Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
You're telling me. There's really no way you can tell this story in the 21st century without it being at least a little bit cringe.
I almost thought I had a way to make it work - by making the change happen despite the influence of outsiders, say by using Elves or Men as a negative example. (Unfortunately the ones who are canonically made an example of, in story, are labelled "Black" in the text - which makes it even worse.) But no, if they are going to take the movies' depiction of the Shire as the endpoint, the choices they have made for the starting point define the change that is implied to happen over time, so there's no way of getting around that however you write it.