/lit/ - Literature

>>13014443
Please, this was cancerous enough on /tg/. It doesn't need to metastasize over to here too.

ok but if this is ggrms problem with tolkein why does he spend every waking second of his books discussing porn, violence, gorn, ect instead of stuff like tax policies or conscription?

>>13014443
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine?
GRRm doesnt adress any of this in his books...

>>13014443
well, shitty author or not, he's right there.
it is a different genre, though, and martin doesn't really deal with these things, either. he had limited himself to rulers and their relations, which isn't a good approach.

>genocide the orcs even the little babies
There were no baby orcs orcs were manufactured
So all they have to do is wipe them out and purge all records of how to produce them

>>13014443

>>13014447
how can orcs be genocided when they aren’t even a race but a corruption of spirit and metaphor for what war does to a solider? it’s a nonsenscial notion, if orcs were genocided there’d be world peace since it’d essentially be the elimination of human (elf?) inclination towards violence.

>>13014443
This is such a good quote because it betrays the absolute brainletism of GRRM. He doesn't seem to understand Tolkien beyond a very superficial level and completely misses the goal of his writings.

Can LOTR be summed up as: good guys good, bad guys bad?

>>13014451
GOT is awful but LOTR is far worse. Kys.

>>13014453
Woah the arguments are straight up flowing out of this one!

>>13014450
>it's a different genre, though
martin is right in the sense that tolkien really doesn't deal with these questions. which, then again, aren't really questions for him, as he writes in a mythic framework.
that is all i have claimed.

>>13014443
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs?
He made the right decision in every case. That's why his reputation was so good it survived as it did thousands of years. But the specific records no longer exist, as they were uninteresting, compared to his other feats.
But rest assured that those in his Kingdom recognized him as being right in every decision he made.
Fuck this fat asshole.

>>13014448
That's only in the movies.

>>13014452
End your life

>>13014447
On the contrary: I appreciate Martin's Seven Kingdoms in showing a feudal society wherein dynastic loyalties, feudal ties, and fealty matter more than ethnicity.

Most fantasy feudal kingdoms act like Nation-States.

>>13014459
This is true but real life Feudal Europe was almost entirely racially homogenous, and outsiders like Andalusians and Magyara were treated as aliens unless they assimilated

>>13014453
This is why the west is losing, because people like you.

>>13014452
“No!”

Characters who are otherwise good like Boromir and Frodo suffer from lapses in judgement, characters like Gollum and Denethor are pretty morally grey, and Sauron, while a pretty terrible person, genuinely believes that he’s making the world a better place. Some Elves are complete assholes and some Orcs are honourable and amiable.

I think people who complain about LotR being morally black and white have never actually read it.

>>13014460
Yeah, but the states weren't built on ethnicities.

>>13014462
>and some Orcs are honourable and amiable
Which ones?

>>13014463
Ethnicities (more accurately, nations) formed because of those states that remained contiguous for a long time such as England, France, Austria, Denmark etc

>>13014464
I’m assuming anon means Shagrat and Gorbag

>>13014465
To a degree, yes, but the monarch wasn't solely the "French" monarch, who would refuse to rule any non-Frenchmen and would demand to rule all Frenchmen.

>>13014447
>well, shitty author or not, he's right there.
Not really. The philosophy behind LOTR is a very post WW1 modernist one, and his claim that "if the king is a good man, the land would prosper" is immediately countered with the example of Theoden.

>>13014466
Not that anon, but Shagrat and Gorbag are hardly honorable or amiable in anything but the most bitter and dark sort of humor. Remember how they laughed at the plight of poor Ulfthak? And that was not two minutes after decrying the "dirty elvish trick" of leaving a comrade in arms behind for a tactical advantage.

>>13014446
yes he does you brainlet showposter

Robert Baratheon is loved by the people and considered a great King by Lords and Peasants alike, but he was actually a horrible King who didn't spend any time ruling the Realm and instead spent his time drinking and whoring, and let his councillors drive a huge budget deficit whithout raising any taxes, driving the crown into huge debt.
His careless conduct also caused a devastating civil war and succession crisis, all the while he was considered one of the greatest Kings by many people in the Realm.
It is called narrative depth, things have more sides than face value, a single Character like King Robert has countless traits that make a whole character, like reap people.

Meanwhile, in Tolkiens world it's pretty much
Aragorn Good
Sauron Bad
there is no fidelity to how they are percieved, it is irrelevant if Sauron built the biggest Economy of Middle Earth from dirt and ash in Mordor, or how his people were unquestionably loyal, because he was a simple bad guy, while Aragorn is a simple good guy, and everything is good or bad depending on their black and white morality.

>>13014469
Sauron was a literal god though.

>>13014469
>king bad, therefore country face problems
that’s not really deep.

AND MY TAX

>>13014443
more taxes, your grace?

>>13014452
Sauron fell, according to Tolkien in his letters, because he wanted to improve the world that he saw as abandoned by the "gods", but then ended up obsessing with the acquisition of power to achieve that above his own previous benevolent designs.

Only Melkor was truly absolute evil in the legendarium.

>>13014469
Why is he loved? should we just buy modernist propaganda that everyone before the 1700s was an idiot, or does King Baratheon do enough stuff right to warrant the popularity of rational human beings of whom he rules? Would people in this setting really care that the king is “decedent” or would, as was in fact the case far more often than not, it be seen as a private matter by most people so long as it doesn’t cross the bounds into depravity? For example Borgias actually did good for Italy despite their vice. what even is sexual morality in this setting? what is considered a good tax policy? In pre-modern society the wealthy focused on consumption
over capital growth, and this in fact had some benefits as it wasn’t a greed fest, just a fest. see, to me, the problem is that it pretends to be all 3 dimensial but really it’s only 2 dimensional.

Does this make sense?

>>13014469
>Meanwhile, in Tolkiens world it's pretty much

Because thats how thing should work and how they work. Tolkien was a catholic, he know that good and evil exist. He will not try to paint you anything with some retard fake moral dilema how you want, so you keep thinking you're smart because some postmodernist retard deluded you.

Jesus, just go away to see Rick and Morty, faggot. Fantasy genre is not for people like you.

>>13014475
>Why is he loved?
because of his tax policy, King Robert didn't allow his Master of Coin to raise taxes, so he had to borrow with the Lannisters and the Iron Bank of Braavos.
When Joffrey took over and Tyrion became Master of Coin for some time they had to raise taxes and that caused the people to hate Joffrey and Tyrion directly, even causing Riots.

>>13014476
>attaching a brainlet wojak to a literal brainlet post
you are too dumb for this board

That quote is what happens when someone with no understanding of spirituality or the power of myth tries to understand Tolkien

I would be embarrassed to have that quote publicly attributed to me

Gurm is a brainlet.

Well? What was Aragorn’s tax policy? He probably continued he corrupt system of patronage set up by his predecessor to maintain stability and any reforms during his long reign were lukewarm and aimed at consolidating his power over the nobles.

>>13014479
only because Idiots like you mistake it for an objective critique instead of a subjective comparison.

>>13014478
>Stop using good and bad! Stop presenting morals in your story!
>*Postmodernist screeching *

How I say, go back to see Rick and Morty.

>only because Idiots like you mistake it for an objective critique instead of a subjective comparison.

>>13014481
>probably
He's fictional. What he did is what Tolkien said he did.
He did the absolute best in every situation.

>>13014477
If that’s case then King Robert might deserve his repution, if money-lenders caused the conflict behind the scenes
just like real life
but this is where actual nuance would come in.

>>13014482
Not him, but given the open and clear mis-statements of how Tolkien's setup actually operates, I think that an assessment that GRRM does not understand Tolkien is quite fair.

>>13014487
Typical posmodernist attacking real medieval fantasy spirit.

>>13014487
maybe you should read his whole statement and not just the meme quote to get some context on his opinion instead of projecting your conclusions onto it.

>>13014482
>objective critique

"Critiquing" a fantasy novel for not addressing tax policy is like complaining an action movie never shows the characters while they're asleep or using the toilet; it is fundamentally misunderstanding the genre and Martin reveals himself to be unironically autistic by "critiquing" Tolkien in this way.

>>13014490
and you reveal yourself to have the reading comprehension of an elementary schooler

>>13014462
>Sauron, while a pretty terrible person, genuinely believes that he’s making the world a better place
When is that said?

>>13014491
How much do you weigh?

>>13014489
I have read the whole statement. It is clearly wrong. I see absolutely no basis in the text of LoTR to base the statement that it operates on a medieval philosophy of good king= propserity. Theoden's example, and it's a very in your face example, runs very much counter to that. To 'quibble' with Tolkien on this point is to essentially argue with a gigantic strawman, because he clearly demonstrates his ignorance as to how Tolkien is actually writing.

>>13014494
>Theoden
but when Theoden stops being possessed he goes straight to being a super good King again

>>13014495
>but when Theoden stops being possessed
Theoden was never possessed in the books. This is a movie only phenomenon.

>he goes straight to being a super good King again
No, he's still rather ineffective. In fact, if you read the book, you'd remember how Gandalf's first bit of advice to Theoden after the latter throws out Wormtongue is to take all the other old faggots like himself, as well as children and other non-combatants, go hide out in the mountains, and let Eomer effectively run Rohan on the war footing.

He then goes running west with his household troops but not a full muster of the Rohirrim (which RoTK established could be done in about 2 days), to find himself grievously outnumbered by Saruman's forces and almost done in if it were not for the fact that Gandalf has to pull his ass out of the fire again in the form of rallying Erkenbrand's scattered army and leading them back in the nick of time.

That's not even getting into how he got himself into that position by dithering around so badly that Theodred had to essentially act on his own to face the battles of the Fords of Isen, or how he apparently put Wormtongue in a position of authority in the first place.

>>13014443
I was literally just watching LOTR lore videos by CivilizationEx
Funny coincidence

>have knights, kings, elves, dragons and magic
>don't have fun at all, write about stupid shit, shit on all of that in general and throw in libshit propaganda as well
>"Tolkien was a hack."

This is why people watch anime. Ever watched Spice and Wolf? It's about a merchant with a wolf goddess. Martin will never be that good. Ever watched Konosuba? Martin was never that good. Ever read Berserk? It makes Martin look like shit.

I'll never understand why people pay attention to these turds when such options are available.

>>13014495
> redditors who have only seen the movies
Jesus fuck feel free to leave this thread at any time

>>13014498
Normies like Game of Thrones.

>>13014452
>he didn't read the Sillmarillion

>>13014460

Racially homogeneous but in such a circumstance of everyone being the same race it heightens sub-divisions. In a world where everyone is white there wouldn't be peace on earth, instead Romance vs Germanic or Germanic vs Slavic ethnicity would prevail.

>>13014465
>Ethnicities (more accurately, nations) formed because of those states that remained contiguous for a long time such as England, France, Austria, Denmark etc
England and Austria are really bad examples as they are pretty half-assed nations. Also you can have nations arising from fractioned states like Germany and Italy or those breaking free from oppression like the Greeks.

>>13014443
Tolkien was writing a fantasy mythology based off Anglo Saxon myth and Christianity. It's not meant to be a gritty realistic medieval drama. GRRM is a retard for not getting this.

>>13014469
LOTR will still be discussed in 500 years, meanwhile Martin's pseud trash will be unfinished and forgotten within a decade of his death.

Hidetaka Miyazaki > Michael Kirkbride > GRRM > JRR Tolkien

>>13014443
Why does it have to be a zero-sum game? Why can't we like both?

Tolkien was a staunch traditionalist, defending community and respect for nature against the rising tide of modernity and industry. He went for the audience that will still be celebrating his work decades and centuries later, both on the right and left of the political spectrum (hippies were Tolkien's first generation of raving fans) though at a cost of staying relatively obscure in his own lifetime. His characters are simple by design: action and doing define their narrative, making it easy for anyone in any year and any culture to step into his characters' shoes.

GRRM wrote a deconstruction of traditionalism, showing how humans have always been the same, complex, flawed individuals that they are today, how ingrained human psychology that doesn't change based on a mere 500-1000 years of technological development. He went for a larger audience that tastes, digests, and moves on, and while he is celebrated in his own lifetime, narratives driven by character dynamics tend to be commentaries on their own time, so their popularity tends to remain confined to it.

True fantasy fans can see the merits of both works, only morons with an agenda to push have an issue

>>13014507
The rivalry between Tolkien and Martin is representative of a deeper divide within the Fantasy community and really all creative communities. The divide is over commercialism and to what degree the preferences of the masses should shape a creator's work. Tolkien was obviously a purist and cared deeply about preserving Fantasy literature's chaste Medieval atmosphere regardless of whether it was appealing to the average reader. Martin is thoroughly post-modern and has little concern for respecting the genre's historical roots and happily panders to the lowest common denominator with plenty of explicit sex, violence and scatologia. The debate surrounding these two authors is really about the soul of the Fantasy genre so it is difficult to cheer for both of them because not only are they so different from each other but there are greater stakes involved than just their books specifically. Will Fantasy in 50 years look more like GoT or LoTR? It remains to be seen but I for one am praying for Frodo.

>>13014443
Tax policy? Well done, well done, Martin. But what are the linguistic differences between each of the Seven Kingdoms?

>>13014509
Good post.

God save us from a future were Martin type of """fantasy"""" is the norm.

Tolkien did grimdark well, and with a degree of true heaviness that I feel Martin can't summon.

>>13014443
I like this pasta, Martin is just such an unlikable piece of shit

Jesus Christ, you polemicists are retarded.
He’s merely stating the two series have different objectives. He’s not shit talking Tolkien, just stating his conceptual divergence from him.
Tolkien’s is to try and portray a fantasy society based on medieval and romantic concepts, a world of heroes and villains.
Martin’s is to attempt a realistic and grim depiction of a fantasy setting.
Both have very good merits and aren’t directly opposed, only try to portray similar scenarios in different ways.

>>13014514

Posted byu/Dalborghetti
1 year ago
J. R. R. Tolkien and G. R. R. Martin
Tolkien is to creative literary genius what Martin is to hack pulp idiocy. They both so far surpass anyone else in their field that they will be remembered 1,000 years from now as a kind of yin and yang of fantasy, a Manichaen duality of speculative letters. For every sublime, luminous beauty that Tolkien has gifted the world, Martin has cursed us with a tedious, banal ugliness. It is unfair to compare the two directly on any one point, because Martin is in every way the anti-Tolkien, patently sterile, parasitical, and inferior, but so much so that he becomes a monument in his own right, and counterbalances Tolkien. Could one exist without the other? Tolkien obviously could. But it is only by the contrast that Martin offers that we can truly appreciate the full depths and heights of Tolkien. Our understanding of Tolkien would be incomplete if Martin had never set pen to page. It is through only the abject failure and futility of Martin that we can approach an apprehension of the true scope and scale of Tolkien's hitherto inconceivable greatness. Perhaps this is what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote about the Music of the Ainur. If Tolkien is a subcreator in the image of Eru, truly Martin is like unto Melkor. It is only reflected in the awfulness of the one that we can fully see the goodness of the other.

Oh look the Tolkien Estate Defence Force is out on the loose again today, the quote is out of context and easily misunderstood as criticism when it is merely an answer on how their philosophies are completely different.

Here is a different quote for all you twats
>"Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. "

Martin would not compare himself to Tolkien if the army of brainlets would not constantly compare him to Tolkien and put their respective works in direct competition, which they are not.

>>13014515
Here here

>>13014443
>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy
Whats wrong with that?
Of course medieval epic like Tolkien's will have a medieval world view, Tolkien took inspiration from legends like Beowulf and Prose Edda, none of those modern cultural deconstructivism / nihilism trash that grrm have

>>13014506
List is missing Chris Avellone and Amy Hennig

>>13014515
>1000 years from now
And thats sad since both of them are not that great.

>>13014506

JRR Tolkien > CS Lewis > Robert Jordan > Michael Kirkbride > Robert E. Howard

*powergap*

Stephen King > JK Rowling > Suzanne Collins > Christopher Paolini > GRRM

>>13014500
Normies like the TV show, which hasn't been written by Martin for like 4 years now

>>13014516
> We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys. "
>Call the bad guys the white walkers and the good guys wear black in the nights watch
Fucking phenomenal, truly revolutionized the genre with that

>>13014510
Rekt

>>13014521
ER Eddison > Dunsany > RE Howard > CAS > Tolkien > Hidetaka Miyazaki > Hayao Miazaki

>>13014523

>nights watch
>rapists, murderers, traitors, thieves and other assorted scum
>good guys

>>13014443
Why does this quote anger the incels so bad?

99.99999% of what we consider national concerns were handled locally then. The king had no tax policy generally (sometimes during war but he had to be very careful about it), his income was his budget.

>>13014469
you look at it the wrong way, its not Tolkien who wrote those books, its Bilbo Baggins, Tolkien intended to portray it as a propaganda created by the Hobbits, people fail to see this tho.

>>13014469
That is the point of fantasy

>>13014443
Now post the Miyazaki one!

>>13014528
This. GRRM is a fucking brainlet. The idea of taxes did not even exist in the middle ages, it was more like literal protection money.

Thread theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0

>>13014526
this tolkienlets show their brainlet understanding of good and bad that their children novels indoctrinated them into.

>/his/ - Fantasy and Literature

>>13014516
Again, mis-statements of Tolkien. Lord of the Rings is NOT about the good vs evil struggle. It's about the Hobbits and how they grow and unexpectedly shape the destinies of the mighty. The War of the Ring is a subplot. A very large subplot, but still a subplot to the main plot of hobbitish perspective on a faux-medieval setting. If he admires JRRT so much, why the hell does he get all these rather basic things wrong? Doesn't that admiration extend to actually trying to understand the figure of admiration?

>>13014518
>Whats wrong with that?
For starters, it's simply incorrect. It's so incorrect in fact, that I wonder how anyone could possibly say that unless they were completely ignorant of either actual medieval philosophy, the contents of JRRT's writing, or both.

>>13014520
>t. Retard with shit taste

It is kinda wierd that Tolkein worldbuilt to the autistic extreme, but totally disregarded how the kingdoms worked

>>13014534
>Bad people are not bad you don't understand!

Are you don't tired to be calle out stupid posmodernist? Of course for a subhuman like you being a moral person is like being an alien.

>>13014538
He didn't. You just didn't notice the signs. Go re-read the very parallel scenes in the Two Towers; where Eomer runes into Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli on one hand; and where Faramir runs into Frodo and Sam on the other. They're very clearly meant to contrast with each other, the parallels are extremely obvious. The level of initiative in the face of standing orders, as well as the sort of aid and reasoning for it, tells you a lot about how Rohan and Gondor work.

>>13014474
Even then, Melkor was only evil because the wanted to sing a song that Eru wouldn't have him sing, he wanted to make an original act of creation himself in defiance of Eru. Turns out the only song left to sing was that of evil and thus he seeded creation with evil.

Who the fuck cares about the tax policy of an imaginary kingdom in a fantasy book. How would that improve the quality in any way.

>it would make it more realistic

Just like having dragons and a kid that can see everything at once does?

>>13014469
>he thinks this is deep
>he looks for depth in tits and dragons
That's gonna be a yikes for me fella. If I wanted economical theory I would read Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

>>13014443
>Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
based and redpilled

>>13014443
That coming from the guy who basically wrote medieval soap opera and even delayed them for profit.

>>13014476
Wait are you honestly as retarded as to say that morality is simply black and white and there are no cloudy areas? What a fucking moron.

>>13014443

Imagine having such a weak hold on how literature expresses itself that you read LoTR and thought it was supposed to be a treatise on monarchical governance.

>>13014690
The characters and plot in GOT are infinitely deeper than Tolkien's. You should only read Tolkien for the prose.

>>13014863
Nothing is ever gray just controversial in its place on the black white dichotomy

>>13014443
>Tolkien doesn't address tax policy.
Except that he did. He mentions how Numenorean kings, for example, originally explored the world and peacefully traded with different peoples in Harad, Far Harad, Khand, etc., and then later got greedy and started establishing colonies to more easily steal the resources of the locals.
Or even how Sharkey oppressed the Shire-folk (probably the most direct reference to an oppressive taxation).
True, Tolkien doesn't address "taxation" directly, but that's probably because he thought it was a BORING topic that isn't the crux of what makes a king good or bad. Reading comprehension helps with seeing the superiority of Tolkien's ability to get to the heart of a matter (is the king good or bad/evil).
Also, keep in mind that the societies that Tolkien typically described were feudalistic monarchies, and in that type of government it really is "as simple as that" when making the conclusion that a good king makes a good kingdom, and a bad king a dysfunctional kingdom. There's a LOT less bureaucracy to mess with, the king is the wellspring of the kingdom.

>Did Aragorn maintain a standing army?
yes, and this would be extremely easy to grasp with reading comprehension.
feudalistic monarchies ALWAYS had a standing army made of nobility and their knights (who were usually the lowest rung of the aristocracy). Rohan had a standing army, even under the rulership of Grima Obamatongue. Elu Thingol had a standing army. Gondor had a standing army. Thranduil had a standing army.
The only places that seem to not have standing armies are places without kings, such as the Shire, Dunland hill tribes, Green Elves of Ossiriand, the Silvan Elves (before the arrival of their Sindarin leadership in the Second Age), the Elves of Valinor (the whole point of Valinor being created, and then moved out of the confines of Arda to a different dimension was specifically so that they wouldn't have to maintain a standing army due to the threat of Melkor, Sauron, or any upstarts like Ar-Pharazon), the Druedain (not to be confused with Dunedain), et al.
The History of Middle Earth has a wealth of information that George R. Martin could have found all the answers to his rather mundane questions.

>What did he do in times of flood and famine?
Read up about the Great Plague of Third Age 1636 that swept through northwestern regions of Middle Earth. It wasn't the only plague, or natural disaster. Granted, Tolkien takes the approach of imputing all diseases and famines to the evil magic of Melkor, Sauron, the Nazgul (or some other evil spirit or maia demon), whereas George R Martin takes the approach that diseases are "natural", not caused by evil spirits or dark magics, just evolution at work (even though evolution isn't a theory or known about in Martin's fantasy world, but lets not quibble about such minor plot-holes).
Tolkien and Martin differ in so many ways in not only their writing style but also the ultimate purpose and meaning.

>>13014443
>"Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy"
>medieval-inspired work has medieval philosophy
ohnono

>>13014469
Based post desu
There are reasons to not like GoT but there’s so much bandwagoning in this thread

>>13014443

>>13015646
For instance, Martin's world seems to be on a completely different planet than Earth. True, it bears many resemblances to Earth, for example: western continent of the 7 kingdoms is primarily filled with whites and middle eastern, whereas the eastern continents is where you find all the blacks, asians, and browns of various flavors, and a smattering of whites. Though it's kinda ridiculous how everyone in the 7 kingdoms, even the Wildlings north of the wall, all spoke the exact same language, even after thousands of years, with only slight variations in their dialect to show any clue as their to their country of origin. For someone that prides himself on his "realism", that's shoddy work.
Tolkien, on the other hand, places his story ON EARTH, merely at a pre-historic time period. That would place us somewhere at the tail end of the Fourth Age, loooong after the golden age of Aragorn's rule. We're more at the brink of "the age of the Orc", with the fires of Mt. Doom sending out smoke signals to warn the West of the impending armies of the globalists dark wizards and their neverending supply of orcs.

> And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”
With reading comprehension skills, it could easily have been deduced that all the orcs weren't killed, by Aragorn nor his descendants. Silmarillion and History of Middle Earth both mention the prophecy about the end of the world, armageddon, where Turin Turambar would return/reincarnate and lead the armies of Valinor and all Eru's Children who had a good spirit against the armies of Melkor, who in the last days would manage to return from the Void (Kuma, what we would call outerspace) where Melkor had been exiled by the Valar for two Ages,

>>13014512
This.
Tolkien did morally grey characters way better than Martin, which I read when I was 10 and only appreciated it because I thought it was "mature" and sex scenes gave me a boner.
I didn't appreciate tolkien until I grew up.
Want proof?
Read the children of Hurin.
Every "dark and realistic" character made by Martin is nothing compared to the ones tolkien created. He managed to create truly morally ambiguous character. Real villainous heroes.
You should only read Martin for the prose.
I could literally kill everyone who disagrees witrh me in this threas using only my bare hands

>>13015720
holy shit that's a lot of absolute SEETHING. Imagine the butt-blasted nerd who wrote all that LMAO

>>13014443
>"I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men, it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing."
―from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Colin Bailey

>>13015762
why are you even on this board though

>>13014889
>muh wall
>winter is coming XD

>>13015980
Because not every book reader is an autistic sperglord who can't handle a little sex, drugs, and rock n roll with his fiction, and need everything presented in overly simplified black and white terms like fiction aimed at 12-year-old boys.

>>13014471
Maybe, but it does naturally follow.

There's no reason to accept Sauron Bad Aragorn Good at face value, especially when the book doesn't take the next step.

>>13016175
>There's no reason to accept Sauron Bad Aragorn Good at face value
When does LOTR ever not present them at face value? When is Sauron ever presented in a positive light or Aragorn in a negative light?

>>13016236
Not him, but LoTR is presented as a frame tale found and "translated" by Tolkien. Literally nothing is presented at face value, because you're reading an in universe history written by in universe characters who make very clear errors in their "history", that Tolkien deliberately placed in there in order to give it the versimilitude of an actual lost manuscript.

>>13016175
Suaron is basically bad Jesus though, you might not get that from only reading LOTR, but he's pretty well established as a total cunt in the appendices

>>13016249
that's pretty spurious reasoning. Take something like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which has both lofty tragedies and ribald comedies with human failure as a common theme, and even calls out the simplistic bootlicking narratives of its day as "rhyme doggerel". When I read about John the carpenter getting cucked in the Miller's Tale, or the Wife of Bath faking her own death in order to drive her husband into remorse, I'm more reminded more of GoT style raunchiness than anything I read about in LOTR

Besides, that may be true contextually, but unless it bears out in the narrative anywhere, it's really just hanging a lampshade. For example, in GoT we are presented with the theater plays of events that we had already witnessed as an audience, and we see complex people simplified into cartoon cut-outs of good and evil which were clearly meant to push a narrative and obfuscate the complexity of the situation for one person's gain over all the others. That's a more nuanced take on the way that literary conventions shift over time.

>>13016409
>that's pretty spurious reasoning.
It is quite literally said in the Introduction to the Fellowship of the Ring and pervades Tolkien's other writings. I would especially put forward the "Notes on the Motives in the Silmarillion", where he quite clearly says that the actual text of Morgoth being "thrust through the Doors of Night" reflects an Elvish misunderstanding of what actually happened, namely Morgoth being bodily executed and his spirit being unable to hold itself together with the destruction of the body it had so pervaded itself into.

>Take something like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which has both lofty tragedies and ribald comedies with human failure as a common theme, and even calls out the simplistic bootlicking narratives of its day as "rhyme doggerel". When I read about John the carpenter getting cucked in the Miller's Tale, or the Wife of Bath faking her own death in order to drive her husband into remorse, I'm more reminded more of GoT style raunchiness than anything I read about in LOTR
How is any of this relevant to a claim that LoTR does not always present things (and to me, in fact never presents things) at face value?


>Besides, that may be true contextually, but unless it bears out in the narrative anywhere, it's really just hanging a lampshade.
But it does. You're seeing an enormously hobbit-centric narrative, so much so that even the War of the Ring is really only a subplot, albeit a very large one. You don't think that colors perceptions just a bit? You don't think all those anachronisms vis a vis the social structures literally everywhere else in the fictional setting placed willy nilly all over the Shire might just be informing you that you're reading something out of its place temporally?

And then there's Tom Bombadil, but going into him would take at least three separate posts.

>That's a more nuanced take on the way that literary conventions shift over time.
An in universe play simplifying, even caricaturing a "real' event is not a literary convention shifting over time. It's well, an in universe caricature, similar to one of Aristophanes's plays. For that matter, someone looking askance at the work of an ancient historian (take Livy for an example) is again not a shifting literary convention. Just because Livy is the only extant source of much of the second punic war doesn't mean you should necessarily believe everything he says. And if someone tells you

>Well, I read X in Livy
turning around and presenting it as absolute fact is not a great idea.

>>13016090
>can't handle a little sex, drugs, and rock n roll with his fiction
autism

>>13015919
>I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing."
Dan Brown btfo

>>13016501
Because that's all just a really verbose way of saying that Tolkien tells us not to take it at face value instead of showing us why. That's all well and good for 16-year-old boys who struggle comprehending the behavioral complexity of adults and needs morally simplified narratives, but for the rest of us, it just feels like we're getting a very idealized and not at all that down-to-earth vision of the world.

>How is any of this relevant to a claim that LoTR does not always present things (and to me, in fact never presents things) at face value?
Show me one instance in the LOTR which shows such a morally complex character like, say, Nicholas, the young scholar in the Miller's Tale who uses music and astrology to seduce another man's wife and then rips a giant fart in the face of her beta orbiter. And none of this "oh, but Tolkien tells us here not to take it at face value", actually show us an instance of a character doing something like this.

>an in universe caricature
fair enough, but the cleverness of the writing here is to show just how flimsy and artificial those "medieval" narrative conventions actually were.

>>13014472
underrated

>>13014443
Tolkien actually began writing exactly this: what happened after only humans were left, elves being gone and dwarves retired in their mountains. He discovered that it was not as interesting, being filled with murders and treasons and gave up on that idea. We could have had a GoT written by Tolkien if it was not for his good taste.

>>13014502

Yes because humans are tribal and divide themselves into groups whenever possible. The nation is just the largest group that can function.

>>13016773
>Because that's all just a really verbose way of saying that Tolkien tells us not to take it at face value instead of showing us why.
He does show you why. Have you actually read the books? Have you ever wondered, for instance, why exactly the Rohirrim have such a huge part at the battle in front of Minas Tirith, arriving just in the nick of time and getting the lion's share of the lines descirbing the action when they're clearly the smallest and weakest of the three allied armies? The fact that they're the linguistic relatives of the Halflings surely has nothing to do with it, yes?

>Show me one instance in the LOTR which shows such a morally complex character like, say, Nicholas, the young scholar in the Miller's Tale who uses music and astrology to seduce another man's wife and then rips a giant fart in the face of her beta orbiter
Ever hear of Frodo? He's kind of the main character. But I would very much argue that a rich dilettante who inherits a dangerous implement and treats it more as a lark than anything else until he's actually plunged into real danger, finds a love of the wider world and is willing, up until the very end to sacrifice himself for it, despite having little to any idea of what exactly he's signing up for originally, finding a taste of power, finding he LIKES that taste of power, knowing intellectually he shouldn't like that sort of power, but can't accomplish his very necessary mission without using it, and then at the end, having succeeded only through this to him very wrong and very addictive sort of power to dominate the will of another, feels like a failure and is a hopeless wreck of himself, even when literally everyone around him thinks he's the greatest person ever.

That's fairly morally complex, isn't it?

>fair enough, but the cleverness of the writing here is to show just how flimsy and artificial those "medieval" narrative conventions actually were.
They're not medieval narrative conventions at all. I can't think of any medieval stories with a couched narrative like LOTR sports. It's been a long, long time since I read ASOIF, but as far as I can recall, you're never given reason to doubt say, that Ned Stark discovered Cersei's cheating and bastard rearing, and that political complications of that are what ultimately lead to his death. What the narrator describes happens (for again a given value of "happened", fiction, yada yada yada.) Tolkien on the other hand is presenting a fictional myth, not a fictional story. Untangling the skeins of what is told and onto what really happened is actually largely an impossible academic exercise; it's like trying to reconstruct an actual historical war in Denmark from the Helgakviða Hundingsbana.

They're very different literary conventions, but they're not shifting ones. I'm not even sure what you're trying to get at here, to be honest.

Economic historian here

The seven kingdoms are an unrealistic pastiche with systems of governance and agriculture randomly spanning eight hundred years of development. The apparatus of governance and extraction are farcical. The span of command impossible.

It is basically a joke setting for psychosexual projection. Exactly like middle earth.

>>13014443
lmfao he did not actually reddit pseud out on Tolkien, did he?

>>13014443
>Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
There are none

Alright, bucko, here we go

>>13018816
orcs are corrupted elves, no female orcs...

>>13018834
post the real one

>>13014443
enough of this!

>>13014443
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”
He didn't read appendixes then. Tax policy isn't detailed but it's still said he fought against orcs and easterlings, often calling Eomer for help.

>>13014465
To a degree. One Polish king in 1300's rode around and visited every town or city in his country, gathering all commoners on the main square and asked them to say a Polish tongue-twister. In this way he singled out German settlers whom he took for 5th columnists. They were then dragged by horses around the square and hanged.

>>13014532
>The idea of taxes did not even exist in the middle ages, it was more like literal protection money.

What are taxes now?

>>13014455
This is the correct response to Martin's quibble.

>>13014510
based

>>13019435
Obviously the same, but there is the myth of the social contract and the consent of the governed via democracy today. These ideas did not even exist back then, that's the point.

>>13014507
>Tolkien
>staying relatively obscure in his own lifetime
What

>>13015992
>muh ring
>you shall not pass XD

>>13014443
Because those arent the questions to ask, that's why.

LOTR is a microcosm of the war between Melkor and the rest of the proper gods. Literal gods, literal devil, literally contesting the soul of the world. Might and logistics doesnt make right; RIGHT makes right.

Taxes, standing army, all of these are petty mortal concerns; Aragorn is an actor on the stage of myth. Him becoming king isn't just the acquisition of a crown; it is the redemption and restoration of the damned line of Isildur.

Insisting on realworld politics and statecraft in high fantasy is like demanding that a joke make literal and testable sense. Before you know it we have Midichlorians as an explanation of the Force.

>>13014443
Sauron has regained much of his former liquidity. He cannot yet take corporative form, but his greediness has lost none of its potency. Concealed within his skyscraper, the CEO of Mordor sees all. His audits pierces policy, appeals, collaterals and taxhavens. You know of what I speak, Gandalf? A great Accountant lidless and wreathed in flame. He is gathering all evidence to him. Very soon he will summon an army of lawyers great enough to launch litigation upon Middle-Earth(tm).

>>13014443
>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy:If the king was a good man, the land would prosper.
It's intellectually chic to downplay black and white morality as outdated and play up the moral grey as the more sophisticated choice, but that's not really true. The forces LOTR depicts aren't supposed to be muddled with all the redundant and irrelevant details that make up a historical account of earthly conflict. The act of storytelling itself is inherently a practice in distillation; you're taking something and boiling it down to just the parts that matter, the "juice," striving to strike the perfect balance between telling just enough to capture the essence of a story without telling so much that it muddles the point. LOTR is an archetypal tale. It's particularly refined because it's analogous for the forces that live within men, and every man. Aragorn isn't so much a specific good king as he is the idea of a good king- his tax policy is whatever the right one is. Even then, we still have representatives for man's more conflicted aspects with characters like Borimir, Frodo, and Gollum. Simplicity is nothing to be ashamed of, but LOTR also isn't as simple as people act like it is.
>But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
While there's no inherently right level of distillation in storytelling, we can safely say that we don't want every tale boiled down as far as Hop on Pop. However, we also don't want the objective of literature to go from distillation to simulation, because the latter is completely futile and serves no purpose other than to foolishly substitute, rather than supplement reality. In that sense, Martin's universe is far less real than Tolkien's is. All Martin's details about tax policies and such only generate redundancies that muddle and distance his world from true reality. This is fine for the purposes of pure entertainment, but the people most inclined to value these redundancies seldom view their work as such. Again, they mistakenly think greyer means better. And again, while they aren't strictly wrong, that's also not always the case. People weren't telling black and white tales for thousands of years because they were too fucking stupid to grasp nuance. They have their purpose.

>>13014476
I want to be on your side here but you're wrong.

You're accepting the other guy's frame that "Tolkien is black and white". Which it is, in the sense that good and evil objectively exist, but that doesn't mean the characters are simply "good" or "bad", for the same reasons that actual people might not be wholly good or bad. Gollum, for instance, is an ambiguous character. So is Boromir. So, for that matter, is Denethor.

Aragorn is a good man, duh, but LOTR isn't about Aragorn any more than it is about Gandalf. Would Aragorn's strength of character have ensured that his reign went 100% smoothly and restored the spirit of Numenor to Middle Earth? LOTR ends before we find out, although there is some evidence that Tolkien himself believed the answer was: no.

>>13020908
Very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very good post.

>>13014476
>Fantasy genre is not for people like you.
HAHHAHHAEAHAHAHAUHAUHAHEUAHAHAHAEEHAHUHAUHEHUAHAUEHAH

>>13014469
I like a song of ice a fire but come on just saying Robert racked up a load of debt by whoring and such isn't deep in the slightest.

What does he mean?

My dear People
>My dear stockholders and employees and my dear consultants and hedge fund managers, and managers, and accountants, and advisors, and directors, and board members, market analysts, lawyers, supervisors and Chairmen.
>Chairpeople!
>Chairpeople, Also my good venture capitalists that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my one hundred and eleventh Bankruptcy!
>I hope you are all enjoying yourselves as much as I am. I shall not keep you long, I have called you all together for a Purpose. Indeed, for Three Purposes! First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one bankruptcies is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable professionals.
>I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I paid less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
>Secondly, to celebrate my bankruptcy. I should say: OUR bankruptcy. For it is, of course, also the bankruptcy of my heir and nephew, Frodo. He comes of age and into his inheritance today. Together we score one hundred and forty-four. Your numbers were chosen to fit this remarkable total: One Gross, if I may use the expression.
>Thirdly and finally, he said, I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT. I regret to announce that — though, as I said, eleventy-one ventures is far too short a time to spend among you — this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!

>>13014443
One day I’ll rewrite the entirety of LOTR in taxposting memes.

>>13019289
Martin BTFO