Does Gondolin make sense?

[Anonymous No.23115703]

It’s a huge city in a valley. But nobody is allowed to leave the valley. So all the resources have to be found in the valley to support gondolin.

When I think of gondolin I think of a child making up a story of a secret castle cut off from the world not able to understand that it makes no sense

[Anonymous No.23116125]

>>23115703
Tolkien was a horrible writer, I'm sorry you are only discovering this now :(

[Anonymous No.23116244]

>>23116125
So then why did he get so popular? Is it just because he was the first? If Brandon Sanderson had been alive back then instead old Tolkien and had written stormlight archive would there be a bunch of nerds “studying” Sanderson as if he were some genius?

[Anonymous No.23116267]

>>23115703
I don't think it's supposed to be a HUGE city.
Also he's literally writing a "fairy story".

[Anonymous No.23116637]

>>23115703
Wasn't it basically Ulmo who led Turgon there? He obviously wasn't going to lead him to a place where he and his people would end up starving.

[Anonymous No.23116956]

>>23115703
The artist's view might make it look huge, but the impression I got from the story was that it wasn't that big in terms of population. I can't give you a number, but for example I recall the evacuation of the survivors (total pop. minus some casualty %) through a single narrow tunnel didn't take all that long.
Do you have any specific issues with it?

[Anonymous No.23117048]

>>23116956
I just thought it was random. A hidden city where there is no trade, they are stuck inside a valley dependent on that valley for everything. I didn’t see much of a strategic reason for why gondolin existed. It seemed like a childish idea for turgid to have a secret elf city nobody could know about.

[Anonymous No.23117512]

and who pumps the tires of the batmobile anyway?

[Anonymous No.23117928]

>>23115703

[Anonymous No.23117940]

>>23115703
>What the fuck? How can earth exist if we can't leave it?
Go fuck yourself autist retard.

[Anonymous No.23117971]

where does all the poop go

[Anonymous No.23117991]

>>23117971
Elves don't do that.

[Anonymous No.23118041]

>>23117991
Do half elves take massive shit once they choose to be human then?

[Anonymous No.23118051]

What does elf poop smell like?

[Anonymous No.23118064]

>>23118051

Freshly baked cinnamon rolls

[Anonymous No.23118089]

>>23117048
>I didn’t see much of a strategic reason for why gondolin existed.
???

For peple to live there? Nigger life is not Civilization IV where every settlement is plopped down by a ruler for claiming muh coastline and filling out muh +5 trade route slots. A shitton of actual IRL settlements happened emergently, without any large-scale plan or strategic goal for their placement.

>"b-but muh resources"
Would be a fair point if Turgon was not given the supernice wonderful rich in every resource location by a literal divine power.

[Anonymous No.23118132]

>>23118089
Not to mention elves themselves are semi-divine immortals. I'm not sure it's even established they can starve to death.

[Anonymous No.23118239]

>>23117512
I’m unsure what your point is? When authors create fantasy stories, they world-build to make it more believable. Might as well not criticize jk Rowling for why the time turners were never used for anything important.

[Anonymous No.23118241]

>>23117928
Have you ever criticized no Rowling for her world building?

[Anonymous No.23118247]

>>23118239
>When authors create fantasy stories, they world-build to make it more believable.
when authors create good fantasy stories they build worlds that are in service to narrative and theme. If Tolkien wanted the image of a city of beautiful splendor hidden from the world which is now only spoken of in tragedy then that's what he did with Gondolin. Worldbuilding and it's consequences have been a disaster for fiction

[Anonymous No.23118256]

>>23118239
Tolkien set out to write a heroic fantasy set within a constructed mythos intended to hearken back to an earlier phase of human imagination. Pedantic, literal-minded notions about "world-building" or "believability" were not of the slightest interest to him.

[Anonymous No.23118306]

>>23118256
human imagination has always cared about believability, in some sense

[Anonymous No.23118317]

>>23117971
where do you think lembas comes from

[Anonymous No.23118436]

>>23118306
But not in the sense demanded by 21st century genre fiction fans who are preoccupied with literalistic concerns about internal rules and logic and have largely lost touch with metaphor and symbolism.

Ancient Greeks listening to Homer's poetry likely "believed" in it as a divinely truthful account of their heritage without feeling the need to ask what Odysseus's tax policy was.

[Anonymous No.23118490]

>>23115703
Yes. It's called being sustainable, not a consooooomer pig who keeps consooooming endlessly and multiplying like a virus.

[Anonymous No.23118506]

>>23117928
Retard, every fantasy story has its own internal rules. Without them the entire story would fall apart, because there are no limitations or stakes, hence no tension or struggle. Anything can be accomplished just by invoking magic. There would be no point to writing the story in the first place.

[Anonymous No.23118515]

>>23118256
Then why did he painstakingly explain all the nuances of the riverbeds and values of his world

[Anonymous No.23118570]

>>23118436
People back then were mostly simplistic people who wouldn’t even understand what questions to ask

[Anonymous No.23118603]

>>23118306
believability is not a function of realism; consistency to theme is the ultimate appeal. Even though The Little Prince involves the highly improbable premise of a small child zipping around the cosmos on a comically small planet the story is quite the opposite of senseless