"Send me a tv show/book/fandom and i’ll say the top 5 things i’d change about it." Try the Tolkien fandom.
lol ok. These are all more matters of taste rather than things that are Bad™, but the question was what would you change, not what OUGHT TO change.
1. More depictions of Morgoth as the “black foe of the world” instead of as Sauron’s strong-jawed attractive boyfriend. I know he took on a pleasant form for a while in Valinor, but generally Morgoth being good-looking goes completely against how I see this character. He is the dissonance in the music of the Ainur. Just think about this for a second: he is the thing that disrupts and upsets the very fabric of the world. Every visual phenomenon is a product of the divine principles at work in the Song, the co-operation of the other Ainur. Plant-life as we know it: Yavanna. Stars: Varda. Humans and Elves: Eru himself. Dwarves: Aule. Encountering these phenonema is what shapes human perception and their expectations of the world. By that logic, Melkor should go against all that the human mind instinctively recognises as “beautiful”, “normal”, “right” or even “making sense”. Have you ever seen something that just looked wrong? That made you sick? Lovecraft might be a better inspiration for Melkor’s looks than the Elves. He might look interesting (after all, Men are not of Arda, so maybe he wouldn’t seem quite as terrible to human as to Elven eyes?), but I don’t see him looking pleasant.
And of course the Valar can choose their looks, but Melkor forces and subdues. He corrupts and rules. He’s the one who created the Orcs. He would probably want to look terrifying unless he happens to currently be trying to subvert an Elven or human society. This is my favourite portrayal of Melkor to date. He looks like a mix of an industrial wasteland and a train mercilessly, mindlessly speeding toward you. The silmarils look terribly out of place in his parody of an Elven crown. This is a creature that would make you freeze in mute terror.
“And he descended upon Arda in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, as a mountain that wades in the sea and has its head above the clouds and is clad in ice and crowned with smoke and fire; and the light of the eyes of Melkor was like a flame that withers with heat and pierces with a deadly cold.”
2. More interesting/weird looking art in general. Creepy Elves. Surreal Valar. I admit I haven’t done much in the way of that myself. I spent two evenings researching facultative air-breathers to figure out how Teleri with gills should look, then didn’t actually shop the result. I had this great symbolism-laden idea of Irmo as a god in moth-form, but then the concept came into too much conflict with the established mythology, so I ended up not connecting the finished picture with Irmo anymore.
But yeah - more surreal stuff. That’s my solution to everything, but also what I want to see in the Tolkien fandom.
3. More poetry in general? I think that would be really appropriate. Ugh, I wrote some Tolkien-inspired poetry myself, but I’m more self-conscious about posting that than about visual art. But I think Tolkien and poetry go together very well. I fondly remember this and this poem for example. If I was The Fandom Dictator, there would be more like this. Oh yes.
4. Idk what else, that’s all I can come up with. I don’t really follow shipping wars or fandom drama, so I don’t have much to say on these fronts. Oh but WAIT, I remember exchanging declarations of war with multiple people on this site over name pronunciations. Yeah. Those people would be kinslain if I was in power. Definitely.
