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
You forgot to add pervy r*pe scenes and other fetishy shit in the GRRM column
I think the omission was intentional to make GRRM look better, just like the omission of the defeatist anti-revolution messaging by leaving out the presentation of just how futile and just as bad it is to try to "break the wheel" too, which makes it seem totally like a leftist story.
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.
If GRRM would like to present more about that, or more of anything of all except spinoffs and cash-in IPs and dodging the completion of Winds of Winter, he is quite welcome.
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.
You just framed my point further. Unless you're making a Thermian Argument for why the story happened the way it did because it had to happen the way it did, you just illustrated the fact that the one major revolutionary character against the status quo didn't just fight a losing battle, but didn't stand a chance to begin with.
You criticized Tolkien for his presentation of divine rights of kings, of destiny and of born-good and born-evil beings, all of that being valid ideological criticism that I actually agree with. In turn, I am presenting ideological criticism of not only what GRRM wrote, but how he wrote it, with the rather strongly implied message of "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."
You even pointed out how Daenerys was hypocritically faulty. Yeah, great, so were all the people attempting to change society somewhat in Legend of Korra. That is a convenient, even lazy plot mechanism in Korra: every conflict was resolved neatly by presenting the revolutionaries as hypocritical villains, which was easy points for the status quo. What you said frames Daenerys the same way.
The other point I was making all along is that you're clearly being unflattering of Tolkien's work while demanding a generous and kind appraisal of GRRM's work, even adding a sort of "his narrative emphasis is necessary and good" the way that we were told for decades that news reporters are strictly "objective" and just report the news as it is and don't actually, ever ever ever, decide what is newsworthy and what isn't.
There is limited time even in a 24 hour news hour, and there is limited attention for a reader reading a book and there's limited words on a page. Subjective choices must be made, and after a while, after enough of those choices are made, "realism" claims or not, "illustrating the setting" and so on, the author is still deciding what is fit to print and what the audience is going to see (and, especially since 1995, expects to see and wants to see more of). There is valid criticism to be had when an author keeps illustrating the same thing again and again far beyond what is necessary to make whatever points were originally claimed.
“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.
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.
Yes, conveniently, the apparent revolutionary figure and the only one that was even presented with a plausible chance of improving society somewhat, hypocrisies and all, has the same downward trajectory as a Legend of Korra villain. It doesn't have to be a leftist revolutionary story, but because you took shots at Tolkein's status quo enforcement, I returned fire accordingly. Neither has to be a leftist work, but you made that claim for what you like, I did not.
Moreover, depiction of failed revolution does not mean that revolution is inherently futile.
So far, in GRRM's books, it certainly is. I'm sure lots of people are still waiting for Winds of Winter, and judging by how it's gone so far, I'm skeptical that revolutions against the status quo will be shown any differently, if they are shown at all. His focus and emphasis are elsewhere. In fact his focus does seem to be anywhere but finishing the book that so many apparently hope would fix whatever the show botched in Season 8.
Also, attempting to "break the wheel" makes things just as bad if not worse, so just pick your favorite quippy reasonably sexually violent noble to root for! :so-true:
: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
You're perfectly welcome and allowed to enjoy them, but since the starter of this thread took shots at Tolkien and presented GRRM in such a flattering and totally leftist way, I had to say something.
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"
"Objective" news reporters still have to decide (or have decided for them by the corporation) what "objective" news is fit to report.
Fiction writers have even less of an excuse for what they choose to write. What they write is a choice, and presenting a fictional world "realistically" is still a matter of choice about what is "realistically" presented, especially in frequency and emphasis. It may not "endorse" sexual violence to write about it, but writing about it and writing about it again and writing about it again and writing about it again and writing about it again is at some point clearly a narrative choice and not just "illustration" or "an event," especially with how it's framed in the story (or the show, with the author's already implied permission).
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 before many times in this thread, it's one thing to illustrate it and another to illustrate it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Dune had
spoiler
rape as a plot point when Baron Harkonnen raped a Bene Gessarit and managed to survive a retalitory Golm Jabbar poisoning which directly shaped his appearance and his psyche forever after
and the point was illustrated without being revisited again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. At some point, it simply becomes about what the author wants to emphasize more than what the story absolutely needs, and clearly you and the rest of his fandom are totally fine with that but if you can't see how that's offputting to other people, I don't know how else to explain 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.
Yeah I don't.
I didn't even imply that I was absolutely fond of all the non-sexual violence presented as exhaustively as banners and pigeon pie, either. To me, GRRM gets too lost in the details of what he gets into, and what he gets into is unpleasant overall for me, be it slaughter or sexual violence. That's a matter of subjective taste, of course.
Dune has plenty of murder and mayhem and weighty consequences and presents the perils and potentials of power in a way that fascinate me, and it does it without repetitive "and this battle was this gory!" or going into excessive details about the Harkonnens' latest acts of brutality, sexual or otherwise. That's more my jam. Things can be illustrated without being driven into the ground with repetition and over-emphasis.
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.
:I-was-saying: There's plenty to criticize about Tolkien but I liked the history bits while traveling the land.
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.
I will admit that it had long-lasting consequences to present elves as so near-divine and so perfect that the notion that them simply speaking made men listen in awe and believe everything they said resonated through generations of fiction that came after, resulting in the still-insufferable "elves are perfect and better than you" power fantasy trope still common in contemporary fiction.
I do appreciate how the Elder Scrolls often presents the Altmer, especially the Thalmor ruling class, as magic nazis that want to magic-genocide their ethnic enemies literally out of existence. It's nice to have outright evil "pretty people" once in a while.
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.
Copy of a copy syndrome is a hell of a drug.
:miyazaki-laugh: talked about this, even if it was about anime/manga.
"What if older thing... but rebooted and grittier" has been a plague on countless franchises and IPs for about two decades now, too. :cringe:
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?"
They're supposed to be superficially pretty, which the Elder Scrolls Online presents a little better.
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.
It can be done many other ways, yes. And a lot of them were brought up here, such as the writing structure, and how it can lose some people to talk about flowers on a road and how they relate to kings, or exhaustive descriptions of pigeon pie or how the tiles looked as blood flowed over them again.
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.
I'm a massive fan of Dune (the original author's works anyway), and while I wouldn't call it a leftist work, it explored similar ideas of power with an emphasis on the dangers of messianic figures and their consequences, and I enjoyed it greatly in my formative years for what it was.
Dune had sexual violence as a plot point (most notably Baron Harkonnen and his encounters with the Bene Gessarit), but unlike GRRM, the narrative focus didn't keep going back to that again and again and again and again under pretenses of illustration and realism. The point was made, and then the story moved on.
A story doesn't have to be fundamentally leftist for me to enjoy it, but at least Dune had the courage to show actual radical and even destructive long-lasting societal change instead of framing revolution as naive, hypocritical, and silly. There's only so many times that GRRM's novelties in 1995 can or should be excused until they just seem repetitive except to himself and to his already locked-in fandom that wants more of the same.
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.
Oh I know it. I didn't say that Dune had nothing to say, far from it, but that I was making no flattering pretensions that every comrade had to read Dune as a supplement to theory.
Yhea. Campbellians are definetly not leftist.
I do find more in comon with them than with libs. For some reason.
Herbert also became single-mindedly fascinated with "barrier" ecosystems, specifically how a specific plant at the edges of deserts seemed to deter the desert's ongoing encroachment. That singular importance of that plant species lead to the idea of the spice melange.
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?
It's been a while, so I don't remember which specific plant caught his attention, but whatever it was, that was the basis of the space melange as a central and pivotal and necessary element that everything else depended upon.
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?
“the more she drank the more she shat and the more she shat the thirstier she grew”
I know that was a novelty in 1995 but how many decades of that remains a novelty with inherent value because peepee poopoo farty butt? May as well turn Jon Snow into a pickle and declare it's the funniest shit Westeros ever saw.
Disclaimer: The Canterbury Tales had an amazing anti-dogmatic fart joke that stood the test of time. I'm not against all potty references.
There's a literal river of shit that's full of the author's political enemies, too. It's on the nose (and everywhere else) but still amusing.
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.
That was also the first recorded instance of “tee-hee” in the English language.
The real obscenity in that story. :disgost:
People who dislike things because they’re popular
That's presumptive as all get out. I enjoy Tolkien's works while knowing what ideological messes they are.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
I dislike GRRM's work, by and large, because the novelty of "what if sort of Tolkien, but grimmer, darker, and
spoiler
lots and lots of rape as plot points and narrative emphasis"
wasn't appealing to me in 1995 and started a persistent trend that is still going and has long since wore out its welcome for me.
Disclaimer: I can handle "grimdark" somewhat. Warhammer Fantasy is still fun for me, especially because it lacks GRRM's narrative preoccupations.
It'd be nice if that titillation wasn't decades of now-redundant "shock" value. Sex can be sexy without becoming yet another narrative emphasis on
spoiler
Ye Olde Gaynge Raype.
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.
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?
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".
I don't think the LotR books ever intended to be politically charged or motivated (politics and political analysis of the author and the work are still inevitable, that said), but because shots were fired about how Tolkien's work was politically pro-feudalistic and supposedly GRRM's work is (in far more flattering portrayal) politically different and apparently superior for leftist consumption, the controversy in this thread began.
Ah, I see, yeah I have no familiarity at all with GRRM or his books at all so
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.
