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One of my normie acquaintances was a big GoT enjoyer, but Season 8 was such crap that even he had to admit it, more or less. Now he's sucked into the HotD hype and he's adamant that this time it won't turn into crap, "because the source material is there for the whole series and it's great". LOL
I despise normies.
I'm not interested in GoT, ASOIAF or this new show but since the creator is still alive, and apparently happy with the race-swapping, it's legitimate. Sure, it contradicts canon, but he can change canon if he likes! (I don't have much regard left for GRRM as a writer, by this point, and I've always resented his throwaway line about "I always wanted to know what was the tax basis of Gondor. Yeah, that was what the show really needed for a better season 8 - a coherent economic policy). And the point that this is based on a complete book so there is a beginning, middle and end to the story is a good one.
What they're doing with Rings of Power does annoy me. I don't care that much about Tar-MÃriel being race swapped, because at least they have a human character played by a human, and looking approximately as you would expect royalty to look. I'm more annoyed about the black Elf and black Dwarf not on racism grounds, but because they've been jammed in there with no attempt at providing a backstory or reason for why they are a different race to others of their species that we see. Where are the other black Elves and black Dwarves? And the media interviews about giving prominent roles to BIPOC are all flannel, because these are not really important characters. They didn't make Durin IV black, they didn't make Celebrimbor black. So the big names and important main characters are all white, still. You can't get much whiter than Galadriel unless you go albino, or that weird Morgoth priest/priestess Eminem look-a-like. But we have a couple of invented original characters, plus background general Númenorean citizens, who are Hispanic or black or Asian, so that ticks off the DEI checkboxes. Actually, now I think of it, that Haradrim village or on the borders of Harad where Bronwyn (new invented human character) and Arondir (our new invented mixed-race Elf) are making cow-eyes at each other should be a hell of a lot browner than it seems to be on screen - again, a lot of white guys so far as I saw. That was a place that could legitimately have been all brown faces, but they dodged on that one, I wonder why? A village of brown-skinned people would fit beautifully with their anti-colonialist, anti-racist theme: "Sure, our ancestors fought on the side of the Big Bad, but that wasn't our fault and it's not right to blame us for the past! Why are we living under military oversight/occupancy by white Elves?"
And since Tolkien is safely dead, and Christopher Tolkien is safely dead, and the estate is happy to take the money and run, they can get away with this.
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