/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22700501]

Imagine creating a genre and killing it at the same time because nobody that comes after you is anywhere near as good.

[Anonymous No.22700505]

Grrm killed his shitty genre

[Anonymous No.22700509]

>>22700501
There were plentry of fantasy books before Tolkien
Talmud, Bible, Quran, Gita, Paradise Lost, Divine Comedy etc

[Anonymous No.22700538]

None of them have been historians or scholars of language. I suspect that’s the key, and obviously a passion and sincere interest for what you do.

[Anonymous No.22701474]

>>22700538
it’s even deeper than that, it’s because the current crop of fantasy writers are all atheists and have no genuine love for god, metaphysics, or mythological symbolism

[Anonymous No.22701492]

>>22700509

[Anonymous No.22701576]

>>22701474
It’s even deeper than that. The current crop of fantasy writers grew up in places like Breezewood, Pennsylvania and have no idea what the organic sweetness of a pre-world war life was like.

[Anonymous No.22701596]

>>22701576
I can buy into this
baldurs gate 3 was really good for a video game story at least

[Anonymous No.22701604]

>creating a genre
why are tolkiendrones so delusional?

[Anonymous No.22701619]

>>22700509
This is true. Fantasy is mythical.

>>22701474
Weininger said the great prophets were atheists that invented God through will.

[Anonymous No.22701624]

>>22701596
Doubt

[Anonymous No.22701630]

>>22701619
Weiminger was also a deeply disturbed and insecure Jew

[Anonymous No.22701650]

>>22701619
post the weininger excerpt. that’s useless without context
>>22701624
just trust me on this

[Anonymous No.22701675]

>>22700501
I would call this bait, but then I remembered that most Tolkienfags actually are dumb enough to think this.

[Anonymous No.22701709]

>>22700501
The sad thing is that he wanted to read something on the level of what he wrote, but it didn't exist. It still doesn't exist.

[Anonymous No.22701854]

>>22700509
I suppose you think that was terribly clever.

[Anonymous No.22701865]

>>22700509
>Talmud
Yes anon, rambling legalistic texts commented on by insane inbred rabbi's is just basically the same as dozens of chapters about Hobbits cornholling through Middle Earth.

[Anonymous No.22702687]

>>22701675
Name five fantasy books better than LoTR.

[Anonymous No.22703504]

>>22701865
>Yes anon, rambling legalistic texts commented on by insane inbred rabbi's is just basically the same as dozens of chapters about Hobbits cornholling through Middle Earth.

I now want a version of LoTR where Hobbits are literally jews, on a mission to destroy the One Shekel that the cool rabbi scammed from some hobo.

[Anonymous No.22703622]

>>22702687
>OP gets pointed out as objectively wrong
>"Oh y-yeah? Post your subjective opinions then!"

[Anonymous No.22703648]

>>22701619
All religious leaders were atheists who invented gods and mythologies as a means guide and civilize people. Without all of human history would have been one giant clownworld.

[Anonymous No.22703651]

I am so desperate for more Tolkien that I started reading Medieval literature

[Anonymous No.22703653]

>>22702687
Also curious

[Anonymous No.22703654]

>>22700538
Its not the key. Tolkein actually lived. Most writers of fantasy haven't. They've just read/listened/watched and plated games inspired by Tolkien, and people influenced by Tolkein, from their room. Not a big surprise its all derivative slop when they lived their existence in a subculture he created.

[Anonymous No.22703660]

>>22703622
where was OP pointed out as objectively wrong?

[Anonymous No.22703662]

>>22703651
Folktales are the only decent substitute. I've found even asian ones work. Monkey, the westernized version of Journey to the West I quite enjoyed. The poetic edda sworks well. Even arabian knights. Beowulf.
He did some other short stories which are really good and wrote some essays which are nice reads as well.

[Anonymous No.22703665]

>>22700501
Poe did that with horror.

[Anonymous No.22703679]

>>22703660
nta but tolkien did not invent high fantasy

[Anonymous No.22703912]

>>22703651
Wagner's Ring Cycle is a nice alternative. You can even find some similarities *cough* plagiarism *cough* to Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.22705230]

>>22703653
You might wanna have a seat. It could take a while.

[Anonymous No.22705253]

>>22700509
Hot damn, that's cringe even by the board's standards.

[Anonymous No.22705260]

>>22701596
Are you fourteen or just illiterate?

[Anonymous No.22705277]

>>22700509
2pbp

[Anonymous No.22705281]

>>22700501
All of tolkiens work is him riffing off of Germanic mythology and christianity. Any equal would have to come from a different culture and draw upon the myths of his own people.

[Anonymous No.22705492]

It wouldn’t be particularly difficult to surpass Tolkien. You would need a concept distinct enough from LOTR to not be branded as derivative whilst also having a writing style which surpasses Tolkien’s homely but shoddy prose. ASOIAF perhaps had the best chance of accomplishing this but there are numerous problems with the work.
>His cinematic writing style is not in keeping with an epic tale.
>Despite being touted as the ‘opposite’ of LOTR philosophically it is not.
>Bloated with no clear direction; clearly making it up as he goes along.
>Has too many characters.
There is a streamlined, dense and profound version of ASOIAF in an alternate universe which surpassed Tolkien. However, I suspect now nothing will ever surpass it. Perhaps some synthesis of LOTR and ASOIAF could be made but I struggle to see how.

[Anonymous No.22705678]

>>22703665
Karl Edward Wagner blocks your path.

[Anonymous No.22705692]

>>22700505
And he hasn't yet finished stamping on the corpse.

[Anonymous No.22705699]

>>22705492
>ASOIAF perhaps had the best chance of accomplishing this

[Anonymous No.22705715]

>>22705699
What would you suggest as an alternative for a runner-up that tried, got far, yet missed the mark?

[Anonymous No.22705734]

>>22703665
I’m being completely unironic and forthright when I write that Stephen King most certainly surpassed him

[Anonymous No.22705829]

>>22705715
He probably has a strong dislike of GRRM but can’t really articulate what was actually incorrect about what was written—ASOIAF would’ve definitely surpassed LOTR in the cultural zeitgeist were it not for those last couple of seasons of GOT—so left out an accompanying refutation hoping that merely quoting what irked him served as a suitable retort. Very silly.

If a more competent writer than GRRM penned the series it had the potential to recontextualise modern fantasy into the yin and yang of LOTR and ASOIAF—two works with completely contrasting, distinct ideologies battling for dominance. It doesn’t matter what /lit/ hipsters who have some strange attachment to the fantasy published before Tolkien think.

But GRRM is a romantic and doesn’t really want to write a grey morality tale despite assuring everyone he does. He still has the prophesied hero Jon Snow with the special bloodline, pet albino wolf, and heart of gold who will save the world against the Others but not get the throne at the end—as if that serves as an adequate subversion of the genre.

[Anonymous No.22705836]

>>22703654
Do you think modern people can live?

[Anonymous No.22705837]

>>22701709
Well, he's dead, so.

[Anonymous No.22705846]

>>22703651
That’s how I started but I now I read a lot of medieval literature and it’s better than Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.22705851]

>>22701650
Isn’t Baldur’s Gate some D&D shit?

[Anonymous No.22705856]

>>22701650
Look at this shit dude…
https://youtu.be/2p-5RXAitTI?si=EQKgrnVJ03Xk55Zj
No way this was good

[Anonymous No.22705857]

>>22700501
Lord Dunsany mogs this hack

[Anonymous No.22705874]

>>22705734
This is the most vile shit I've seen posted here in a long time. Truthfully, you deserve to be pilloried for the rest of your days. If not that, it at least should be legal to have the reading rights of your ilk unconditionally revoked, and your libraries burned to cinders.

[Anonymous No.22705913]

>>22705857
Tom Bombadil > Mana Yood

[Anonymous No.22705920]

>>22703679
"high fantasy" just means that the people on the cover have sleeves.

[Anonymous No.22705925]

>>22705874
You can raze my small library but I’d rather be killed than let my vast collection of pdfs, categorised and alphabetised, be deleted.

[Anonymous No.22705937]

>>22705829
>the cultural zeitgeist of the early 21st century
... is worthless. It's low culture, as opposed to the higher-culture context in which Tolkien wrote. Readers were simply more literate in Tolkien's time.
>If a more competent writer than GRRM penned the series it had the potential to recontextualise modern fantasy
Agree with this. But Gurm is objectively an incompetent writer. There are sentences in his books that literally do not make sense in English. And his "prose" isn't worthy of the name.

[Anonymous No.22705956]

>>22703912
Never read House of Wolfings, the Edda, the Volsunga Saga, or every folklore native to Finland, Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, France, or Northern Germany, huh?

[Anonymous No.22705962]

>>22705937
>It's low culture, as opposed to the higher-culture context in which Tolkien wrote. Readers were simply more literate in Tolkien's time.
Lord of the Rings only enjoys the mainstream success it does today because of the hippie movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s where it became a favourite of college students and those in the counterculture. They were the first to start Tolkien societies and clubs. Tolkien greatly disliked it. I’m unsure of the popularity he enjoyed prior to the popularisation of Lord of the Rings overseas but it was small enough for him to respond to almost all the letters readers sent to him.

[Anonymous No.22705967]

>>22700501
I think it's more profound that every foray outside of his specific "multicultural fuck-nuggets of grand heritage stop a specific problem far away" has been a failure.
GRRM doesn't know politics.
Le'Guine doesn't know perspective-over-reality.
Steven King doesn't know how to write.
Speculative fiction proper cannot into progress and fear thereof.
Either people interested in constructing a fictive world or worldly byproduct aren't intuitive, or he did indeed salt the earth with an intangible itch upon the reader.

[Anonymous No.22705974]

>>22705962
Literary merit is not correlated with popularity. If anything, there's an inverse correlation.
Tolkien was popularised more by the film adaptations than students and hippies.

[Anonymous No.22705989]

>>22705974
>Tolkien was popularised more by the film adaptations than students and hippies.
So he was popularised by pretty much the same audiences that popularised GOT?

[Anonymous No.22706000]

>>22705989
I have no statistics to refute that. But if you hang out on /tv/, you'll get the strong impression that most fans of the Tolkien movies are conservative males, while fans of Game of Thrones are "liberal" females (and/or trannies). Pic related.
Also, I specifically said that literary merit is unrelated to popularity.

[Anonymous No.22706337]

>>22705846
Any recs?

[Anonymous No.22706344]

>>22700509
This is excellent baiting well done

[Anonymous No.22706369]

>>22703651
Iktfbro. The search can lead you into mythology, and history, and that can be really rewarding, but in different ways, it can't scratch the same itch. And it can lead you to read other fantasy, but that's so bad it just makes it hurt worse.

When I finished Return of the King, I was 9 or 10, and I felt like crying. I used to dream about being in Middle Earth, and I even used to dream about *reading* LotR - the dream was me turning pages and reading the story. Still my peak literature experience, I read things that are "better" but there's only one first ...

[Anonymous No.22706372]

Have you guys read this?
Are you desperate enough to read the Lays of Beleriand?

[Anonymous No.22706433]

>>22700509
>Quran
Only this one is pure truth. The rest are low-quality fantasy fiction.

[Anonymous No.22706442]

>>22706000
/tv/ is full of retards, but then again so is the rest of 4chan. It's not worth having debates with people who think everything about the value of a work of fiction should be assessed by its ability to be associated with shallow discussions of current events.

[Anonymous No.22706681]

Anyone got a link for a .mobi or .epub of the new revised edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien?

[Anonymous No.22706718]

It's impossible for someone to be similar to Tolkien. I can't imagine a man going through one of the worst wars ever, then from his experience, the main lessons he learned was friendship, the good of humanity, how nature is unconprmisingly beautiful, and inherent goodness. All while being an absolute studious freak when it comes to folklore and linguistics. Tolkien had such a unique human experience and outlook on life that no one can replicate his comfy style and outlook. For everything about him was bizarre in all the best ways

[Anonymous No.22707378]

>>22706372
I'm the idiot who has not only read it, but read it multiple times. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, but there's something comfortable and interesting to me, even if it is sometimes a bit like reading the Uniform Commercial Code

[Anonymous No.22707625]

>>22705492
>There is a streamlined, dense and profound version of ASOIAF in an alternate universe which surpassed Tolkien. However, I suspect now nothing will ever surpass it. Perhaps some synthesis of LOTR and ASOIAF could be made but I struggle to see how.
That's just Shakespeare aside from Shakespeare still being bloated.

[Anonymous No.22707742]

>>22706372
I've read parts of it; whenever I wanted to check a fact or compare the published version with an earlier iteration of that story, I'd check the 12 volumes.
Never actually sit down and read from beginning to end though.

[Anonymous No.22707748]

>>22707742
sat*

[Anonymous No.22707778]

>>22703912
>You can even find some similarities *cough* plagiarism *cough* to Tolkien.
Zero similarities, Tolkien didn't plagiarized shit. Wagner's Ring is incomprehensible schizo mess made by "germ"ans.

[Anonymous No.22707929]

>>22707778
The way Tolkienbros cope about him ripping off Wanger is hilarious, absolute goldmine.
>muh Tolkien said the only similarities it had with Wagner is that both rings were round! They drew inspiration from the same myths and legends!

[Anonymous No.22707936]

>>22700501
I hope at least that you don't believe he created a language.

[Anonymous No.22708048]

>>22707936
He didn't? I've never looked into it, but rather took it as a given since that's all people ever seem to bring up in regards to his worldbuilding.

[Anonymous No.22708636]

>>22708048
He did

[Anonymous No.22708970]

>>22707778
>>22707929
>be angl*id scum
>destroy your own heritage twice because you went full retard with christianity
>Be tolkien
>I want to write a story for anglo's because we aint got shit going for us
>takes the entire corpus of Indo-European Mythology , incorporates Christian theme, copies from the Ring Cycle
>But its an original work!

[Anonymous No.22709018]

>>22700501
>creating
Lovecraft, Robert E Howard and Clark Ashton Smith all predate Tolkien's works.
Michael Moorcock's works came about after Tolkein.
Tolkein invented and ended relatively little, his primary contributions were mostly cancerous to the overall fantasy literature, mainly the fascination with fake languages and worldbuilding.

[Anonymous No.22709026]

>>22700509
this is why I like /lit/. It's an endless spring of the most shitass opinions possible

[Anonymous No.22709254]

>>22705836
Not him, but no.
Zoomer authors literally write about posting on Instagram and going on Tinder dates.
They don't lead lives worth reading about.

[Anonymous No.22709257]

I am going to be the next Tolkien/Patrick O'Brian/Conan Doyle/Umberto Eco

[Anonymous No.22709309]

>>22709257
Even if you were nobody will read your work

[Anonymous No.22709315]

>>22706337
Nibelungenlied (do NOT, repeat, do NOT read a prose translation. It butchers the flow. If possible, read Ryder’s rhyming poetic translation.)

[Anonymous No.22709373]

>>22709257
>all white men
Most publishers will consider this "problematic."
I mean, you're not actually white and male yourself, are you? Are you?

[Anonymous No.22709434]

>>22709373
I am a non-white trans woman actually
>>22709309
Well I want to read it

[Anonymous No.22710468]

>>22707625
What play?