/lit/ - Literature

In contrast, Martins world is one where an evil and smart person will choose to be evil. As there is no known punishment for being evil, and being evil can lead to rewards as such a person will be willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want. They will not self limit their actions to obtain their desires. And Euron Greyjoy is one such person who is evil and believes gods and morality are fake. He chooses to be evil because he sees nothing that will punish him and he sees that being evil is strategically smart to get what he wants. For him, being good would just limit his ability to get what he wants in life. Ironically it would be the natsoc nietzsche supporter who believes morality is an illusion and that all that matter is the will to power that would be most against Martins ideology of self sacrifice being good.

If Tolkien hadn’t been the first epic fantasy world building author, he would not be well known at all. Let’s look at his works. The hobbit is a children’s book. This sort of book if released today would never be treated seriously. The lord of the rings is an epic fantasy book but it’s very boring in its writing style and for how Tolkien will describe how far characters walked and what ordinary leaves on a tree or grass looked like. Not even fantastical things in nature literally just normal things like a couple of hills. People would say lord of the rings had potential but needed an editor. And the over use of deus ex machina would have not been as defended as Tolkien fans do today.

Also, the unpublished Tolkien material like the silmarillion and the unfinished tales would have been seen as an oddity. An outline of the worlds history with no character depth, and seemingly random events happening like beren and luthien. The stories would have been seen as they should be, extremely boring. I can’t understand how the unfinished tale of tuor and his trip to gondolin is praised so much. I was just wanting it to end. It’s just a chapter of walking in the wilderness. And finally when he gets to gondolin and passes a gate, it’s said there are seven gates in total he has to pass to get to gondolin. And each gate is described in detail. I couldn’t understand why anyone found that interesting. It was so cheesy how each gate was more advanced in how the first is wood and the last are like iron such. I really have a hard time comprehending how people can say with a straight face that the silmarillion or that the first age events are more interesting than the lord of the rings. At least with their lord of the rings it is a narrative that is cohesive with far more depth put into its story than something like “the children of hurin,” which many Tolkien fans claim to like more than lotr.

How come the Orcs had serial numbers? When did they get assigned one and who kept track?