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

Someone post that screen cap of his books just being there world as seen through the perspective of a fat person please.

Who gives a shit about rulers?

I need some sleep, I'm seeing double.

>>55166055
OK, it's a new day's thread and I have the copypasta I wrote before:

===

Doesn't need one. The king who slew the BBEG was appointed by the gods to rule the world, and each community experiences bounty or famine directly proportionate to how much love they have for their objectively-good king at the time.

Suck my dick, you fat pervy hack.

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>>55166055
Fuck off

>>55166055
I honestly don't know what George is getting at. Aragorn was wise and good, so clearly all of his policies, or at least the sum total of his policies, were wise and good.

>>55166150
Their puppetmasters

>>55166484

A line of slaves thinking themselves in control.

>>55166055
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
What was King Robert's tax policy, George?

>>55166499

How dare you expect him to live up to his own standards.

Fantasy cliche are stupid. Now lets get the lost prince and his wolf friend to fight the load bearing dark lord so they can save the world and be the wise and good ruler of all the lands.

>>55166499

He didn't really have one, because he sucked at it. Robert is in some ways Aragorn. He was the big damn hero who slew the bad guys and won the day for the scrappy rebels, and then found he was terrible at ruling.
Also when George is talking about taxes, you're meant to take it metaphorically, not literally.
GRRM can be criticized for many things, but his quote up there is fine, it's merely expressing the difference in focus between his work and Tolkien's. Books are the way in which writers converse with each other, and GRRM's clearly got a lot to say. about food

What would be Arya's tax policy?

>>55166055
>THIS COPYPASTA IS SO COOL IMMA REPOST IT

Yeah, we get it, you're a shitposter.

>>55168100
Faces for the Manyfaced God.

>>55166055
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
feudalism
>Did he maintain a standing army?
gondors army
>What did he do in times of flood and famine?
his best
>And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
orcs and human became good friends, just like in the dreams of hobbits from the animated version

>>55166150
Engineers and architects?

>>55168553
What about plumb bobs?

>>55168325
Ha ha! Good old GRRM criticising Tolkien without reading it.
>waaaah my books about genocide are darker than Tolkien's books about genocide because he never went into detail about rape and taxes and only left it implied! Tolkien spent three pages describing a tree but i spent three pages describing septic infections so i win! I'm a fat man that never had any conflict in life criticizing a war veteran's description of the horrors of war!

>>55168700
Did you even read the thread?

>>55168553
Architects don't give a shit about rules.
Architects only care about "aesthetic" and making a name for themselves.

Engineers are faggots.

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>>55166071

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>>55168973

>>55166339
His point is that things a rarely that straightforward.
People think, and used to think that if the king is a good person, then his rule will automatically be good, but it is such a simplified fairy tale view of the world.

I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with such a world in books or other fiction, but it clearly rubs GRRM the wrong way to some extent at least.

>>55166055
Trying to make fantasy more realistic is completely missing the point. GRRM's "answer" to Tolkien is to make it post-heroic, and by doing so strip away any literary reason for using a medieval setting. Realpolitik with rape and violence could be done anywhere, why swords and dragons? Unless of course youre a Tolkien imitator without the soul.

Tolkien wasn't trying to accurately depict medieval politics. He was writing Anglo-Catholic myth/parable. His themes were gotten across in essence not in autism

>>55169041
>but it clearly rubs GRRM the wrong way to some extent at least.
Because he's a fedora tipping fatass that can't wrap his head around actual fantasy, since everything must be shitty to be good in his eyes. He's that fat nihilist you knew in school who thought that because he was "euphoric" he knew everything. His shit stinks but it smells like roses to him.

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>>55168973

>>55169097
>as much as I admire him, I do quibble with
>quibble

You're blowing this thing way out of proportion.
So the man likes his fantasy more grimy, so what? Different strokes and all that.

>>55169119
quibble is a British way of saying "arguing our knobs off" in polite company.

>>55168973
because steel is heavier than feathers

>>55169125
Well in that case your experience with the word is vastly different from mine, and frankly i've never seen it used in the way you describe.

>>55169094
So your argument is that fantasy as a genre should only exist as classical conservative propaganda?

I mean, you should at least read some LeGuin before arguing that, even if a lot of other people who also haven't will agree with you.

>>55169094
>Realpolitik with rape and violence could be done anywhere, why swords and dragons?

Why not with swords and dragons?

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>>55169041
>His point is that things a rarely that straightforward

Which is missing the point of Tolkien's writing. Tolkien sat down to write a book that emulated viking and anglo-saxo saga traditions. He was completely aware that what he wrote was not a realistic book. The inclusion of halflings and wizards should convey the fact that no, this is indeed not an attempt at realistic historical fiction. Inhis own words Tolkien specifically wrote myth.

But not GRRM. No, the genius himself comes fromthe tradition of science fiction, that in its essence tries to examine unrealistic ideas in a realistic fashion. In sci-fi you have to have a good grounding in reality because the whole premise is to examine the effect of the unknown on the known.

So GRRM does the novel (or at least not mainstream) thing and use the methods of sci-fi to write fantasy, drawing heavy parallels to history in order to create an arena in which he can examine the realistic implications of magic, dragons etc.

That's all fine. These are two completely different approaches, and both offer new ideas and contribute to the genre in their own ways. But only an idiot would try and measure Tolken and GRRM by the same yardstick. That idiot, as it turns out, is GRRM. It's easy to see why he does it. It riles people up and creates a little more hype around his work. It's tried and true that you can always talk your work up by talking down other people's work.

>>55166055
GRRM obviously not a Tolkein lorefag, no such thing as an Orc baby in an Orc cradle
this comment is disingenuous at best: the entire drive of the Tolkein universe is overcoming temptation and the sins of the past. he really only pays lip service to the good kings' reigns of peace, most of the time he's concerned with the exact opposite. the moral of the story isn't that good king is good, it's that good is the most difficult path to choose. also kek at all the fat neckbeard nihilist GRRM comments

>>55169208
It's not missing the point, it's simply having different taste in fantasy, i don't see what's so hard for people to understand.

I'm sure even GRRM realizes that the professors works is not supposed to be read as a "realistic" works, the point nonetheless is that such fantasy is not his cup of tea. And you know what? It's totally ok for people to have different tastes in things.

>>55169246
Nigga did you even read the post you quote?

>>55169228
>GRRM obviously not a Tolkein lorefag.

Neither are you apparently.
Orcs "had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar" From Silmarillion

and

"There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known."
From Tolkien's own letters.

>>55169263
Sure, he quibbles (in his words) about aspects of of the books that Tolkien left out, because clearly they were not important to him, but they seem important to GRRM, hence different tastes again.

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>>55166055

>>55168700
He has another book, The Armageddon Rag, which is all about setting up the self-insert protagonist's dodging of the Vietnam draft as the most awesome and courageous thing ever, that saves the world.

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You people need to broaden your horizons and realize there's more original fantasy out there than just the 2 most wanked-over series.

>>55169989
the first two from left to right sound like the books I have about Malazan.

Shit books IMO but then again I hate deserts

>>55169989
Are you saying there's 3 overwanked series then? I guess Discworld would make 4, huh.

HEY, FAT MAN. YES, I ARE TALKING TO YOU. YOUR CLEVER LITTLE WORLD OF "REALISM" AND "SUNRISE FOUND HER SQUATTING IN THE GRASS" HAS BEEN SUPPLANTED BY DUMB AND DUMBER'S VERSION OF YOUR WORLD. STOP ACTING LIKE YOU IS CLEVAR WHEN CRAYOLA WRITINGS GET MORE LOVE AND AFFECTION THAN YOU.

>>55170023
Discworld will never be wanked-over enough (because it is perfect in every way), so it doesn't even count

>>55169246
>the point nonetheless is that such fantasy is not his cup of tea.
Isnt this the same fucking retard who writes books about zombies and dragons

Black Company is better then everything mentioned so far desu

>GRRM: Tolkien ain't shit I'm the one who knows the horrors of war
>Tolkien: "By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

>>55170117
I recall seeing a very interesting post that brought up exactly this, how Tolkien was a very sensitive man that immersed himself in stories of "the good old days" to cope with the worst aspects of the Industrial Revolution and the Great War. The romanticism and almost mythic quality of his writing wasn't some misunderstanding on how Anglo-Saxon England actually worked, it was a deliberate choice to create a narrative that did not need to trouble itself with bullshit like taxes or "the horrors of war."

>>55170136
That's true, and I don't think anyone including GRRM argues that it isn't, but it's not a defense.

Just-so tales of small-hairy-footed John Bull and the enduring superiority of (literal) shire conservatism are a particular narrow niche that make a good coping method for an immigrant boy who took to that life like a duck to water and was then torn out and thrown into some serious shit. They make a poor basis for a living world rather than a (too-)firmly-believed utopia, and an utterly dire one for an entire genre of fiction or style of gaming.
The unquestioning acceptance of such gives you /pol/ containment escapees like half of this thread arguing that all fantasy fiction -must- be heroic and all the heroes -must- fit neatly into traditional English ideals.

>>55166081
/pol/ gets blacked posters, /tg/ gets MARTIN'D posters

>>55170067
I like Discworld, but it lost the grim edge of its humor in the later books, when he got to liking his characters and stopped doing such horrible things to them.

>>55170287
>The unquestioning acceptance of such gives you /pol/ containment escapees like half of this thread arguing that all fantasy fiction -must- be heroic and all the heroes -must- fit neatly into traditional English ideals.
I wouldn't say that all of Tolkien's stuff is like that, I mean look at the Sil. The elves lose everything they fought so hard for, the world is irreversibly damaged, and everything starts sliding into the shit from there.

>>55170383
Sil is also the man at his most Catholic and least English, and it's definitely his least-imitated work.

I don't have a problem with him having his worldview, and it's one common enough to have a bit of resonance for each of us. It would just be nice if, like he did himself, people recognized it as a particular worldview from particular influences and lots of opinions-not-facts takes.

>>55166571
Jon Snow would actually has *some* of the qualities required for a statesman. See his dealings with the Iron Bank, for instance.

>>55170687
And his dealings with Stannis and the Wildlings. I think there's a point made somewhere that Ned tried to teach Jon statesman qualities alongside Robb, which was a detail I appreciated.

>>55170744
>And his dealings with Stannis
The dealings that directly led to him being stabbed to death? Those dealings with Stannis?

Let's see, an epic Dark Fantasy novel featuring an (unconsciously) incestuous Anti-Hero, the fate of a family over the course of an epic struggle, a morally ambiguous dwarf, loads and loads of black and grey morality, a sinister supernatural force encroaching from the north and a serious downer ending.

Am I talking about A Song of Ice and Fire, or the Children of Hurin?

>>55170756
He learned from Ned, what did you expect.

>>55170767
Children of Hurin, since the fatman's books are not done yet.

>>55170756
No, where he keeps Stannis from settling his men in Brandon's Gift and resists Stannis's attempts to pull the Night's Watch into his war.

It's Jon wanting to abandon the watch and lead the Wildlings to Winterfell that gets him stabbed.

>>55170812
Can I advise you this read? It's enlightening, just like author's analysis of Meereen arc.
https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/other-wars-part-i-jons-noble-heart-and-greater-duty/

>>55166055
The more I look at this quote, the more I become convinced that GRRM simply hasn't read Lord of the Rings. I mean seriously, let's take a look at Theoden. He's a fairly major character, not first string the way a Fellowship member would be, but certainly about as important as anyone outside the protagonist company gets. He is, by all accounts, a kindly, brave, and somewhat shrewd man. He acquits himself well in battle, bringing down the king or some battle leader of the Haradrim, even at an advanced age.

And he is a *terrible* king. He has somehow been losing a war to Saruman when he has equal to greater numbers, (He, after his losses in the previous campaign, musters 10,000 riders. That's about on par with what Saruman has when he "empties" Isengard, according to Merry), and vastly higher troop quality. Hell, just a much smaller mounted charge during the Hornburg actually breaks Saruman's lines, and even without the help of the Huron's it seems reasonably likely he'd win the battle with Erkenbrand's reinforcements.

But no, he's sitting in Meduseld, sulking over the death of his son. Who, by the way, only dies because he takes a piffling force and rides west to contest the fords of the Isen, because apparently Theoden is to ineffective to have any say on policy at all, which is why his various regional lords, guys like Erkenbrand and Eomer, have to do everything. And his inability to actually muster the resources of his nation, resources which could have easily put paid to Saruman's troops and at least besieged Isengard indefinitely, bring them to the point of ruin.

1/2

>>55171089
All of this is plainly in the text. The only way you could miss it is if you're simply not paying attention. We have other "morally good but terrible ruler" figures like Wil Wheatfoot and Denethor, or at least Denethor before he goes nuts. His "quibble" only seems to applicable to Aragorn's rule itself, which probably has a hell of a lot less to do with the inns and outs of Aragorn's rule and much more to do with the fact that the story fucking ENDED, and for good reason, since the core story isn't about Aragorn. It's not even about the war of the Ring, it's about the fucking hobbits and how they come out of the Shire and despite being soft, weak, and more than a little naive, become the keystone to victory. That's why over 85% of the trilogy is narrated out of a Hobbitish point of view. That's why he includes all those appendices about how the Hobbits know things, and why you have Hobbitish trivia, and assorted anachronisms even compared to the other anachronisms in middle-earth. Aragorn ruling over Gondor, hundreds of miles away, is not pertinent to the Hobbits, so it was not included.

>>55169100
HUH!

But the story was over once they killed Sauron

>>55169246
>describes diarrhea in detail
>spends more time on food than character development
>killed off his interesting characters early in the series and has no idea how to continue it
>won't actually finish the series before death
He's fine if you prefer shit.

Literally.

>>55171299
"I only know ASOIAF from memes": the post.

>>55171299
>describes diarrhea in detail
Yes, because it's important for the character.
>spends more time on food than character development
The last two books are spent purely on character development, which admittedly hurts the pacing. Descriptions of food are present, but are nowhere near Brian Jacques level.
>killed off his interesting characters early in the series and has no idea how to continue it
Isn't really true. The only really important PoVs he killed are Ned Stark, Catelyn Tully (who was brought back later) and that's all, really.
>won't actually finish the series before death
True.

>>55169292
Why do idol dances feel so mechanical?

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>>55166055
>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper.
>MEANWHILE IN GAME OF THRONES
>Danerys is a better queen than Cersei, therefore Westeros would prosper under her

>>55171221
He wasn't killed. He was diminished.

>>55171462
GRRM doesn't write for Game of Thrones, anon.

>>55166499
Littlefinger "handled" that.
By which I mean he managed to embezzle an untold amount of money out of the treasury and then laundered it through his brothels.
Because Robert was a king that didn't actually want to do king shit. He was probably a fine leader, but a shit ruler. And those are two very different things.

Okay I'm genuinely confused here. Reading that quote and the interview it comes from I don't come away with 'tolkien was bad and his stories we're bad' I come away with him saying what most people here seem to be saying, that he and Tolkien are simply writing different types of stories. Am I missing something or where are people getting the idea that he's saying all stories need to work like that?

>>55166055
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
what was ANYONES tax policy in GoT?

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>>55166055

He's not saying Tolkein is bad, He'ss saying that he wrote a completely different book than Tolkein


Tolkein wrote Beowulf but larger and with more moving parts. LOTR has fuckall to do with politics and everything to do with culture, peoples. and that invisible tapestry that make nations nations


ASOIF on the other hand it the opposite, it's an intensely character driven work. It's less of a Beowulf style epic but rather a large collection of folk songs that tell of the war of the five kings. It's less setting driven and more plot driven.


I like both, (For a long time I disliked Tolkien's work until recently where I read those old legends he ripped off and finally understood what he was going for) and I think both are kind of the two out of three directions you can go with fantasy literature (Robert E Howard stuff being the third option).

>>55166055
Did baby orcs even exist in the Tolkien world?

>>55171462
Daenerys stayed in Meereen for two reasons. First, she didn't want it to suffer the same fate as other cities she freed, Astapor and Yunkai. Second, she decided that she needs to learn how to be a queen.
The moment Cersei ascended to power after her father's death, she became her descent into a drunken, insane and paranoid whore, seeing shadows of Tyrion in every corner and alienating literally every her ally.

It's not hard to be a better queen than Cersei.

>>55169125

He's also from Bayonne and based Westeros of his fevered childhood ideas of what Staten Island was like. Shaolin Represent where my SI homies at?! I highly doubt he actually knows that definition

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What are some good and new(ish) fantasy series?

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>>55171531
Yeah?

>>55171538
And even then it becomes pretty clear that Daenerys isn't cut out for it, what with dithering over what to do, not cracking down hard enough on the subversive elements, etcetera.

>>55171538
And yet she's fucking winning on the show because reasons
Fucking D&D

>>55171637
Makes me think of how orcs in LoTR had a sort of modern organization to their amry. Like, orc officers threatening troops that they "will have your number" and such.
Makes me think of an orc officer going to some orc den to tell the nervous she-orc and her litter that her husband is dead.

>>55170788
Kek

>>55171618

I liked Throne of the Crescent Moon quite a bit. Also the Dabir and Asim books by Howard Andrew Jones is the closest I have found to a new author that does Sword and Sandal well

>>55171660
The peace was real, anon, and Daenerys was right about not cracking down. Then again, cracking down would also be a good option.

>>55171771
sell me on it

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>>55171696
I wouldn't go that far. The Orcs have followed the Dark Lords for so long, I doubt they have much of a culture that doesn't spring from them. And I can't imagine Sauron or Morgoth could really be bothered with teaching their minions art. Don't want to make them think that they could ever have a way out.

>>55169100
This is our town, Scrub!

>>55171783
I mean, she'd already fucked up by demanding that 163 of the officials be executed, basically just to make herself feel better, without actually checking if any of them had anything to do with the crucified children.

Then, she allows the surviving officials/aristocrats (who now mostly have a grudge against her) to go on as before without really doing anything to them, which is where a low-level revolt comes from. If she'd cracked down hard, preferably via emphasizing the "dragons" part of "anyone who rebels will be fed to the dragons" then she might have secured a stronger foothold.

>>55171852
>which is where a low-level revolt comes from
Yeah, but she also ended it overnight, when she negotiated a peace. Being a peacemaker is better than being a butcher.

>>55171682
she has dragons
cersei has a what?

>>55171898
A ceasefire at best, and only via marrying one of the aristocrats, who shows signs of ignoring her reforms himself. Would that peace of hers last, do you think?

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>>55171810

Which one?

Throne of the Crescent Moon is about this old sorcerer who want to return to drink tea and stay indoor where the heat is off of him. problem is is he's constantly getting called out to go fight monsters in the outer areas of the city. He is joined by this kid that kinda showed up at his doorstep and is a part of a Dervish-esque organization of swordsmen that are fanatical in the devotion to eradicate evil. (The playoff between the old guy's cynicism and "I'm too old for this shit" joking and the young guy's religious zeal for taking out monsters is a major source of humor in the book)

Anyway so like one day thy are called out to take out some pesky bone ghuls that are murdering people outside the city and run into this tribesgirl that can shapeshift into a jaguar and who is a total hick when compared to our main characters due to the whole nomad thing and she's all "Whoever made these ghuls is an asshole and because I'm a Bedouin expy I gotta get revenge" and the two main characters are like "k senpai come back with us and we'll ttly figure this shit out" and things escalate from there as things often do. The side plot is all about this douchebag Sultan that runs the place like an asshole and this legendary folk hero called "The Falcon prince" who is trying to overthrow the sultan and put a good ruler in charge of this city for once (Every character is lowborn and the author has stated he did it on purpose because he was tired of fantasy always being about nobles)

>>55171852
She should have just killed all of the nobility. It's well established that they're more or less like the IRL Emrati - they do no labor and have no skills. You want their degenerate culture gone? Start with them.

>>55166055
Fucking stop this.
You should feel ashamed of yourself, OP.
Requesting someone draw OP's waifu leaving him because of incompatible orientation.

>>55169274
fair, but I am tempted to be pedantic and suggest that "after the manner of" means 'in a similar fashion', not 'in the exact same way'. that is, as there were eventually more elves and men, so to were there eventually more orcs
the only concrete lore we have is that orcs were corrupted elves and men
it seems unlikely to me that the way Tolkein envisioned them, that such a thing as an orc infant ever existed

Martin is a hack.

>>55171932
Well, yeah. That's how compromises work. Neither side gets what it wants, but bloodshed is avoided. The Harpy stopped their terrorism, and Dany stopped ignoring their interests.
Then again, it's all kind of out the window when Daenerys flies away on a dragon, Barristan breaks the peace and the slaving coalition gains new, hot-headed and violent leaders. But even then, the Harpy seems to work with Barristan so far, if only because of mutual enemies in the form of slavers.

What's with that dumb hat he always wears anyways

>>55171937
oh yeah, I actually read that.
were there ever any sequel?

>>55172084

Saladin Ahmed kinda got super depressed for a few years and went back from writing, I think he got better and is in the process of writing the sequel right now though

>>55171771
Throne of the Crescent Moon is shit, flat characters, boring plot, ends on an anticlimax, world is boring.

>>55171966
Occam's razor a little (and know anything about Catholicism.) The two options are:
1) Fallen men became immortal, even though the rest of the setting cribs the biblical theme of loss of immortal idyll through falling.
2) Fallen men became blinded to the light, twisted into inferior caricatures, and fled to the east or south - this cribs directly the early-XXth Christian explanation for where Africans and Asians came from if Genesis were to be taken literally.

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I hope to one day be as good at prose as mister Martin

>>55171618

Joe Abercrombie
Brent Weeks
Brandon Sanderson
Patrick Rothfuss

Some high fantasy, some low fantasy, some somber, some action, some humour, some world-building, each athour with their own angle to the whole thing

>>55172204
>Fallen men became blinded to the light,

Revved up like a deuce?

>>55171485
You don't get to plaster your name all over a TV show and accept truckloads of cash, then wash your hands of what ends up on the screen.

Tolkien is to creative literary genius what Martin is to hack pulp idiocy. They both so far surpass anyone else in their field that they will be remembered 1,000 years from now as a kind of yin and yang of fantasy, a Manichaen duality of speculative letters. For every sublime, luminous beauty that Tolkien has gifted the world, Martin has cursed us with a tedious, banal ugliness. It is unfair to compare the two directly on any one point, because Martin is in every way the anti-Tolkien, patently sterile, parasitical, and inferior, but so much so that he becomes a monument in his own right, and counterbalances Tolkien. Could one exist without the other? Tolkien obviously could. But it is only by the contrast that Martin offers that we can truly appreciate the full depths and heights of Tolkien. Our understanding of Tolkien would be incomplete if Martin had never set pen to page. It is through only the abject failure and futility of Martin that we can approach an apprehension of the true scope and scale of Tolkien's hitherto inconceivable greatness. Perhaps this is what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote about the Music of the Ainur. If Tolkien is a subcreator in the image of Eru, truly Martin is like unto Melkor. It is only reflected in the awfulness of the one that we can fully see the goodness of the other.

>>55171538
>completely missing the point of the post you're replying to

>>55172274
I haven't read the first two but
>Brandon Sanderson
>Patrick Rothfuss
God no.

>>55172261
You know, the irony is that, apart from the fact that he's writing about explosive diarrhea, I don't think the prose is that bad.

>>55166055
>tfw /lit/ memes finally make it round to /tg/
yes

>>55171618
wolfe counts as newish right

>>55169125
Brit here

no it isn't

>>55166497
Just like us.

>>55172561
>Finally
It's been here for a long time.

>>55172261
Still disappointed they skipped that on TV.

>tfw taxposting has completely replaced Epic Pooh threads.

>>55172561
Brown water flows back

>>55168974
A Tale of Thighs and Ass
Gout of Moans

>>55171812

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

>>55172714

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/world-41077102

>>55169160
>LeMeme

>>55172450
Sure you do. Tolkien doesn't get exhumed and desecrated for what happened in the Hobbit trilogy.

>>55172714
Pidgin is unironically aesthetic af

>>55172535

Oh come on, Kvothe is like the Elminster of the new millenium (mary-sueness included), and Sanderson writes geniuinely good books with interesting worldbuilding

>>55172886
Rothfuss is an edgelord hack and Sanderson is pure anime. I should know; I've never read either.

>>55168700
>I'm a fat man that never had any conflict in life
Just look at the man.

Clearly every day is a battle.

>>55170067
I used to like them a lot, anon, I really did. When I was thirteen. Sooner or later you need to wake up and smell the plebbiness.

>>55166055
The quote George RR Martin posed is legitimate and is understandable for a worldbuilder.

This thread is not. Even if this was the most profound relevant quote ever made on the subject of fantasy literature repeating it ad naseum does not make you smart. At best you are a 5 year old saying E=MC^2 and thinking this makes you as smart as Einstein.

>>55172592

Nah. Only when you start getting into that Game of Thrones bullshit do you throw away your freedom.

>>55173180
>The quote George RR Martin posed is legitimate and is understandable
>for a worldbuilder.
Worldbuilding is a terrible meme. If it's not for literal tabletop RPGs, it's a waste -- it can only hurt your work.

>>55173180
>The quote George RR Martin posed is legitimate and is understandable for a worldbuilder.
It really isn't. To say that Lord of the Rings has a very "medieval philosophy" and to proceed from there is an enormous misstatement from the text.

>>55169989
decent series, but pretentious as all fuck
also pointlessly complex, half the shit that happens doesn't matter in the end

only real achievement is the worldbuilding, never seen something like that before

>>55172886
I remember reading The Way of Kings and thinking how his worldbuilding made zero fucking sense.

Sanderson to me is the most egregious example of the sort of DnD-fication of fantasy, which is to say that he treats magic like an utterly mundane, falsifiable and reproducible phenomenon, and then doesn't really think through the massive implications that would have for his world.

Needless to say I sort of despise that approach.

>>55172115
Depression's a bitch. I hope Ahmed got over his.

>>55171505
I think it's just a meme because out of context the tax policy part of the quote is pretty funny.

>>55171299
>won't actually finish the series before death

My personal theory is he is waiting with finishing the series until after the show has had its last season. By doing so Martin can 1) keep the hype around the series going longer and 2) tell a completely different story and market it as the 'real' ending, to keep readers interested.

>>55173261
As opposed to randomly generating everything on the fly and hand waving stuff in?

>>55173408
My personal theory is that he has zero idea what to actually to do with the story.

>>55173443
As opposed to writing a good story you plebby faggot. Who cares about taxes? It's unimportant. A good writer knows when to handwave.

>>55173447
I lean towards this one.
It's hard to proceed now, the show goofed pretty bad with their "tie up 6 season of loose ends and tension in 3½ episodes."

>>55173455
>Who cares about taxes?
I do.
Elegant accounting and sleek spreadsheets are GOAT.

>>55173479
Your head is like a sledgehammer of plebness.

>>55173489
Mak les talk talk ride moar dragon nao

>>55172204
would they have to be immortal though? there is precedent for breeding=/= copulation/gestation/infancy. the movies depict this quite literally re: Uruk Hai.
the lore as is does not seem to ascribe the ability to create life to Melkor & Co. I guess you would have to decide if corruption leaves fertility intact.
but then again we are arguing about orcsecks on 4chan

>>55171966
There is actually a sort of/kind of reference to orcish child at one point, but it's cleverly hidden, and not perhaps as clear as we would want it to be.

In the hobbit, Gollum is described as having eaten an goblin imp, which as we know Tolkien used goblins and orcs interchangeably, so what could a goblin imp be, most people seem to agree that Tolkien meant a goblin child.

But yeah, the initial creation of the orcs we sort of know, despite the fact Tolkien has given various explanations in his works and then extra musings and considerations in his letters and other published works, but the main constant is that Evil can't create, it can only twist, corrupt and empower beings already created.

>>55171089
>>55171103
>>55173318
Every. Single. Fucking. Time. Tolkienfags are the worst. Anytime anyone criticizes their demigod, it's the same chorus
> you didn't read it!
> you didn't understand it!
> you don't have a doctorate in catholic theology, or WW1 trench fighting, or Scandinavian epic composition, so of course you missed it.

They literally cannot conceive that someone might inderstamd their pile of shit for what it is, a pile of shit. They're like Marxists, and both groups miss that if you need to spend ten years in post-graduate education to understand a book, IT IS A SHITTY BOOK.

>>55171966
Was Bolg not the son of Azhag? Does this not imply familial ties?

>>55172204
Occam's razor:
Bolg is described as Azog's son in the hobbit. Orcs have parental relationships.

>>55173766
It's

>>55166055
>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper
It's called myth.

No one gives a shit about how kings rule a kingdom in practice in fantasy, you stupid fat fuck. Except for that one thing that's the engine ofthe story, like a political mistake or something like that.
As a matter of fact you're not able to write anything resembling reality, let alone a realistic political background.

Jesus christ, the more I look at his face, the more I hate him. He looks exactly like I imagine a descendant of the Numenoreans 10000 years after the Third Age would look, devoid of everything that made Men once great.

>>55166499
>What was King Robert's tax policy, George?

"Let Arryn and Baelish handle all that boring stuff".

>>55173795
Man your entire post is just one seething mass off repressed desire to say the c word.

>>55173766
pleb talking. It's infinitely better than a shallow grasp on the War of the Roses clad in fantasy aesthetics and profound descriptions of food

>>55169989
Of course there are more than 2 series. There are actually 4.

- Tolkien's middle earth
- The Dying Earth
- The Book of the New Sun
- Conan

Never heard of anything else.

>>55173863
You've never heard of ASoIaF?

>>55173795
Logistics is the best part of alternate worlds,leave the power fantasy to freeform forums.

>>55173261
How do you mean?

>>55171618
After 1989 everything is garbage. Don't bother.
>>55173885
>austistic stemfags
Your kind always has to ruin it for everyone else, uh? No, no one gives a shit about that stuff in high fantasy, Jesus christ. It's exactly what I DON'T WANT to read about. I want to read about good man doing their best to overcome evil, about their sacrifices and stuff like that. I don't want to read about fucking economies for fuck's sake.
>>55173837
Cazzo?
>>55173876
No (if I had heard about it or even read it in the past I'd have forgot about it to save my mental sanity for sure).
But I forgot Gormenghast.

>>55173771
Yes it does. Especially when coupled with tolkiens own comments on the orcs >>55169274

>>55173993
Worldbuilding is all unimportant to the story. If it were important, it would BE the story. You wouldn't call it worldbuilding. For example, Aragorn's tax rate simply isn't important. If it was important, it'd be tied to theme or character, instead of used as simple worldbuilding.
>>55174002
How can you know it's shit if you haven't read it? You're right, I think, but still.
>Haven't heard about ASoIaF
My friend, I genuinely do not believe this unless you live in some third world country which does not get Burger media and even then I do not believe it because it's all over 4chan, especially /tg/.

It seems everyone forgets Gormenghast ;_;

>>55174049
I gotta say i both disagree and agree with this post at the same time.

>Worldbuilding is all unimportant to the story.
Not really since the story happens in and interacts with the world, without the worldbuilding things might look disjointed or unconnected or at worse seem unimportant to the reader.
But i also think ignoring certain aspects of the world (like the taxes in this case) is also worldbuilding, it's Tolkien saying that stuff is unimportant in my world and the story that takes place in it, sort of like worldbuilding by omision.

Otherwise an interesting post, carry on.

>>55169041
When has it not been? Pretty much every king or queen that is remembered as great is that way because in the grand scheme of things they did good thing. I seriously don't get his argument.

>>55166055
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
What is Cersei's tax policy?

>>55174119
Not a "great king" but "good" king.

Effectively saying that if a king is fair and just everything will be ok.

But you famine does not car about justice, superior armies won't necessarily respect fairness.

>>55172928
Kek

>>55174119
I don't see what's so strange about it, the fact that we look back on some leaders and say they did good and were therefore great is different that proclaiming that a man that is good now as a "not-king" will also be a great king simply by the virtue of being a good man.

GRRM's point is that being a ruler is not easy, that you might have the best of intentions and despite that you might make policy and decisions that might end up being bad rather than good.

I mean if you look history, many rulers had nicknames that changed with their rulership, when the people prospered they were praised, when shit happened they were disliked, and all of that is completely unconnected with whether the ruler was or tried to be a good person.

>>55174119
People are remembered fondly because they ruled with strength. Time takes out the sting of their iron fist, and all that is left is the stability they inevitably brought. For example, Stalin is still beloved by many in Russia, because he saved Russia from the Nazis. Cao Cao was beloved by peasantry despite his warmongering, because he protected them. Of course, later the reverse happened to Cao Cao, but that was for literary reasons.

t. xxXmachiavelliXxx_03

>>55174171
Peter the great gave literacy, reformed government.. and nearly bankrupted the country
and sent many thousands to live miserable lives and die sad deaths in a reeking swamp so he could have a modern European port city named after himself.

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>>55173261
Did someone say.. world building ?

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The one thing I can't stand about GRRM badmouthing Tolkien is that half the shit he talks about "Hurr Tolkien's works are too black and white with their evil overlord", but then GRMM DOES THE EXACT SAME THING with shitty villains like the Night King. However, at least Sauron was a tragic figure when you learn more about him; while Night King is just "Hurr kill all humans".

>>55174165
I am still finishing the two towers but from what I heard (and flicking through the last book for spoils). Doesn't the end of return of the king describe how aragorn handles stuff like that?

I mean most great historic figure who were great generals where also pretty competent rulers. Ceasar, augustus, alexander, napoleon they all made allot of administrative decicions that were pretty great.
Why couldn't that work for aragorn? It certainly not imposible for a general to be a good king

>>55174049
It's a joke, of course I know that shit. I even read it. It's not worthy of being mentioned.

>>55174267
Add "creates complete working fictional languages" on the left.

>>55174285
He might be a great king, the whole argument is that a nice guy doesn't' necessarily make a competent ruler.

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>>55174171
>Stalin is still beloved by many in Russia, because he saved Russia from the Nazis.
-t. Stalin's Propaganda Ministry

>>55174169
That's very true. Might have misunderstood the intent of the statement then.
But doesn't Tolkien cover that with both the line of Gondor stewards who are bad rulers but good fighers IE Boromir and Faramir. And theodon being kind of sucky.

>>55169125
That would be "I would dispute" quibble is used to deplict an argument as unimportant.

>>55174285
Not him, but no. The only thing that you get is a weird little vignette where Aragorn worries to Gandalf that he won't live forever, and that he wants some sign for the future. Gandalf takes him for a little trip to a forgotten corner of Mindullon (the mountain Minas Tirith is set upon),and he discovers a sapling to replace the White Tree that's dead in the courtyard.

The closest thing you get to canon about the rule of Aragorn in times of peace is set in the notes for an abandoned story he wrote about a resurgence in Sauron worship about 100 years after the end of LoTR.

I would also add that one of the most subtle things in LoTR is Aragorn's speech patterns. Almost everyone else has a very distinctive one. Aragorn tends to mimic whomever he's talking to, and if you know where Tolkien is drawing his speech pattern inspirations from (for instance, men of Rohan tend to have very Wendish patterns of diction, especially for their poetry), Aragorn tends to speak such in a higher/purer way, indicating that he's at the very least extremely eloquent. Given how much import Tolkien puts on linguistics and talking precisely in general, that should be a big sign that he's actually very good at ruling.

>>55174319
>Cossacks
>Not scumbags who should have been exterminated
Cossacks were essentially the enforcers of the Tsars of the late Russian empire, the fact that so many supported the Nazis should if anything vindicate the communists in their actions.

posting these threads should be a bannable offense.

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>>55174259
Exactly. And he built Russia's power in the Great Northern War.
>>55174319
That too.
>>55174310
>The Virgin Worldbuilder creates conlangs with dialects
>Chad Forger of Worlds slaps English onto everything

>>55174346
Cool didn't catch that tidbit not being an english speaker.
One of those awesome things he could pull of with being a very esteemed proffesor.
Did GRR do anything of note besides game of thrones? Curious were he pulls his inspiration from. I personally don't enjoy his writing style so I just ride with the memes

>>55174169
Yeah but some actually incompetent rulers still had good reigns. The king is irrelevant in most things.

>>55174377
Whats the map from?
>>55174376
But the discussion in it is pretty fun. It certainly not as bad as the eldar/elf waifu threads.

>>55174331

He does, but the main point of contention is this >>55174312
Aragorn is undoubtedly a good man, but Tolkien handwaves that he will also be a great king, which is not wrong to do, it's his story and in his world apparently that is how it works, GRRM simply does not like this "Good non-king automatically because a good King" which is his right as well, different strokes and all that.

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>>55174430
"I read [Eddison's] works with great enjoyment for their sheer literary merit. My opinion of them is almost the same as that expressed by Mr. [C.S.] Lewis...Except that I disliked his characters (always excepting the Lord Gro) and despised what he appeared to admire...Eddison thought what I admire 'soft' (his word: one of complete condemnation, I gathered); I thought that, corrupted by an evil and indeed silly 'philosophy', he was coming to admire, more and more, arrogance and cruelty. Incidentally, I thought his nomenclature slipshod and often inept. In spite of all which, I still think of him as the greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read."

--Tolkien
>>55174508
The point is that, to Tolkien, good king = good man.

>>55174280
Night King is a creation of the show, mon. So far, we've not seen any indication that the Others in the books have any sort of leader like that.

Besides, I don't think GRRM *is* badmouthing Tolkien.

>>55174418
Of course, real world is vastly more complicated than any fantasy. Whether a king is irrelevant depends on how large a kingdoms and what point of history we're talking about.

>>55174550
Not him, but that is most definitely not borne out by Tolkien's writing. It's hard to contest either the premise that Theoden is a good man, or that Theoden is a bad king. It would probably be more accurate to say that, according to Tolkien, being a good king necessitates being a good man, but being a good man is insufficient for being a good king.

>>55174550

>The point is that, to Tolkien, good king = good man.

I know, i'm not arguing that Tolkien did it wrong, but that he simply had a different approach as GRRM.
And you could argue that " good king = good man" is a massive oversimplification, and he technically does it in the order of Good man -> Good King with Aragorn.
Which again, is not wrong to do in his fiction, it's his and he can write it in any way he wishes, and for me it does not even detract from the overall story, but despite that i can still see why someone might object to that and i can understand why they would.

>>55174346
I did wonder for a while where Aragorn learned how to rule, how to be a statesman and that, until I remembered that he, like every chieftain of the dunedain for generations, was fostered at Rivendell during his youth.

Couldn't get much of a better education from a millennia-old elf lord who was raised by the sons of feanor (the least bonkers ones) and who served the last king of the elves in war and in peace.

>>55171514
Go south and ask for more men and some money to repair the wall.
Get a lone from the inlaws.

>>55174598
I could agree with that, actually. Can't think of any rulers like Bloodraven in Tolkien's work, who were so ruthlessly pragmatic in their efforts to ensure a peace. Then again, that did get Bloodraven despised by all and eventually exiled, so perhaps it didn't work out in the long run?

>>55174615
He was a "philosophical anarchist", according to himself, so I don't think he'd be in favour of any king which everybody else considered good but not a good man.

I don't think there's anything wrong with disagreeing with Tolkien's philosophy (I myself regularly suck Machiavelli's Florentine cock), but GRRM's not doing it in a very convincing way.
>>55174598
I would agree with that. As for Theoden, I would say he is a tragic king. He dies for a reason.

>>55174623
Not to mention he rules over what is essentially a scattered kingdom in exile in the form of the Rangers of the North, who themselves are a kind of hidden bulwark to communities in Eriador like the Shire and Bree.

Or that he, under disguise, has spent extended sojourns in both the courts of Rohan and Gondor.

>>55166055
>What was Aragorn's tax policy?
Fun exercise: Show me ONE part of Game of Thrones in which this fat faggot bastard wrote about tax policy or actual rulership.

Oh no wait, he didn't. He wrote about the exact same things Tolkien did, but ineptly instead of beautifully.

>>55174365
From what I can tell, nobody really liked Cossacks.

They had several uprisings against Poles.
They had several uprisings against Russians.
They had a short alliance with Crimean Khanate during Khmelnytsky's Uprising, but most of the time they were just doing raiding them.
And then they tried to make a separate state during the Russian Civil War, where they fought against Reds, Whites, Ukrainians, Turks, Nazis, Ancient Gods and who knows what else.

>>55174716
And now everybody wants to pretend they're their ancestors.

>>55174691
I specifically remember one chapter where Cercei sits around discussing purchase of ships and the movement thereof.

>>55174365
>so many supported the Nazis

lol, brainlet non-history reader detected. So there was thing whole event--maybe you've heard of it--it was called the Red Terror. Then there was a second event called the fucking Holodomor. It's sort of like the Holocaust except with starvation instead of gas, three times as many people died, and it actually happened. It was totally unnecessary and only happened because Lenin and later Stalin stole fucking grain from the people who produced it and then sent it to Russia while millions of people starved.

The Ukranians, including the Cossacks, were 100% justified in fighting the USSR and frankly the only shame is that they didn't win. The Soviets butchered millions of human beings for literally no reason.

>>55174671
Sure, and like i said, Tolkien is wrote the works as he wanted, and that's totally fine, but it is equally fine to point of or "quibble" about some aspects of it, without legions of people getting angry at it.

I love Tolkien's work, me and my players have been playing One Ring for ages now, but i can still understand why people criticize aspects like this.

Also, to note him being a "philosophical anarchist" and having it perhaps bleed into his works at some points also opens such things for criticism by people who hold a different view, and that's ok too.

Whether GRRM is being convincing and going about it the right way is a different discussion all together.

>>55174756
Anon I hope you realise that your shitposting is the reason people still deny the holodomor. Well, that and Uncle Putin's cock.

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You know, guys, maybe this is just a crazy little idea, but perhaps Martin meant his tax policy comment in a metaphorical way?

Like saying that Tolkien provided a very idealized view of medieval politics and methods (generally speaking, anyway), and from there came his idea to write a Song of Ice and Fire.

>>55173788
damn, I forgot this entirely and am now BTFO

>>55168325
>orcs and human became good friends, just like in the dreams of hobbits from the animated version

Wait for real?

>>55174671
Oh and for Theoden, he is a tragic figure who combines the elements of a good king being corrupted by evil strongerthan him but who still redeems himself in the end.

Perhaps to highlight that just being good is not enough, one also requires a certain steadfastness and moral fibre to resist such corrupting elements. Which one might argue are also qualities that a "good person" should have, but that's neither here nor there

>>55174780
It does, but I don't think anyone's disagreeing with his disagreement. Partially it's derision at GRRM's 'quibbling' despite his own lesser skill (people are rubbed the wrong way by things they think are overhyped; combine this with all the "Is GRRM the new Tolkien?" stuff...). The other part is fixation on the rest of GRRM's quote -- the taxes bit.

>>55174812
No. In fact, Tolkien couldn't resolve the issue. He abandoned the 100-year-later plot >>55174346 mentions for being too grim.

>>55170067

Moist is my husbando

>>55174267
But what if I do ALL of those things?

>>55174756
Technically no fewer Ukrainians starved to death during that time than starved to death every single year up to that point, and after that there wasn't famine in the Ukraine again.

>>55174833
Yeah it does seem to boil down to people disliking GRRM.
This whole notion of "is GRRM the new Tolkien" is understandable if flawed comparison, both are fantasy writers, Tolkien is the most influencal thus far, and GRRM perhaps the most popular right now.

>>55170067
I have never actually heard of prachet from people that weren't pretentious as fuck about it so I refused to read it out of spite.
What is it actually about and what makes it so good, I am very curious?

>>55174918
Revisionism. What Soviet statistics are you reading? In what version of events were millions of people regularly starving to death in one of the most fertile regions on Earth?

>>55169097
You just sound like an angry pleb who's still mad that he was a nerd socially but still not one of the smart kids. Stay mad, brainlet.

>>55169094
GRRM isn't writing ASoIaF to portray the heroic, religious, and Old-English-Wankey values Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings to portray. GRRM writes pure War of the Roses fanfiction.

>>55174867
>Not William "D" Worde
>Not Buddy "You'll be Yellin''" Celyn
>Not Sam "My Cock is a Climb" Vimes
>Not Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs
>Not Sergeant "Semi in your Colon" Colon
Shit taste my nig.

>>55174964
How the fuck can you be pretentious about Pratchett.

The guy's looked down upon.

>>55174965
>replying to paid Russian trolls

>>55174985
0.15 Reichsmarks have been deposited in your Swedish bank account

>>55174984
Liking things and being able to express it eloquently = pretentious, at least to those who hate everything and are bereft of linguistic fluidity.

>>55175002
Swiss, fuck me

good night

>>55174788
Even then Martin's story assuming it follows the general path of D&D is turning out to be pretty generic.
>Secret son of the dead prince who everyone loved goes off to fight the dark lord while the evil queen remains in her city just as the prophecy of the prince who was promised stated

>>55174615
If you want a good example of good =/ good man, this look at Nicholas II. By all accounts, he was a very nice person and loved his family. But he ran his country into the ground so hard he was overthrown and executed.

>>55174918
Ah, yes, this beautiful nonsense of "hurr it was just normal to ukrops to die from starvation". Yes, die of starvation in the most fertile fucking land in the entirety of the Russian Empire, the land commonly called the breadbasket of the empire, the land whose flag still symbolizes a golden wheat field that fills the horizon. Yeah, starvation was perfectly normal in the Ukraine, just ignore these commies treating them worse than cattle goy.

>>55166055
Does he ever go into detail about tax policy in the self-insert LotR erotic fanfictions that he calls books?

>>55174567
He's not, like in most things /tg/ completely ignores the context of this quote because it makes for good (you)s

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>>55174885
Then you're me. And I love me.

>>55175033
Yeah there are so many in rulers or other people who held positions of power who failed as rulers or simply were judged by history as bad rulers even if they were good people, or even if they actually tried to rule well but real life just smacked them in the face.

>>55175032
You're confusing the books for the show here, none of that has happened in the books.

>>55175090
No idea how i bollocksed that sentence up that badly.

>>55175032
Well it is still fantasy, so some familiar fantasy tropes are to be expected.

>>55175033
You're also forgetting the part where a literal cabal of jews, following the ideological doctrines of another jew, roused up a bunch of guys and overthrew the ruler because they wanted to create a global utopia.

>>55175144
It is still a pretty generic trope in fantasy for a writer who styles himself as gritty and realistic and yet has prophecies always coming true.

>>55170847
Ive read that before; that blog has some good essays

Also not that guy just chiming in

>>55166055
maybe i should copy this so i can make a good post tomorrow.

>>55168986
napoleon

>>55174984
By pretending it someone you can only read if you also like opera and belong to certain fraternities.
It was mostly something posh kids I went to college with went on about talking about how much smarter it was then any other fantasy. I

Honestly don't know anything else about the guy besides that he is apparently responsible for totalbiscuit which is pretty funny.

>>55175163
>Communists are the reason the Russian empire was awful
Yep political oppression of the lower classes, involvement in costly wars, political favoritism, unwillingness to reform the government, and naming himself supreme commander of the army while losing a war didn't have anything to do with the collapse of the Russian Empire.

Also, blaming the Jews? Clearly the Germans who sent Lenin back to Petrograd and helped support the Bolsheviks had nothing to do with the rise of the Soviet Union, it was all those evil Jews.

>>55175163
Christianity?

Why the fuck are there so many GRRM fanboys and tryhard edgelords who do their best to try and shit on Tolkien? The guy who did Takeshi Kovacs went out of his way to bitch at Tolkien despite writing a typical sword-n-spells shittery that so happened to hew close to Tolkien. Or China Mievelle, whose works are all admitted to be bitching at Tolkien.

In fact, why do so many fuckwits insist everyone being rapist war criminals and shitty transparent author self-insert Mary Sue whose role is to bitch at the designated naive dumbass who has everything bad happen because believing things aren't shit 24/7 is apparently naive optimism.

If you want "realism", there'd be a grand variety of good people, bad people, people who are neither winning, losing, and things that are neither. Life and humanity aren't inherently one thing. It's insulting from grimderpers to use the "oh I'm just being honest" when your honesty consists of flat villains who are "morally grey" because maybe they have a family. People are likely to be dicks as they are to be saints, and telling me this shit is realistic when you have dragons and magic faffing about is laughable.

>>55175210
Man how do you fuck up being pretentious like that. At least go with Wolfe or Peake or try and weld Borges into the genre or something.
>>55175232
you bear some responsibility for replying to bait this obvious, you know.

>>55175202
Kek
>>55175196
Why wait? Post it as soon as this one is autosaged, hell do it now and live a little!

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>>55172894

>>55175184
Cept for the prophecy about Dany's child. And a few of Melly's prophecies, although I guess you could argue that she's misinterpreting them.

>>55175210
Amusingly there's a Discworld book set in an operahouse. The gist of it is that Pratchett did not get opera at all, and wanted to share that feeling with the rest of the world.

>>55174171
>he saved Russia from the Nazis.
He damn near turned it over on a silver platter. Purges of officers, moronic interference, refusal to do anything in spite of his spies telling him an attack was coming....

Russia won in spite of him.

>>55175184
Sure but gritty and realistic are a lens through which you can look at the typical fantasy tropes, or if you want they can act as modifiers, like fantasy often has dragons, how would dragons work in a more realitic gritty fantasy.

what happens to "dragons the trope" in a setting like that?

bottom line is that i don't see how gritty and realistic somehow means you can't use even cliched fantasy tropes.

>>55175247
I don't know dude they were some shitty people. Can you tell me a bit about prachet? I am pretty intrested in him now
>>55175246
Thats just the edgy muh grey you see everywhere now. Same people complain about starwars needing shit like that

>>55175301
He writes characterful comedy based on fantasy and pop-culture, with slightly anvil-style morals. I liked him as a kid, but I wouldn't read him now.

>>55175322
>wrote

>>55175267
Christ man that makes it even funnier. I will give those books a look now.
>>55175281
I learned in history class there was a massive stalin backlash after he died in Russia for that reason. Is that not true? I never heard Putin metion Stalin

>>55175322
Funny, I hated him as a kid, but grew to adore him as an adult.

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>>55175184
Well a lot of the prophecies are just information or deductions you could gain/make if you were a nigh omniscient telepath.
Not to mention since a lot of these prophecies are self fulfilling or easily fulfilled by an actor aware of them you could probably use it as a pretty effective way to influence the outside world.

>>55171908
Childr..... Oh wait.

>>55168974
It's sad how inaccurate and generalizing this image is.

>>55168676
Nope they just need to be heavy and tied to a string. Being pointy can help

>>55175338
>I learned in history class there was a massive stalin backlash after he died in Russia for that reason.
Yeah, Khrushchev had a de-Stalinization policy. It went pretty good until Brezhnev later reintroduced much of the repression which lasted until Gorbachev.

>>55175338

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/15/positive-views-of-stalin-among-russians-reach-16-year-high-poll-shows

There has been a rise in Stalin's popularity, mostly by younger generations who simply see him as a strong and powerfull leader, an imagine the Kremlin does not dispute or correct.

>>55174964
>I have never actually heard of prachet from people that weren't pretentious as fuck about it so I refused to read it out of spite.
>so I refused to read it out of spite.

You realize that's pretty pretentious in of itself, right?

>>55175284
Not him but I think the criticism comes from GRRMs own comments about how he wanted to subvert fantasy tropes to show how they'd end up in the real world. Robb and Dany are prime examples of typical young rulers thrust into power against wicked forces. In Robbs case joffs tyrannical rule and dany the slavers. However he ends up having robbs honor cost him his life and dany turning out to be an ineffective and temperamental leader. Now its shaping up to be Jon as the unknown backup prince rising to power in a very typical fantasy way. Of course its not done yet, I could see him killing off Jon after he gets dany preggo, in some heroic sacrifice no less, but despite all his talk of subverting fantasy tropes his grand finale, if the show is anything to go by, is ending very standard fantasy wise.

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>>55174716
Cossacks are like the outlaws of the old west or the medieval vikings - by all accounta unpleasant and violent, yet still romanticised for the freedom they represented.

Not that being loathed by your neighbors necessarily tells the whole story of an entire social groups, but it does give some indication as to why their lifestyle might not be viable in an orderly society.

>>55175301
Prachet used to work in nuclear safety, one day when his boss was out of the office the phone rang and answered.
>This is the press, we have heard that there has been a nitrogen leak at the nuclear power plant and we demand to see it.
>Okay.
>Wait! Is this safe?
>Yes, it's only nitrogen.
And after that he got some fantasy novels published that poked fun at common tropes of other fantasy works of the time.

>>55170106
Aw yeah boi

>>55175576
Fair point, it does look more like the subverted tropes are on a sort of micro level, but on a macro level the story still progresses through the typical fantasy beats. People can of course dislike the shape the story is taking, or dislike GRRM himself, but personally i don't see it as such a huge deal, to me the grim and gritty is just lens to look at typical tropes in different context and world, but i can totally see where you're coming from.

Like, totally off topic, but i like to do this with ready-made adventures, take a pathfinder module for example and while reading it see how you could twist the story to fit a sci fi campaign, or a different style fantasy,how the tropes and story beats would look like in a completely different style setting, while still keeping the basic gist of the story.

>>55175698
I have no problem with it personally myself. My problems with his books and sorry progression is pretty minor, its the show, Since season 3 at least that I have a problem with.

I do think a lot of the ill will though comes from people who are tired of authors of gritty dark fantasies shitting on typical black and white good vs evil stories. Like all things, the execution is more important, a well executed good vs evil story is going to better than a grim bleak story that is just using that lens as a crutch.

I will never understand the appeal of Martin.

>>55173180
>The quote George RR Martin posed is legitimate and is understandable for a worldbuilder.
but that fat fuck is a terrible worldbuilder

>>55174171
>Stalin weakened the soviet military and purged competent commanders because he feared a coup
>Tukhachevskiy was a military innovator who advocated mobile warfare over WW1 style combat. Tukhachevskiy is found guilty of treason and purged.
>Germany uses mobile armies to great effect, Stalin abruptly decides Tukhachevskiy had a point and institutes his reforms. In 1940.
>Army is too busy remobilizing, reoutfitting, and reinforcing to competently address a possible invasion by the Germans
>Pruskov warned Stalin the Nazis would invade, Stalin didn't like it and had Pruskov replaced by yes-men
>Yes-men too afraid of Stalin to contradict him
>Nazis invade, Pruskov is executed by firing squad three months after invasion anyways.

The Russians beat the Nazis more in spite of Stalin, and the fact that Hitler was an idiot for invading Russia in the first place. If anything Stalin facilitated the massive gains the Germans were able to make initially, instead of simply crushing the Germans like an insect.

The reason for Stalin's relative popularity was a combination of propaganda and terror, rather than actual competence or because he was a Hard Man Making Hard Decisions.

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>>55174716
>They did one thing right
Sultan Mehmed IV to the Zaporozhian Cossacks:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians - I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

--Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV
Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.

Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

- Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.

>>55175777
>well executed good vs evil story is going to better than a grim bleak story that is just using that lens as a crutch

Of course, we're in total agreement in that, I just find this sort of fan rivalry of different styles of fantasy to be a bit ridiculous, I feel there is plenty of space for various styles out there, it makes the fantasy literature scene richer not poorer when you have such differing styles, even if i don't personally even like all the stuff that comes out.

>>55175443
Found the fattie

>>55168973
Why are brainlets always so envious of engineers?

>>55174267
Thank you for understanding and using that meme properly and making the Chad the polar opposite of each point, not "the optimal ubermensch"

>>55175971
Something something simple minds
something something simple things

>>55175834
That letter was fake though.

>>55175971
I can't imagine anyone's envious of engineers except perhaps poorfags/imminent baristas who want a steady income.

>>55175556
That was why I came here to ask a second opinion :P

>>55169041
his point is retarded because tolkien wasn't writing a book that shows realistic world events, but trying to build a myth
>>55169246
>>55169287
no, it's not different tastes at all, it's being unable to understand the book he's criticizing.

Tolkien didn't ask those questions because they didn't fit the type of story he was telling.

>>55176379
That's allot of people though.
>>55175630
Sounds like a pretty cool guy!

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>>55168325
>his best

>>55169160
If I want to read a radical feminist's manifesto, I'd go to tumblr.

>>55171505
Why are you not joining the GRRM hate bandwagon?
Srsly though, it's a snippet from an interview and GRRM is a huge Tolkien fan. Hating ASOIAF and by extension GRRM has become the fashionable thing to do ever since the show became popular. I was wrong thinking this pretentiousness was confined to /lit/.

>>55174965
It wasn't the most fertile part of the world, it was a blasted hellscape.

>>55166499
>8
>>55166571

He was a retarded and shit ruler. Did you even read the first part of the first book? The whole point of robert is the answer to that. He was a great warrior but knew fuck all about ruling.

>>55168700
The entire point of ASoIaF is about how war is terrible and distracts people from actual issues.

>>55177270
Its a bit sad to realize that Tywin ruling as hand for Tommen would have been the best end scenario were the others not coming. He managed to keep the realm prosperous and peaceful under the Mad King of all people. That is assuming he managed to curb the Martells and the mummers dragon

Is this going to become a /tg/ regular?

>>55174671
>I myself regularly suck Machiavelli's Florentine cock
Edgy.
Beat any woman today?

>>55177523
That line really came out of nowhere.

>>55175039
Kek.
Russians would still deny the evident.
>>55175247
>>Man how do you fuck up being pretentious like that. At least go with Wolfe or Peake or try and weld Borges into the genre or something.
But that's not being pretentious, it's having good taste.
>>55175462
Typical third world education.

>>55177381
Except Tommen would've gone mad and been as bad as Aerys as he grew up.

>>55177659
Pretentious people pretend to have good taste.

>>55177657
Seems pretty "in-line" with the rest to me.
>>55177694
Everyone with half a brain knows Martin is shit.
By the way, Dying Earth > New Sun.

>>55177674
What's your reasoning for that?
Being an incest baby?

>>55177741
>Seems pretty "in-line" with the rest to me.
You've got lots of taking charge of fortune, sure, but it's all focused on grand campaigns and country-forging and brutal anecdotes from history and then
>fortune is a woman, so beat her up to show your dominance

>Everyone with half a brain knows Martin is shit.
This is Pratchett we're talking about, although he doesn't exactly have a better reputation. Point is these guys can't even pretend to have good taste.
>By the way, Dying Earth > New Sun.
Take that back.

>>55177427
I think it already is to be honest. Dare I say its a meme?

>>55177908
Yeah it is.

>>55177694
Sounds like something a pretentious person would say.

>>55176379
Did an engineer make you feel inferior about your lower IQ and then fuck your wife or something?

>>55177933
It is.
>>55177908
It's been a meme for ages.

>>55177952
My dad was an engineer, so I guess one fucked my mother.

>>55176379
Unless you're a successful doctor or lawyer I'm going to have to laugh at you.

>>55178135
I'm a NEET, but only temporarily. Soon, I shall go to university, to study Chinese and history. Then I will get a job worth respecting.

>>55177861
It simply means that "chaos" isn't really chaos and you can drive it.

>>55176436
>his point is retarded because tolkien wasn't writing a book that shows realistic world events, but trying to build a myth

Jeez, we've covered this already, the fact that Tolkien was building a myth and not focusing on all the nitty gritty elements of rulership, does not automatically shied the work from someone pointing out those things are missing and how they would prefer those elements were to be in.

The fact Tolkien chose to ignore such elements because they didn't fit into the soty in his mind, or would have taken something away from it does not mean one can't point out "i think the story needed more X"
The whole concept that because the author did something on purpose somehow makes it immune to criticism is ridiculous

>>55178184
You're joking, right?

>>55178255
I'd say it's that luck is unpredictable and cannot be prevented, but that precautions can be taken and opportunities seized.

But it's the metaphor that's jarring, not the meaning.

>>55178283
I'm serious. But you can't get degrees for the jobs I want, and if I can't get those degrees I'll probably convert to law.

>>55178270
I'm clearly too tired to write.
>shield
and
>story

>>55175971
Yeah okay.

>>55178255
Chaos is a laddah

>>55178289
You're wrong. And I was incorrect.
He means you actually MUST drive luck, not can.
>>55178351
What?

>>55178270
While I understand different strokes for different folks. That isn't the problem. The thing is that adding those things to it would change lotr into something else entirely taking away from what makes it good. Therefore it's a shity critisism. It is fine if you don't like lotr but the story would lose something by adding that to it.

>>55178384
It's a joke from game of thrones

>>55178393
"that's just like your opinion man"
I happen to agree with your oppinion, but GRRM is still allowed to comment that he would have preferred more X over Y, no matter how it would change the story, and he has the right to say so.

It's not shitty criticism, it's subjective, GRRM thinks the story might have benefitted from those elements, you and i disagree, the fact we don't agree does not somehow change his comment into shitty criticism.
People need to chill with this nonsense.

>>55178323
You could at least try to make an argument, brainlet.

>>55178616
Yeah okay.

>>55177908
>>55177933
>>55177968
>An anon spams a post for a few weeks
>It's a meme guys!

Fucking newfags.

>>55178852
George RR martin threads have been spammed for years retard, it's a running shitposting meme.

>>55178925
>George RR martin threads have been spammed for years retard, it's a running shitposting meme.
I thought that was complaints about "BBEG".

>>55179276
BBEG ugh ...
Am I doing it right?

>>55176279
Reddit ruins everything eventually

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>>55179297
Yeah, more or less.

OP's got a long way to go, though.

>>55172567
Always.