, what the heck do I do with myself? And it just so happens this particular household had their own Amazon Prime subscription.

Anyway, I have thoughts, which I’m now going to unload upon you, dear reader.

A Short But Unhinged Rant About Powerful Women

Ok, so I saw the full Rings of Power trailer the other day. And, er…

Welp.

That’s all I can say, it looks—if I can be frank—absolutely horrific. I will not be seeing it for a number of reasons, which I’ll list below:

A). I don’t have an Amazon Prime Subscription

B). Amazon is corrupt and I do not like supporting them if I can help it, so I won’t be signing up for Prime either.

C). I don’t want this rip-off to ruin my love of the books and the movies.

ANYWAY, now that we have that out of the way, let’s examine what actually sparked this terrible rage inside of me. Now, let it be known that I’m not a “fan fan”, I don’t care that they cast black actors, or that there’s hobbits in this (for literally no reason?), or that the girl dwarves don’t have beards, or that the elves have short hair (though, why??). Sure, they’re all weird artistic choices that I don’t really understand, but I don’t mind. In fact, I’d love to see a spin on the Peter Jackson aesthetic that has dominated for the last two decades.

So yes, these are all a touch bizarre, but none of them are rant worthy. What definitely is rant worthy is the depiction of Galadriel.

HOO BOY. What a can of worms!

My girl Galadriel, arguably the most powerful being left alive in Middle-Earth, counsellor and friend to Gandalf, ruler of Lothlorien, bearer of Nenya, the Ring Of Power. And they turned her into that? And by that, I mean a teenaged warrior princess that looks like she’d fit perfectly into a cheap young adult fantasy novel. They put her in armour, for goodness sake! She comes riding into battle like she’s blooming Joan of Arc!

Wise, powerful, beautiful beyond compare Galadriel reduced to a GirlBoss(TM) armour bearing teen with a Katniss Everdeen braid.

Who, exactly, do these people think they are? Cate Blanchett would be turning in her grave if she was dead.

And look, I might be completely wrong. RoP might blow it out of the water and Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel might be wise and strong to rival Cate’s. But seeing as armour-wearing, sword-wielding Galadriel (who probably goes by the name Gal or Dri), is so prominent in the trailer, I’m honestly not hopeful.

But Chelsea, you might be saying, why are you so incredibly upset about this? Female empowerment, remember! You’re a feminist, you love strong female characters! Warrior Queens are your favourite trope! Stop whinging!

Yeah, you’d be right. I love Warrior Queens, Strong Female (TM) characters, I’ve always been obsessed with real life women who fought for their beliefs and their countries, despite gender inequality. I love fierce characters with brutal physical prowess and a sword in their hand.

But Galadriel isn’t one of those characters. She’s a powerful character, but she’s a Queen, and not a warrior. In fact, she doesn’t need to be one of those characters, because the LOTR books already have one (Eowyn, the OG Warrior Princess and awesome character) and the movies have two (Arwen, also a kickbutt Warrior Princess, the scene where she turns her horse to face the Black Riders at the ford is just perfect). We didn’t need to arm Galadriel for battle, because that’s not her role in the story, and its not in her character.

It just seems incredibly sad to me that in 2022, we still equate physical prowess with female empowerment. A woman can’t be powerful unless she’s also masculine.

Honestly, I thought we were past that. I thought the hundreds of Strong Female Character critiques that have been written over the last decade or so had finally put this to rest. Female characters have come so far in the last few years, particularly in fantasy. Just look at the character of Addie LaRue, in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, or Tiffany Aching in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, or the heroines of Spinning Silver. These are all amazing women and girls who have well-rounded, brilliant personalities without needing to be physically strong, or emotionally icy. I’ve seen so many people protesting the emotionally dead female cliche, and praising the well-rounded female character, so I wonder why it’s still popping up in big budget projects like RoP?

It’s a damaging trope, which constantly pressures young girls into believing that they have to be strong in order to be valuable. There’s no room for power of any other kind. Physical power is only one type of power.

But no one could argue that Galadriel is not powerful. There are many powerful characters in LOTR, such as Gandalf, Elrond, and Aragorn, and seeing these powerful, noble men defer to Galadriel, often literally bow to her, to seek out her wisdom, protection and aid, is very telling. It shows her wisdom and power. The narrative doesn’t need to convince us that Galadriel is an awesome powerful queen, it simply shows us, but showing the mortal kings, the wizards, and the elves all deferring to her power.

Because let’s face it, Galadriel is not Boudicca. Eowyn is Boudicca, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Tolkien had purposefully modelled the Princess of the Rohirrim off the Celtic Queen of the Iceni. Galadriel is more like some of the queens of old. She reminds me of Eleanor of Aquitaine (but nicer and less ruthless), a powerful and ambitious Plantagenet queen and the wife of King Henry II and the mother of historical icons like Richard the Lionheart and the infamous King John. She was a political heavyweight and she held power over the men around her, despite her apparent powerlessness. She orchestrated rebellions, treason and coups, manipulating some of the greatest political chess pieces in the world. And admittedly, she and her ladies in waiting did participate in the Second Crusade, while she was Queen of France, and there’s an unsubstantiated rumour that they were dressed as Amazons while they did so, but she still was not really a warrior.

And Galadriel is the same, she’s powerful, in her younger days she was ambitious and somewhat arrogant. As she grows and matures, she becomes wise, beautiful, revered and respected. We have our Warrior Princess in Eowyn, and in Arwen in the movie version as well. We don’t need another one.

Anyway, this is a completely unedited brain dump and it’s not meant to be anything particularly deep or meaningful, I just felt like shouting into the void. I’m also passionate about the presentation of women in fiction and media, so I needed to make my feelings known on Warrior Princess Armour Wearing Galadriel.

Also, I really hope I’m wrong. I hope Amazon surprises us all and Galadriel is a great character etc etc. That would be absolutely amazing and I would actually consider watching it. But, unfortunately, I do not trust Amazon and in my opinion they are guilty until proven innocent.