Tolkien: and then the Good King came and cast out the Evil Stewards who were corrupt because they ruled without the correct bloodline. Everything was peaceful after that and there was no more evil. There are two women in this story. Monarchy is good. The actual singular God who created everything wants you to be ruled by a 300 year old nobleman. The End.
GRRM: Feudalism is inherently destructive. Even the Noble Good Guys cause unimaginable suffering due to the structures of the system they operate within. Women are no more than brood mares under Feudalism. There is a Good King whose father was deposed. This Good King has spent his life living amongst the common people in order to become a good ruler. He is being manipulated by cynical actors and will bring devastation to the world when he begins his conquest. Thirty years ago the Hero of Prophecy acted to save the world from the Great Evil. He unleashed devastation on the land, died, and destroyed his own dynasty, possibly dooming the world. There are no gods, only powerful forces beyond our understanding that operate through the power of blood. Once upon a time there was a Good King who ruled justly. He brought peace to the land and improved the common folks' lot tremendously. Due the nature of Feudalism, the succession crisis that succeeded his reign led to the most bloodshed in 300 years. No one who wants war understands its cost.
People who dislike things because they're popular: Wow these are exactly the same!
Counterpoint:
Tolkien: Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow. Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.
Martin: No Tom Bombadil.
Checkmate.
:downbear:
You forgot to add pervy r*pe scenes and other fetishy shit in the GRRM column
I know that Tolkien is problematic, and I'm not really interested in defending him, but I'll take sexless chivalric fantasy over writing that feel like the author wrote it one handed any day
The futility of Daenerys’ revolution was presented in the books too, specifically the way that the slave owners rather quickly recovered from momentary setbacks and the status quo was apparently creeping back without further changes seemingly possible.
Yes because Daenaerys ruling in Essos is a story about a hypocritical white supremacist foreigner who wants to rule a continent by virtue of her birth and conquest, while looking down on brutal dynastic conquerors. She does not study the land or people she's trying to impose her will on. She fucks up by not understanding the power dynamics, listening to her chauvinist (literally) Western advisors, and conquering a state with nuclear arms, erecting a toothless council with no material basis, and then fucking off.
Then when she fucks off to Mereen, it becomes another illustration of class and power. She fucked up her last revolution, so this time she tries to please everyone by permitting those with power to remain in power.
“yes Westeros is a brutally backward and cruel place, but no meaningful change is really possible and efforts to make meaningful change are naive like this one naive character.”
Daenerys has never in the books expressed a desire to end the Feudal system of Westeros because she's not a revolutionary, she's a downwardly mobile noble who experienced hardship and now is capable of understanding that other people who experience that hardship also suffer like she did. You keep bringing up the breaking the wheel thing, which was never spoken in the books.
Moreover, depiction of failed revolution does not mean that revolution is inherently futile.
:michael-laugh: i actually enjoyed the books, but i had an issue with this too. His writing is so pessimistic especially on that point. World is bad, but changing it is always worse, is a pretty fucked world view, very lib one though
Totally understandable. Plenty of room for critique of GRRM for sure
When the show was announced I decided to re-read the books and I quickly realized what a miserable fucking torture porn mess they are and just stopped.
spoiler
Then soon after a scheming Romani fantasy ethnic minority that she made the mistake of sparing betrays her
Yeah who knew that
spoiler
slaughtering someone's entire tribe and then personally saving them from their 15th rape of the day
wouldn't earn you their undying gratitude. What's the objection here?
spoiler
summons the fucking devil in a blood magic ritual, aborts her child, resurrects her husband as a mindless zombie, and facilitates the destruction of the clan
Yeah that's all stuff that happens. It helps illustrate that this is a world of powerful and unknowable blood magic. Again, I don't know what the objection is beyond "this depiction of events is an endorsement of them"
Yes GRRM chose to write about rape to illustrate how horribly violent and misogynistic his Feudal world is. You're welcome to not like that depiction. He chose to write a story that shows that hypocritical moralism at the last second doesn't excuse horrific violence preceding it.
As I said again and again, you're welcome to not like this depiction. But there is easily 100x as much non-sexual violence as there is sexual violence. People are just used to genocide in their stories.
My interpretation of events is Mirri Maz Duur doesn't distinguish between the people who genocided her tribe and their queen who does not have as much power as their king, yet nonetheless has more than anyone else (who else could stop a warrior from raping a woman and claim her as their own slave without killing the warrior?). Dany then proceeds to ask this victim for help in keeping the man who just oversaw the genocide of her people alive. She then exacts revenge on the hypocritical queen who saved her from a force commanded by her husband. She explicitly tells her savior how hollow she finds the gesture.
To extend it to real life, I think the only reason Europeans and their descendants haven't experienced similar reprisals is because of the completeness of their genocides and the effectiveness of the caste systems they erected to prevent just such a thing.
strong independent female character
Who is, I cannot stress this enough, 13.
And I checked, and during the War of the Roses period that the story is loosely based on the average age of first marriage for women was 18-25.
I don't think I'll ever revisit GoT because Martin is such an exhausting author. Dude just doesn't know when to shut the fuck up about banner designs and the cooking methods of a 20 course dinner.
Sure, because Tolkien, and by extension every fucking fantasy author ever, would never wax lyrical about mundane and plot inconsequential stuff just to establish lore or atmosphere...
I distinctly remember a part in the LOTR where the fellowship enters a small forest, and Tolkien does nothing but talk about the flowers growing on the side of the path, their color, their smell, in which part of Middle Earth these flowers usually grow, how some ancient king died, and the flowers were growing on his grave....and on and on and on, for three full pages, only to end the whole paragraph with "and then they left the forest".
GRRM is so much more sharp and precise than most of these other classic fantasy authors, it's just fat shaming when people have to constantly make the same joke about "20 course dinners". It's the attack helicopter joke of fantasy writing.
Contrarian edgelord bullshit is what it is.
It's been a while since I've gone through LotR, I did have a lot more endurance for that kind of stuff when I was young.
IIRC rather than spending eight paragraphs describing food and people's suffering, Tolkien spends six paragraphs describing the landscape and its history.
Isnt the whole point if these stories to build fake physical geography with its fake social dynamics? And the rest is just narrative devices to showcase said fake world(and in some cases the point those dynamics are tring to make). That is why the characters are always in a journey or a quest or an adventure or traveling somewhere.
how would you compare them to Bernard Cornwell? he's the closest i have gotten to reading medieval fantasy
I'm not familiar with his stuff, though I'm definitely interested in a medieval story that's a little more grounded.
honestly i'm really, really enjoying it. had stopped reading for a while and his Saxon Tales series has got me read routinely again. i think he offers a pretty fair and representative picture of how the medieval period was, i don't think he romanticizes or dramatizes it in excess. if you like history, medieval historical fiction or medieval fantasy you'll probably enjoy it. the prologue of the first book is a bit of a slog but after that it picks up pretty quickly.
Dude just doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up about banner designs
I like banner design :I-was-saying:
Getting into a description of a feast and realizing it goes on for three pages.
How many times did he describe what pigeon pie was?
LOTR becomes so much more enjoyable when you root for Sauron and the forces of Mordor who're actually oppressed people waging a people's war against the bourgeois.
Also both are gigamtic figures that can destroy armies with their bare hands.
http://fan.lib.ru/img/e/eskov/last_ringbearer_engl/last_ring_bearer.pdf for anyone who's interested.
Its alright. I read it a while ago, so my memory is pretty hazy, but its very much a reimagining? LotR feels like fantasy partially because of the way Tolkien writes, and Last Ringbearer is written in comparatively modern English; feels almost like a WWI novel in some ways. Similarly, the world and characters from LotR are pretty different feeling, though it 'fits' with the general concept of "Tolkien's novels are Elven propaganda". Not that that's like, in universe canon, but its the 'vibe'.
Overall, its definitely interesting, and pretty decent, but the writing isn't anything special IMO, and the plot gets a little muddy.
The problem is thay Tolkien did something incredibly beautiful and incredibly deep, and people just try to copy the absolute surface level of it to capture the beauty and it doesn't work.
Same thing with Orcs. Tolkien's orcs are highly organized, technologically sophisticated, and generally fairly capable. The dumb "tribal" ethnically coded orc is post-Tolkien. People have largely forgotten that if they represent anything the orcs represent industrialized warfare.
That is really annoying. They just completely misunderstood the book in a very racist way.
It’s nice to have outright evil “pretty people” once in a while.
the games did fall down a little on the pretty front
christ the unmodded elves are hideouschrist the unmodded elves are hideous
"What did Sauron say to Saruman before creating the orcs?"
LOTR: sauron's "evil" army from the east, made of the common clay and swarthy, a multi-ethnic alliance is pretty obviously the rising specter of communism. the ring represents democracy, which is "evil" and calling out to those forces of "evil", which is why the "good guys" have to destroy it because it will pervert the kingdoms and their totally awesome political system of hereditary eugenics and the very light skinned perfect beings.
the ring/democracy has to be destroyed by a little landlord and his bootlicking tenant. people who spend too much time with the ring/democracy or communicating with sauron get "permanently brainwashed" unless a magic white guy in a very, very white robe uses his very white power on them to remove these evil thoughts of solidarity with the rising tide from the east.
also, J R R Tolkien invented the CIA and was a biowarfare consultant during the Korean War. this is all detailed in an extended metaphor within The Silmarillion.
The sole measure of a works quality isn't in its didactics. That's a really boring way to look at art.
One of the most valid musings the ASOIF novels have, which the TV show only barely skims over when absolutely necessary, is its running central theme of power. What is power? What defines it? What does it mean to have it, to use it, who has it, what differentiates someone who has power and one who does not? Why does one become king? What makes a king so special, anyway? What are institutions, and how do they contrast with sheer, raw ability to wield force in the face of them? What good are abstractions like duty, honor, honesty etc in the face of power?
These questions are answered, demonstrated, or mused upon by the various cast members (again, novels only) throughout the various events of the narrative and it becomes a more enriched story, rather than just a story of a civil war and succession crisis with a looming supernatural threat and also detailed descriptions of nobles and houses and sexual abuse and misogyny in the background, or not, as the case may be. GRRM is a pessimist, and concludes that power is inherently bad, and that even good intentions may have wider-reaching negative consequences in the long term. To a well-read leftist, this may seem abhorrent, but it is still a valid series of statements, conclusions aside. I don't think GRRM will "redeem himself" with an out-of-left-field hidden leftist message when (if) Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring come out - he's said his piece by now. There will be few happy endings, and that's fine. It's also, crucially, fiction. ASOIF is no more a valid condemnation or support of feudalism, or of the futility of breaking existing power structures than Animal Farm is a valid critique of communism.
As forTolkien, I feel he has a lot less to say, and less to muse upon, about more abstract philosophical concepts, rather than telling a pretty straightforward story about defeating evil and doing some casual genocide of lesser races.
Dune may not be leftist but the campbellians still have ambitions toward scientific history so Herbert made a lot of effort in that front.
There is even a revew of dune in lecture format by Peter Turchin. If you whant to know what someone who studies historical dynamics thinks of it.
Yhea. Campbellians are definetly not leftist.
I do find more in comon with them than with libs. For some reason.
Interesting i was not aware. So the spice is the equivalent of that but for space travel. That is an interesting ecological concept. I wonder wat conditions lead to such an arrangment. Would mangroves be a similar type of plant?
I agree with most of this, but I don't think that it being a critique of power precludes it being a critique of Feudalism as well. It definitely smooths over plenty of the details (and is plainly undialetical in the way it depicts all of these kingdoms as coherent bodies changing relatively little over time) but I think the kernel is close enough for it to work.
I would personally make the case that if you want to critique a real-world subject like feudalism, liberalism, fascism, communism etc, then it should be grounded in real-world historical examples of its effects and why you're making a case for or against it. An allegorical work, or even a more grounded one set in a world that is total fiction and has no basis for having a feudalistic system other than the author's fancy is not as valid as one explaining why feudalism worked in the early to late middle ages, why it eroded away or was overthrown and what historical influences led to its demise, to be replaced by liberalism. Fiction tends to leave too many things open to interpretation, so if it's not clearly in favour of one real-world ideological basis in favor of another, you get brain-dead takes like "uhhh yeah Hunger Games is actually about fighting communism" or Squid Game, or anything else. In other words, you could make a work of historical fiction, be as accurate as you like with the details, condemn feudalism in the text as subtly or overtly as one wishes, and champion the cause of liberalism in a setting where it makes historical and dialectical sense to do so.
Maybe I'm too literal, but I simply assume all fiction is inherently reactionary or not well-thought through enough to tell the difference. Helps me sift out the bullshit by just keeping the guard up.
Well on that note I don't think I've ever read a work of fiction that's actually dialectical, let alone one that models itself after something historical.
Maybe The Expanse is the closest?
Disclaimer: The Canterbury Tales had an amazing anti-dogmatic fart joke that stood the test of time. I’m not against all potty references.
That was also the first recorded instance of "tee-hee" in the English language.
If you want good Grimdark fantasy check out the Books of the Black Company. Basically fantasy Vietnam from the perspective of the slightly-less bad guys.
A hill I will die on: the LotR books aren't reactionary (not revolutionary either). The movies aren't either but I'll admit that there are some reactionaries who pick up on some "defend the west" type shit that you could extrapolate from the movies but not the books.
Everyone wants to read allegory into LotR. Everyone wants to think Tolkien is trying to "say something" or that his sociopolitical views just bleed through the pages. Sure, there's some inherent bias in his work - he's a white dude who grew up in the first half of the 20th century, of course there's biases at play. But Tolkien tried (and succeeded, I think) to create a mythology free of allegory. The point is the story and the world he built, not "the ring of power is just an allegory for trying to do political things".
Ah, I see, yeah I have no familiarity at all with GRRM or his books at all so
I think that's a generous reading of Martin. I'm a big asoiaf fan but it reads to me like Great Man theory. Especially if the books are supposed to end like the show did (it will never end though).
(it will never end though)
Because GRRM will do a Kentaro Miura?
I'm pretty sure eru illuvatar doesn't "want" anything for you because the world was sung into existence and he fucked right off unless you think he's tom bombadil in which case he fucked off to the woods to have hot river nymph sex with his wife
Hard to erase the accomplishments of beings who spent the entirety of existence sitting on their asses watching their evil big brother invent new war crimes to inflict on helpless bystanders.
