>Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom,

>>8027822
Interesting though not exactly original observations from someone who certainly knows what they're talking about, considering Martin is considered the current grandmaster of medieval fantasy.

That doesn't make him smarter or better than Tolkien. You have to remember Tolkien was writing about myth, but Martin is writing within a ghetto that was formed in a large part due to Tolkien's writings.

>>8027822
The more I see this fat faggot the more I hate him.
Tolkien wasn't a "Dark Fantasy" writer.

>>8027846
That's because there wasn't such a thing as dark fantasy, let alone fantasy, before tolkien. Before him there were folktales and myths

>>8027822
Tolkien books were all about the "legend and adventure" side of medieval fiction, so he didn't cared enough to put stuff like tax policy and genocides, also he originally wanted to write for his grandchildren.
GRRM has a more realistic approach to it and it's also more recent, which explains why he cares about that kind of stuff.

I haven't a clue about genre fiction but fuck this faggot

>>8027822
>I don't understand that greater myths are what's really important, therefore I'll prattle on about pedantic little facts for "realism"

Truly a small mind

>>8027850
>there wasn't such a thing as dark fantasy, let alone fantasy, before tolkien. Before him there were folktales and myths
this is what fantashit readers actually believe

>>8027822
Stop false flagging, you're giving us genre apologists a worse name.
>>8027850
Tolkien wasn't the first fantasy author you fucknugget. He drew inspiration from the earlier Worm Ouroboros, for example.
>>8027851
Also, Christianity.
>>8027878
Greater myths aren't, themselves, "what's really important"; but pedantic little facts certainly aren't.

That said, I think he's really ham-fistedly trying to say that realism is more important than idealism.

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>>8027822
>all this coming from a man who cannot even explain how the weather in his world works

>>8027938
He didn't even put any thought into how having seasons last for multiple years would effect crops.

Pro-tip: maintaining a suitable topsoil level wouldn't have been possible for so many reasons.

>>8027961
>possible
Impossible* Fuck.

>>8027961
you know, I always did wonder about their food preservation techniques if winter supposedly lasts for years or decades at a time. I get that parts of the world aren't as heavily affected as the others, but its not like The Reach can have production even in winter to support an entire continent's worth of people.

>>8027966
GRRM doesn't have much experience in life outside of writing, he'll probably come up with crops that can grow in winter or something retarded like that.

>>8027971
Garlic
Leeks
Onions
Radishes (Raditz)
Lettuce
Peas
Potatoes

for winter and shit

>>8027975
Those plants don't really "grow" in winter, they can be kept alive and picked in winter but frost will still fuck their shit up.

>>8027961
oh GOD fuck you

>>8027975
Protip: Potato's must be harvested and buried during the winter months or else they will die

>>8027975
Also Loquats.

>>8027822
>Go read your dead greeks from a bygone age and see how much wiser you get
Is this bait?

>>8028030
Yes, you stupid nigger.

>>8027971
there are crops that grow in winter you idiot

>>8028127
Sustainably and commercially? try again tim.

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>>8028131
Rye says hi, buddy

>>8027966
Maybe in a world that has years of winter plants have adapted to that. Maybe it fucking magic. You're more insufferable than he is.

>>8028133
Rye germinates in autumn and enter a vegetative state in the winter, it doesn't start growing until spring; It's a winter wheat not a fucking miracle crop.

>>8027822


if you read fantasy to find out what's the king tax policy you really should go out more

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>>8028152

>>8028148
>>8028133
>>8028131
>>8028127
>>8028006
>>8028012
>>8027986
>>8027975
>tfw all /lit/ browsers are actually farmers who live within driving distance of each other

>>8027938
it's magical in nature :o)

Fantasy is not supposed to be realistic, you know, FANTASY

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>>8027822
I will respect him once he resolves the open story threads of his giant fantasy epic in a satisfactory way.

So far A Song of Ice and Fire smells a lot like it has the Lost syndrome. A lot of story line puzzle pieces that look like they will fit together perfectly in the end and reveal some sort of master plan, but in the end it turns out he just made up shit as he went and there never was any overarching plan to the story to begin with.

Maybe that's why he takes forever to write his next book, he doesn't have a clue how to salvage the train wreck.

>>8028131
In a world where Winter lasts years, the ecosystem is probably a little bit different friendo.

>>8028227
He's already got the full story written out, plot wise. It really doesn't seem like Lost to me, either; things are either collided, or on course to be collided.

What I'm waiting for is the obviously inevitable Peasant's socialist uprising.

the question is legit, the climate greatly affects crops and it led to famines in the past

no crop can grow if we assume a winter that lasts a few years

then, if you consider the real people who lived at the north where the climate can be assumed as perpetual winter, they were not farmers, they were hunters, stockbreeders and fishermen

>>8028231
your phrase literally means nothing
that's leaving aside that you use the therm ecosystem completely wrong

>>8028231
In a world where Winter lasts years, human beings maybe wouldn't exist at all, all organisms would evolve differently, adapt to the season cycle and the winter wouldn't be so dangerous for them.

>>8028245
>He's already got the full story written out, plot wise.
He only has the ending, if I remember correctly.

>>8028251
>"you used the therm ecosystem wrong"
how many layers of irony do you have painted on your shiny grinning skull

>>8028251
>they were hunters, stockbreeders and fishermen

Very weirdly there's only mention of one island that hunts whales and that isn't in Westeros, it would be incredibly difficult to stay calorie natural eating fish and goat.

>>8027822
>Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

I'd say why not? Tolkien was a Christian, and the philosophy behind his books is largely traditional, Christian, and moralistic. Orcs are in some ways a representation of sin, so why would they not be eradicated.

>>8028324
The orcs were capable of redeemtion, without Sauron's evil forcing them.

>>8027822
>Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
lol, wat?

>>8028323
desu i think their 'winter' wasn't a real winter but a period of a few colder years which still had summer periods warm enough for crops... it would still lead to famines probably

>>8028323
What is calorie neutral? Not burning more than you eat vice versa? I think they'll manage, humans have done it.

To be fair, he does mention famines happening in winter and people committing suicide in order to leave enough food for everyone else.

>>8028210
Toppest kek of the week

>>8028254
>He only has the ending
>Everyone dies

>>8028340
>Not burning more than you eat vice versa?
Yep.

>I think they'll manage, humans have done it.

Eh, not really, the Sami and Inuit only managed it because they got incredibly lucky by being located near reindeer and whale.

>>8028359
Well on the upside winters might be long but there is at least a summer eventually. And ask the Russians, you can pickle or just cellar store food for a long time. And our plants haven't even evolved to stay survive years of winter.

>>8028370

russia doesn't really have a severe climate it's just colder than europe because europe is warmed by the gulf stream... its climate is similar to the canada's one. also generally continental countries have colder winters and warmer summers than coastal countries

not counting its far north of course which is no different than, say, alaska

>>8028356
Everyone freezes to death

>>8028210
Just imagining this to be true makes every thread on here suddenly worth reading. Thanks, Anon.

Orcs were made in factories from mud. They're just very dangerous sentient pottery. No cradles.

>>8028213
This will be it and it'll prove him more of a hack than he already is.

>>8028534
that was a mud craddle

>>8027964
So maintaining topsoil wouldn't have been impossible. What, exactly, is your complaint with GRRM?

>>8028552
topsoil is kinda important senpai

>>8028627
Absolutely. Good thing that he clarified that maintaining topsoil wouldn't have been impossible in GRRM's world.

>>8028534
That's a movie thing, they most likely reproduce like humans, though it is never described directly.

An important idea of the universe is that only Eru Iluvatar can create sentient beings out of nothing. Orcs were created by corrupting elves or humans. A process that can be reproduced by sufficiently powerful beings like Morgoth or Sauron. This might mean orcs don't really fuck, they just get replaced with new corrupted humans. It's also not really clear how long orcs live, they might be immortal until killed like elves.

There are definitely lineages of orcs though. For example the orc Azog had a son. He could be adopted, but I guess it's save to say at least some kind of orcs can have babies.

>The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that.

ABSOLUTELY SAVAGE

>>8028736
>dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that

what about the war of the roses? you basically described richard iii :^)

p.s. also napoleon, he used to be handsome in youth (like sauron when he was a good maya) but then got fat and ugly (got corrupted like sauron)

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>>8027822
>you don’t portray [sexual violence], then there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that.
Oh please. He portrays sexual violence because sexual violence interests him, not out of some altruistic need to hold a mirror up to society. Anyone who has read more than a few chapters of his writing can see that plainly.

Enough with the orcs, I want more topsoil-related bitchslappings and hi-jinks.

>>8028534
Uruk came from the mud factories infused with Saruman's magic. Goblins (or Orcs) are fallen, corrupted elves and probably reproduce normally.

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>>8027822
>So why do you shit on gurrm so much?
So shitty GoT fanboys don't get ahead of themselves.

>He sounds like a very wise fellow
He sounds like a retard who missed the point of Tolkien

>and a lot better than Tolkien
picrel

>>8028784
>Uruk came from the mud factories infused with Saruman's magic. Goblins (or Orcs) are fallen, corrupted elves and probably reproduce normally.
Tolkien hadn't decided before he died I don't think

tolkien mentioned that uruk appeared when orcs began to capture humans to supposedly breed with them

>>8027975
>potatoes
Do you have ANY idea what kind of fuckery including potatoes in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting would do?

>>8028809
Oh, that's true actually. I'm thinking of the Silmarillion, and who knows how much of that is actually the work of Chris Tolkien?

>>8028819
I don't. Enlighten me.

>>8028636
The problem is you have a fat man picking fault with what Tolkien didn't explain but hasn't done any himself.

Any argument of:
>use your imagination, we just did
is as valid for the points he raised against Tolkien.

>>8028910
He's making fun of >>8027964's grammatical failures.

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>Implying this isn't the only crop that matter when winter is "coming"

>>8027975
I've grown all of those things and they would absolutely die over years of winter

>>8028137
>Maybe in a world that has years of winter plants have adapted to that. Maybe it fucking magic. You're more insufferable than he is.
Maybe he should explain that if he's so interested in the economy of the world. The majority of his plants and animals are direct imports from our world. Not to mention his world is hilariously large

Gritty reboots and grittier storylines have been a staple of fiction for a while, so I'm not sure how these thoughts are supposed to be particularly groundbreaking.

>But if you’re going to write about war, and you just want to include all the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and things like that and you don’t portray [sexual violence]

tfw no books portraying high impact sexual violence against dem orcs

>>8027822
>not understanding that Tolkien was trying to correct what he perceived as England's lack of a purely English fable/legend like the Aesirs for the Norse or the Olympians and titans for the Greeks.

He was writing a legendarium fuckwit, not shitty made for the screen genre fiction with degeneracy at every turn to keep the masses entertained

Why do people connect Tolkien with Grumm?
They wrote different things.
I just don't see how could you compare them.

>>8029032
Because they haven't read either; they've watched Game of Thrones.

>>8029032
Level of popularity and similar-sounding names I would guess.

>>8029032

They're just the two most famous fantasy authors right now.

>>8029037
Even if you have only seen the movies,you can clearly see the difference in tone.
LotR is lighthearted and is about the journey and the things that happen while the characters are on the road,while GoT is about character interaction and the struggle for power within the nobility mainly(don't quotoe me on this one,I never touched anything related to Grumm)

ITT: People judging Tolkien without having read The Silmarillion/Children of Hurin

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>people take that hack seriously

>>8029125
I don't see the problem with that quote.

>>8029125
Very Pynchonesque

I think most people hate on Tolkien because of all those fantasy writers who were influenced by him, and wrote more or less the same kind of stories.

The thing is that, unlike the fantasy writers that followed, Tolkien's legendarium was a very personal interpretation of Christianity and Nordic mythology, a place in which to escape and express his nostalgia for a world that never existed. This escapism helped release the creativity of a man deeply influenced by tradition and dogma (by themselves anti-creative concepts), in a world changing in the most rapid way possible.

Middle Earth was created as a way to preserve and built upon values and ideas that have absolutely no relevance in our 20th (and 21st) century everyday life. That, I think, is its charm.

SUNSET FOUND HER SQUATTING IN THE GRASS. HER FAT PINK CUNT BECAME THE WORLD.

>>8028939
This.
I used to think that "winter is coming" is a warning for the people to store enough food for winter.

Because Tolkien was taking and adapting most of his stuff from mythology, where there is a good amount of "Good and Wise King"

>>8028939
>Not to mention his world is hilariously large
You don't know shit, I can't remember the name but a while back I was reading a fantasy novel where the author didn't put any thought into distances travelled or... well anything.

Literally everybody thought the teleportation spells weren't instantaneous (they were) because every time they transported to a different city the sun was in a different position.

So when happens when our MC teleports over to the next city? he somehow manages to figure out a radical new concept called time zones, the time difference the two cities right next to each other? +10 hours.

Like what the actual fuck? Is the planet in your setting the size of Jupiter?

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>>8029339
the magic the gathering main planet actually is the size of jupiter

>>8027938
It's not surprising considering most of the book just involves basically superheroes and upper class notables. He thinks failing to focus on sex and violence is "fundamentally dishonest", yet failing to offer proportional focus on the vast majority of this society's population (the "smallfolk") is the same issue. It's not really an issue of course, because it's fine for books to have particular focuses. But he'd be hypocritical to attack Tolkien for being dishonestly narrow when his own books have about 1/10 the breadth of his waistline.

Why do people want fantasy to be realistic?

>>8029401
Because escapism doesn't have to be unrealistic. Because the fantastic is not mutually exclusive with many elements of realism.

>>8028921
WHEATFAGS ON SUICIDE WATCH

>>8029535
He's talking about rape.

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There's a reason Christopher Tolkien hates how popular TLotR has become. It's not something the common man can properly appreciate, and should he try anyway, the result is wholly vulgar.

That is essentially what Martin is, a vulgar man with a vulgar story, and naturally if he has the gall to compare himself to Tolkien he readily equates the crudity of his work with some kind of literary virtue. This is a very modern lens, and while TLotR is not a modern work (thank god) Martin will still bring it under this contemporary scrutiny to add the power of its name to his, the very comparison invites the idea that the two are comparable. Martin is little more than an opportunistic hack pandering to the unwashed masses, and isn't that the very brunt of this rhetoric? Shameless self-aggrandizement, the worship of shit, and the recruitment of the shitty.

>>8027822
>quiet agricultural medieval society
>MACHIAVELLIAN SCHEMING EVERYWHERE


Yeah, ok.

This is bait, but Tolkein was not writing a book about fucking politics, he was writing a mythical story. It not being written in a twentieth century modern mindset was not only intentional, IT WAS THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

GOT and LOTR are two entirely different works that have only surface level similarities.

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>>8029612
Martin is a soap writer. Like all soaps, his has themes, points to make, some pondering; that's not the point. The point is relationships, drama, *plot*.

Tolkien was a literary author. He wrote a plot, yes, but it had themes, points, pondering, and all the elements you might, if you were really autistic, boil literature down to.

Ordinarily, this would be fine. Different strokes for different folks, and so on. But in the OP, we see one of Martin's few, definite "points". Realism; war is shit, nobles are shit, peasants are shit, and they're also all right. He rejects the Good King because he only believes in Kings. And this point is naturally opposed to the deliberately mythologically idealistic writing of Tolkien, and to a lesser extent the more Christian thinking of Tolkien; that everyone has -- flaws, can sin, can fall to temptation, but everyone can be redeemed, and so on. And then also the devil-like villains of Sauron and Morgoth.

It's a matter of one of Martin's *better* qualities clashing with what makes Tolkien literarily superior.

How does this even make sense?

It would be like Radiohead saying, "I'm glad our caveman forefathers invented the bone-on-rock drum, but I have a QUIBBLE with the lack of poetic lyrical imagery and complex time signatures!"

Does he not realize he is building on Tolkien's work? That he is a derivation? That Tolkien allowed him to write his Byzantine 'low' fantasy drivel?

>>8029836
>Does he not realize he is building on Tolkien's work?
I'd argue he builds more on Howard and Burroughs than Tolkien, although he does himself place more emphasis on Tolkien.

He does love Tolkien, by the way. It is, by his words, what got him into "good" fantasy.

LoTR: mythical, fantasy, world-building, simplistic but deep

ASoIaF: she shat and she shat, pudgy cocks, sexual perversion, little about politics, 3rd grade morality at best

>>8029339
>So when happens when our MC teleports over to the next city? he somehow manages to figure out a radical new concept called time zones, the time difference the two cities right next to each other? +10 hours.

you shouldn't think that people back then were stupid

the conception of time zones follows simply from the idea that the sun travels the sky while the day passes because it's either the sun orbits the earth or the earth orbits the sun, if we imagine either of those conceptions it's obvious that the sun should be at different heights in different faraway places. btw the ancient greeks already knew that the earth was a sphere and the idea that medieval scholars thought that the earth was flat is wrong. but even a flat earth would suffice for the time zones idea

it just had had no practical implications and had been overlooked till humans got the ability to travel fast enough

>Literally everybody thought the teleportation spells weren't instantaneous (they were) because every time they transported to a different city the sun was in a different position.

nope, they wouldn't

also to disprove it one simply should teleport back and check the time there

>>8028227
ASOIAF was supposed to be a trilogy at first.
The whole series as it is now, plus the one yet to be released in 3 books.
It's why especially later books become a bit of a clusterfuck

>>8029853
>I'd argue he builds more on Howard and Burroughs than Tolkien, although he does himself place more emphasis on Tolkien.
Quite a few of his plot structures are ripped directly from Tolkien. There's massive parallels.

>>8029936
*
Because they're padded as fuck

>>8029820
>It's a matter of one of Martin's *better* qualities
This would be true if he didn't take it to an almost comical extreme. Martin's world is too full of backstabbing, violence, rape, etc...

The man writes pornography.

>lit proudly doesn't read Tolkien
>lit proudly doesn't read GRRM
>oh I know all about this comparison

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>>8028999
Tolkien confirmed of writing Kalevala for brits.

>>8029125
>>8029245
>implying that any of Tolkien's characters has a body between the clavicles and knees
The soddits and dorfs are the only expections, with their well-muscled stomaches.

>>8029628
>>8029612
>>8029820
>muh elitist momophoemic epic bookz
Sorry, pleb aristocrats. You can't lie in an unplausible way. Exhibit 1A:
>Nine-year-old Pippi is unconventional, assertive, and has superhuman strength, being able to lift her horse one-handed.
No, he would either jump to the side or be impaled. And don't get me started on Ida getting hoisted up in the flagpole. True, her girdle is wide enough to support her body weight as long as she arcs against it. But if she hangs with it under the armpits, she will suffocate. All this assuming that Emil could hoist her without getting badical rope burns.

Tolkien confirmed for Astrid Lindgren - the sloppiest and most inconsistent writer for
>it's only for children
ever.

>>8029353
>the magic the gathering main planet actually is the size of jupiter
My head!

>>8030000
Nice.

>>8030005
Yes 8-3=5 and there's five zeroes in my epic get.

He can be right, which he is, and still write like a blind, fat donkey.

>>8029083
Please, please stop posting. You fucking moron. You gave yourself away.
>even if you only saw the movies
>more about competing nobility
>Tolkien is lighthearted
Read the silmarillion, or the lays of beleriand. Literally all Tolkien scholars agree that one of the major themes of his work is death. He wrote in the trenches during ww1. And not every character literally dies kind of death. You goddamn buffoon.

>>8029868
That's the point they were trying to make Anon.

>the author didn't put any thought into anything

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>>8030024
>>8029612
>After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien, whom his father had once called his "chief critic and collaborator," embarked on organizing the masses of his father's unpublished writings, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. Christopher Tolkien said, of assembling and editing The Silmarillion, "It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials – to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century – would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative."
Cucked by his father's sloppy writing.

>>8029960

Confirmed for either having only watched the show, or having never studied history.

>>8027822
>little orc cradles

I know he read Tolkien, so how did he not remember that Tolkien deftly sidestepped that by having orcs born as fully grown adults?

>>8030059
>I know he read Tolkien, so how did he not remember that Tolkien deftly sidestepped that by having orcs born as fully grown adults?
Where is that said? There's also the claim that orcs was created by subjecting elfs to torture.

If we go with a magical explanation, then just whipping an elf will change the genes etc.

If we go with a scientific explanation, then the elves must have been subjected to genetic modifications.

Either way, it's a too convenient explanation to why orcs should be treated as shit.

>>8030070
Orcs were originally elves captured by melkor, who could not create life, only eru illuvatar could, so he corrupted the works of eru and the other Valar whenever he could. The corrupted elves then bred amongst themselves. Happy? A demigod had an inbred eugenics experiment.

>>8030070
#orcslivesmatter

>>8028999
Fucking trips of truth

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>>8027822
Because Tolkien was a lazy fag, that's why. After 50 years, he still didn't manage to finish Silmarillion. The only three things that he didn't procrastinate on was making babies, pipe smoking and beer drinking. Then he spent the better part of a decade studying the "beautiful" aspects of finnish. And still wouldn't be able to order a cup of coffee in S:t Michel.

(As if anyone would actually want perkele in a cup, but you get my point.)

>>8030082
In short: Shitty augustinian christianity original sin fapficition.

>>8030083
>implying that niggers are hunted by "elves" as sport

>Grishnákh is described in the book as "a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground" and as having a voice that was soft but evil-sounding.

Oh, I really understand that he is EEEVIIIILLLLL

>>8030112
yeah what? the original captured elves were victims, their offspring are only killed when they threaten other civilizations, and they only threaten other civilizations when they are commanded to by gods or demigods, (melkor or sauron). Also the civilizations they were originally at odds with (the protagonists) were those who turned away from the valar(gods), a portion of the teleri elves, and the noldor elves, who travelled to valinor, probably as close as tolkien gets to heaven, and then decided to tell the valar to go fuck themselves. So the antagonists are manipulated by deities, while the protagonists act independently (for the most part) how does that jive with augustinian original sin?

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>>8030131
>they are evil from birth
>they are even more evil if properly commanded
>but they are EVIL FROM BIRTH
JRR Tolkien is the A Wyatt Mann of fantasy. The fact that he despised Hitler doesn't prove anything. Trotskij despised Stalin and so on...

>>8030138
what bad things did trotskij do though?

>>8030142
Just from the top of my head: Creating the Red Army and slaughtering the sailors in the Kronstadt rebellion.

>>8030138
please dont greentext a strawman argument if those words never appear in the post youre replying to, you only make yourself look foolish.
they were victims, and then useful idiots. where do you get evil from birth?

>>8030043
>he thinks incest cannibalism and 5-way wars are common throughout history
retard

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>>8030112
>Tolkien was lazy
How's autism treating you?

>>8030145
>implying that LotR ended with a peace talk where Strider the Beautiful Australian Man took great pains to ensure that everyone, even the orcs, got something out of it
Top kek! The only good thing with the end is that the anemic nazis with an average score of 143 years of nofap left Middle Earth. The bad thing is that those haughty sissies no longer can breath down humanitys neck. So it's basically hunting orcs for their perveted pleasure being supplanted with full scale genocide.

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>>8030154
Productivity is actually delivering something. Not this:
>After his father's death, Christopher Tolkien, whom his father had once called his "chief critic and collaborator," embarked on organizing the masses of his father's unpublished writings, some of them written on odd scraps of paper a half-century earlier. Much of the material was handwritten; frequently a fair draft was written over a half-erased first draft, and names of characters routinely changed between the beginning and end of the same draft. Christopher Tolkien said, of assembling and editing The Silmarillion, "It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials – to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century – would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative."

Anon. Writing one single A4 a day for 50 years will produce 18250 pages.

>>8028784
I thought uruk were orcs mixed with men? Or is that just uruchai?

>>8030165
that was so incoherent and full of inane premises that i have no idea what your point is.
that the prehistoric age king didnt make peace treaties to ensure an egalitarian system amongst the hordes of enemies that had been pillaging and slaughtering his people?
that because the elves are gone humans in middle earth will either wage a genocide or start hunting orcs for sport?
are you retarded? where are you getting this shit from, and even it was logical, why is it a problem? these tales are of wars and desperate defenses of peoples, not some fucking commune fantasy bullshit where everything has to work out for everyone and everyone who fought in dagor agalareb gets a fucking participation trophy. honestly, what in the hell are you talking about?

>>8030192
>implying that just putting a Good King on the throne will set everything right
>not starting sentences outside of greentext with capital letters, yet chastizing me
>not understanding that I'm saying that the elfin hunting of orcs for pleasure will probably be supplanted by human genocide of orcs
3/20, would not re-roll.

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Uruks are just a strain of orc, sometimes they are bred with humans. Sauron's spys in bree were probably of mixed race, but mostly uruks are just great-orcs.

Orcs most certainly do breed.

>pic related is my credentials, but I haven't touched any of them since Highschool which was over 6 years ago, so w/e

>>8027822
Because Tolkien rose above his mistakes while Martin rolls in them like an impaired pig.

>>8030144
>Creating the Red Army

are you fucking serious
how is it worse than, say, creating the army of usa
what a vile act indeed, to create the army to defend your country

>slaughtering the sailors in the Kronstadt rebellion

he was a minister of defence (a 'commissar of war'), the troops were commanded by tukhachevsky

now, suppressing a rebellion isn't a war crime and they asked to surrender too

>>8030201
>elfin
>humanitys
>chastizing

you dont want to go grammar nazi on me, faggot. all of your shitty points rest on a premise that everything needs to be somehow set right at the end of the trilogy of the ring. good king, bad king, fucking butterbur can be king of gondor, who gives a fuck? tolkien didnt begin his books with a foreword explaining that he was writing a manifesto on how to rule a preroman age breton inspired kingdom perfectly. also your "probably" speculations are pure shit, so kindly leave them in your ass instead of pulling them out here where we can all smell them. also the elves didnt hunt orcs for pleasure, give me an example that wasnt from a fucking movie produced by disney. i still dont understand your argument, what are you even saying? what is your thesis here?

>>8028887
It would decentralize the society. If you can plant and harvest potatoes with little effort, then there's hardly any need for feudalism. Potatoes was introduced to the western world after the fall of feudalism, when the states didn't rely on breathing down the peasants necks. As a matter of fact, potatoes strenghtened Europe.

An interesting take on early potatoes for Europe is the alt-history in the first GURPS compendium on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GURPS_Alternate_Earths#Ezcalli

>Ezcalli is dominated by the Tenochca (Aztec) Empire. In this world, Carthaginian explorers landed in South America in 580 B.C., two millennia before contact between the Old World and the New in our history. The early exchange of biota resulted in the decimation of the American peoples by Eurasian diseases, but the low technological disparity between the two continents at the time meant the newcomers could not take full advantage of this before new populations with resistance to the diseases developed. More importantly, the introduction of American animals and crops (especially the potato) gave peasant farmers a greater ability to feed themselves and prevented potentates from controlling their subjects through grain imports. This caused the nascent Roman Empire to fly apart in the 1st century CE, and the successor states were still squabbling a millennium later when the hordes of the Mongol Empire arrived.

>Europe and Asia are now covered with a half-dozen Mongol khanates (the greatest of which is the Khanate of Ch'in) and dozens of semi-independent petty kingdoms that are easy targets for steam-powered Tenochca slave raids. The Tenochca have coaling stations around the world and their continental lands now stretch from the Ohio River to the northern Andes. North of the Tenochca Empire's American territories are the iron mines and weapons factories of the Hotinosavannah League (the Iroquois) to the east and the Tlingit Confederacy to the west. Africa is home to Zoroastrian Egypt, the rapidly arming southern state of KwaZulu and the Songhay Empire, inheritors of Christianity and Roman civilisation. The "current year" in Ezcalli is 1840.

>>8029125
>>8029245
>“How many there were the Company could not count. The affray was sharp, but the orcs were dismayed by the fierceness of the defence. Legolas shot two through the throat, Gimile hewed the legs from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s tomb. Boromir and Aragorn slew many.” – The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 5: The Bridge of Khazad-Dum
Epic writing, indeed.

>>8030242
>epic writing indeed
confirmed for having never read tolkiens source material, or understanding the stylistic choices of a fable. check out the grettir saga and try again

>>8030224
>Tolkien rose above his mistakes
No, he didn't. He denied them and let his cranky son, Cristopher Hitches, save his ass.

>>8030226
>how is it worse than, say, creating the army of usa
It was a fucking COMMIE ARMY, you fucktard.

>>8030237
>bi bi bi me mi moo starting letters with capital letters is hard
And you excuse Trotskij too. You must really be touched by the angles.

>>8030256
Are you trying to say that his shitty description of a battle can be excused by reading a lot of other crap?

No, it doesn't seem like a hardboiled icelandic saga. It's pure lazy important professor.

>“How many there were the Company could not count. The affray was sharp, but the orcs were eumayed by the fierceness of their sassinesss. Legolas shot two in the throat, Gimile plhewed the butts from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s dildo. Boromir and Aragorn blew many.” – The Fellowship of the Penis Ring, Chapter 5: The Bed of Khazad-Dum
6/10, would fap again.

>>8030271
we are different people

>>8027884
In reality, one of Tolkien's inspirations was the fact that England had such shitty mythology. He wasn't the first, but he was dissatisfied with his country had produced thus far.

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>>8030318
Yeah, you showed that perfectly with the absence of capital letters and punctuation.

>>8030192
After Aragorn reclaims the throne he basically wages war and subjugates the east and south. And Tolkien further goes on to say that Middle Earth evolves into our own world over time. Read a book, nigga.

>>8030215
Where's Children of Hurin you fucking faggot?

>>8030340
No orcs in the south, and subjugation does not equal genocide, nice try. Also there are clearly still orcs in today's world, see africa

>>8030360
In the Silmarillion, you turbocuck.

>paying for the same story twice

>>8030375
you fookin' wot m8

>>8030271
I am not that other guy talking about trotsky, and what's your argument? Talking about capital letters? Care to answer any of my questions like what in the fuck is your point in your pathetic strawmanning?

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>>8030384
>trotsky
Go back to read your tolkiein.

>>8030415
>Tolkiein
Howbout leave the Tolkien thread if you don't want to talk about him

>>8028227
Lost or Twin Peaks. Its a very common thing. Its a lot easier to start something interesting than to finish it with a bang. Stephen King has made his career of novels that begin intriguing and end in utter nonsense.

To those clued up on the current state of fantasy literature, do you reckon GRRM would have achieved Wolfe-like adoration among /lit/izens had his books never been adapted into a TV series?

Basically, how does Martin fare compared to other current fantasy writers?

>>8028137
If you're gonna question Gondor's tax policy you should be able to explain something as glaring as having decade long seasons in your own book

>>8030441
No, he was already despised before the adaptation. Wolfe has a highly refined, mystical prose whereas Martin filled his with terrible passages, onomatopoeia and unnecessary vulgarity to compensate. The “Sunset groaning” paragraph may one of the worst ones, but it still is in the book. He's a bad writer and it's getting worse. Besides, he doesn't create a coherent world and just fit himself into the lack of sexual/violence realism fantasy had. He constantly complain we need to look at “history” to write a better fiction but sorry, no, there wasn't incest, cannibalism, homosexuality depravation and paedophilia acknowledgement on a daily basis back in the middle ages. Just because the very partial history we were taught in middle school isn't properly rendering the morals and customs, and that—most—previous fantasy authors created a sexless universe doesn't mean the complete opposite is right. It isn't, the extreme, unrealistic violence/sex display Martin has made up is a bait to catch thirsty teens and people fed up with fairy tales. He's always been a bad writer, the fact his series managed to gain fame—what a surprise—cannot change that. I can give you fantasy as gruesome as he wrote, with an infinitely better prose.

>>8030441
wolfe writes much better than martin

>>8030485
Recommend some good fantasy. I have only read the first two LOTR books (liked the first one, disliked the second) and ASOIAF (which I really enjoyed).

Recently purchased a book by Wolfe, Shadow of the Torturer I think it is. Will get round to it at some point given it's pretty short.

>>8030520
Book of the New Sun
Canticle for Leibowitz

>>8030112
>lazy
Actually the opposite, really, he obsessively wrote and revised all of his works. His revision process was also more akin to going to the beginning of what he wrote and slowly rewriting it again. He would also get new ideas in the middle of a work and go work on that instead to explain this or that.

Though he did start the legendarium to write the story of Earendil, which he never did.

>>8030524
Thanks. Are they especially gruesome or just good in general?

>>8030532
If you want gruesome try McCarthy, I personally liked them a lot

>>8030532
>>8030524
Isn't me. However those are good recommendations, absolutely not gruesome. I'm more into lovecraftian kind of fantastic literature. I suggest Crawford (“The Screaming Skull”), London (“The Shadow and the Flesh”) as short stories. Jean Ray, Walter Williams, Philippe Caza, Claude Bolduc, Philppe Pissier—I don't know if he's translated in English but surely the most infamous one. I almost threw when reading—Kate Wilhelm—a bit dull but entertaining—Fabien Cerutti—the most evident decent substitute to G.R.R. Martin—Robert Silverberg, Jeff Vandermeer—not the best but still readable—and such. Cormac McCarthy, yeah, indeed. I don't read a lot in English, I'm more comfortable with French/German.

>>8030146
>7 years War
>World War I
>World War II

>>8028012
Loquats flower in autumn and fruit in spring/summer. Their fruit production is very dependent on a warming period with longer sunlight hours.

While they might survive in an extended winter in a reasonable climate, they would not manage constant snow, and they would not reliably bear fruit.

On fruiting plants and flowers in general: how are they pollinated? Because I'm not certain how most species of bees would survive a protracted period of extreme cold very well.

>>8031890
pollinating is the least of the problems since it can be done by hand, also some species pollinate with wind etc

>>8031913
Have you ever hand-pollinated a fruit-bearing tree? I did one year. Wouldn't do it again. The amount of effort that goes into it is enormous for not much reward.

>>8031928
i didn't picked cotton by hand either but i was told it's the hardest agricultural job imaginable

>>8030485
>there wasn't incest, cannibalism, homosexuality depravation and paedophilia acknowledgement on a daily basis back in the middle ages.
There literally was.

Okay, not incest, but that was the whole point.

This whole "it's vulgar so it's bad" meme should've died long, long ago.

>>8030423
>do not understand that I mocked Sloppy Anon by misspelling
Anon, I mocked Sloppy Anon by misspelling "Tolkien".

>>8030485
>>8030508
>defending Meme Wolfe's writing
He's fun just because he's him. But a whole legion of writers with the same flowerly writing? No thanks.

>>8030485
>defending modernisms false dichtomy between "high" and "low

>>8030526
There's work and there's busywork. Tolkien had pretend-to-work. He didn't deliver as much as he could. Simple as that.

>>8030524
>Book of the New Sun
>Canticle for Leibowitz

>fantasy

No, both are sci-fi.

>>8031937

I never picked cotton either. But my mama did and my brother did and my papa died young. He was working in a coal mine.

>>8032103
>No, both are sci-fi.
New Sun is science-fantasy.

>>8032103
>>8032176
A lot depends on whether you define genuine divine intervention as fantastical. If you do, both are pretty firmly fantasy with sci-fi built on top (and more fantasy built on top of that sci-fi in the case of TBotNS).

>>8027822
This fat cunt is not qualified to critique Tolkien's grocery list, let alone the Lord of the Rings.

>>8029125
I never saw the problem with this, other than the cadence which can make it sound comical.

>>8028227
I think the trap he fell into was deciding to depict so many events scattered across his world geographically, which necessitated POV characters in those locations.

>>8032187
>implying that Tolkien wrote a single grocery list
No, his wife did. Otherwise it would never be done.

>says ruling is hard
>never experienced being a ruler, not even a ruler of a fantasy land of magic and elves or a ruler of measurements

>>8027822
Genre, exactly the genre.
These are not the authors that you learn someting from, it's just joy.
I don't see why Tolk should have more history close, realistic and honest about wars, kings, civil life and other common sence.

>>8028245
>What I'm waiting for is the obviously inevitable Peasant's socialist uprising.
Brotherhood without banners for life brah

>>8032226
What is a posteori?

>>8032245
Because Tolkien doesn't lie in a convincing way. There's huge areas of wilderness between the various countries. So what kind of rape monsters prevented the slow but steady expansion of humans?

>>8032292
>Because Tolkien doesn't lie in a convincing way. There's huge areas of wilderness between the various countries. So what kind of rape monsters prevented the slow but steady expansion of humans?

why do you think something prevented it?

>>8032292
>What is a posteori?
Dependent on experience or empirical evidence. What about it?

>>8032226
Gotta be in the valley to see the mountains, mang.

>>8028227
He had a few blogposts when he wrote ADWD about how he couldn't figure a way out of Meereen because it was such a colossal clusterfuck of nonsense. That's why you have the queen of burgers shitting somewhere in the countryside at the end of it.

>>8032307
>the queen of burgers
You what? Do you mean Americans, or people who live in cities? I mean, she does rule over city states...

>>8027822
That's like saying Homer was a bad writer for not going into detail about how the Trojan war was financed.

>>8032409
This. Tolkien was writing "Mythopoeia" - not realistic fiction. He devised archetypes, not 'characters'. Whole different ballgame.

>>8027822

You've got to love that he's claimed that Tolkien, who fought in the fucking Somme, didn't understand the brutality of war and hardships of life, while the worst experience of this fat fuck's life was when Crispy Cream ran out of double chocolate glazed donuts.

>>8032409
I think people are taking this at face value too much. I don't think he means that everyone should go full autist. Like I said before, I think his main point is that realism > idealism, and he's just using the hum-drum mundanity of real ruling to make this point (as well as the traditionally thought of as unfortunate side-effects of war, ex. genocide).
>>8032416
This I agree with, however.

>>8027822
>quibble
>key word quibble
man this guy is so FUCKING PROFOUND
>quibble...

>>8030485
He wasn't well liked even before a Game of Thrones, a lot of people thought "Tuf Voyaging" was completely shameless and shelf filler.

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>>8032294
Rape monsters?

>>8032301
And experience and empirical evidence says that ruling is hard.

>>8032416
Experiencing and understanding isn't the same thing. Good thing that Tolkien didn't write porn. Then it would have looked something like this:

>“How many there were the Company could not count. The affray was sharp, but the orcs were eumayed by the fierceness of their sassinesss. Legolas shot two in the throat, Gimile plhewed the butts from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s dildo. Boromir and Aragorn blew many.” – The Fellowship of the Penis Ring, Chapter 5: The Bed of Khazad-Dum

Nah, I'll stick with 50 shades of Gary.

>>8032002

Where's your source for literally any of what was listed being common? What reason do you have for thinking that the middle ages were so bad other than anti-medieval sentiment that was started by anti-Catholic protestant writers during the Enlightenment?

>>8032592
"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

-J. R. R. Tolkien

But I'm sure dodging the draft also gives one a profound understanding of war.

>>8032595
Don't bother, he's probably one of the plebs that spams /tg/ about how everybody had to carry a sword in ye olde England because you couldn't step outside the door without somebody attempting to stab you.

>>8032595
People were exactly as gay back then as they are now. And people were also exactly as prone to having sex back then as they are now, even if they thought it was a sin.

People didn't have a concept of "too young" until ~the beginning of the previous century. Yeah, they usually set the bar at around thirteen (because they realised that you're not going to get kids otherwise) but they didn't have a concept of child abuse, in that way.

Cannibalism didn't happen, I just didn't see that in his comment 'till I'd already posted.

I have no idea why you think I think the middle ages were "so bad". I think they were the second best time to be alive, excluding nowadays.

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>>8032601
Literally no one says that. The predominant feeling is firmly against Plutarch-style circlejerking.

>>8032600
>dodging the draft
Is an honorable thing to do. And please don't tell me that Tolkien voulnteered. I don't want to know.

The point is that despite him being at Somme, the writing doesn't show that he did so.
>Boromir and Aragorn slew many

>>8032602
>People didn't have a concept of "too young" until ~the beginning of the previous century. Yeah, they usually set the bar at around thirteen (because they realised that you're not going to get kids otherwise) but they didn't have a concept of child abuse, in that way.
>tfw born 150 years too late

>>8032627
No, the point is that if Tolkien didn't write in a hyper-realistic style it's obviously not because he didn't know what war was like. It's people who have no actual experience with things like war that think that making things as gritty as possible is the closest thing to profundity.

>dodging the draft
>Is an honorable thing to do. And please don't tell me that Tolkien voulnteered. I don't want to know.

Whether you think dodging the draft was honorable, it certainly wouldn't give one a better understanding of war. And yes, Tolkien did volunteer.

>>8032602

>People were exactly as gay back then as they are now.

That's an empirical claim, so where are the empirical facts to back it up?

>And people were also exactly as prone to having sex back then as they are now, even if they thought it was a sin.

Again, an empirical claim. Different people with different beliefs and values will act differently. Yes, people have always liked sex, but do you really think that a society where fornication is universally condemned will have the same rate of fornication as in a society where it's largely accepted?

>People didn't have a concept of "too young" until ~the beginning of the previous century. Yeah, they usually set the bar at around thirteen (because they realised that you're not going to get kids otherwise) but they didn't have a concept of child abuse, in that way.

"and where in the old indigenous religions, women married between 12 and 15 years of age (coinciding with puberty) and men married in their middle twenties, as Christianity expanded men married increasingly earlier and women married increasingly later"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern#Middle_Ages

>>8032654
>That's an empirical claim, so where are the empirical facts to back it up?
Are you retarded. Do you think our genetics suddenly changed within six hundred years?

Read Decameron. Tell me people did not have sex just as much as we do well, perhaps not that much.

>"and where in the old indigenous religions, women married between 12 and 15 years of age (coinciding with puberty) and men married in their middle twenties, as Christianity expanded men married increasingly earlier and women married increasingly later"
I don't see how this contradicts my point.

>>8032602
>People didn't have a concept of "too young" until ~the beginning of the previous century. Yeah, they usually set the bar at around thirteen (because they realised that you're not going to get kids otherwise) but they didn't have a concept of child abuse, in that way.
but you just contradicted yourself

>>8032679
More like I worded it badly.

People did not have a concept of "go any lower than this and you are the worst human being imaginable". They had a general rule, which they generally followed -- most people are not into anything lower than thirteen, anyway -- but there were people who went lower.

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>>8032664
>Are you retarded. Do you think our genetics suddenly changed within six hundred years?
>homosexuality is determined by genetics and genetics only

relatively ot
is there an audiobook of this made by an amateur with a nice voice and all
really not liking roy
thx mateys

>>8033211
>this
off all the main books i meant

>>8032654
>No, the point is that if Tolkien didn't write in a hyper-realistic style it's obviously not because he didn't know what war was like. It's people who have no actual experience with things like war that think that making things as gritty as possible is the closest thing to profundity.
One conclusion is that he wasn't a good writer. That fight scene makes everything seem implausible. Nice Verfremdungseffekt!

>Whether you think dodging the draft was honorable, it certainly wouldn't give one a better understanding of war.
War is so much more than frontline fighting. Politics and logistics, for instance.

>And yes, Tolkien did volunteer.
Did he cave in to the nagging of the White Feathers?

>>8032627
Well, what more is there to say? he wasn't writing gore porn for wannabe generals.

>>8028910

He's not criticising Tolkien, he's taking issue with the hordes of pretenders that did the same shit over and over again.

>>8034041
False dichtomy. If he had been part of a gay homo orgy in Eton and wrote shit like this:

>“How many there were the Company could not count. The affray was sharp, but the orcs were eumayed by the fierceness of their sassinesss. Legolas shot two in the throat, Gimile plhewed the butts from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s dildo. Boromir and Aragorn blew many.” – The Fellowship of the Penis Ring, Chapter 5: The Bed of Khazad-Dum

Then no one would take him serious. But shedding blood instead of shedding semen? Oh, everything you write is sacrosanct.

Literature has always been largely a reaction to and rejection of what came immediately before it. Naturalism and realism have, many times throughout history, been written in critique of romanticism. Crane and Zola aren't laughed at just because they wrote in obscenities, it's understood that works are rooted in their time.

>>8035861
I was talking about when you said that him (Tolkien) not writing much about the battles themselves was not a problem since Lord of the Rings is not about the battles or the war.

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>>8032310
He's referring to the new fat danny.

>>8036087
B-b-but muh STEuMel Tolkien!

>>8036326
And yet he manages to botch the battles, who are pretty much important.

>>8028324
>advocating for genocide
Yep. Sounds like religion to me.

Anyone who thinks that literature is for getting insights whether in to philosophy or society is a stupid pseudo intellectual degenerate. Full fucking stop.

I'm not saying the creation of art doesn't require intelligence, hard work, skill, etc. It does.

>>8028328
Still Heilkien can't describe them without all these examples of how EVUUUL they are.

And regarding the anemic heilfs. When Gollum was captured by the farmers. Did they ask nice to hand him over? Or did they say that if they string Gollum up, the whole village will be forfeit? Or what would they do if they had arrived half an hour too late just to find out that he was strung up and a pincushion for pitchforks?

>"But no one can say whenever anyone should be killed", stated Heildalf and puffed on his glass heroin pipe

Sorry. That can and does everyone all the time. People with weapon and power who claim to be humanitarians are the worst oppressors of them all.