>2017 >Still watching LOTR Why do you waste your time

>entirely missing the point

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Don't care about the memes. GRRM created the GOAT fantasy character.

>>80283604
>implying cat wasnt his best-written character

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>>80283604

>>80283461
I've got pasta of my own.

>Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple.

What an appaling simplification. Does Tolkien play around with ideas and myths like the Fisher King? Yes (so does Martin, see "a Stark in Winterfell). Does he stick to such a philosophy rigidly? No. There are many good and just rulers in Tolkien's works, Dior, Ecthelion, various kings of Arnor and its successor states, who nevertheless preside or the decline or fall of their lands. If a good ruler was all you needed then Inziladûn would have redeemed Númenor, but he didn't (and if we're just talking strictly about prosperous in terms of materialism, which I suspect Martin is, then his son was one of the most evil rulers described and yet conversely he achieved the greatest material success of any kingdom ever before his sudden fall). Tolkien describes plenty of complicated rulers that are simply "good" facing complicated situations with no easy answers. Denethor, Thingol, damn near every descendant of Finwë.


Continued...

>>80283698
>But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army?

It is of course supremely arrogant of Martin to declare what Tolkien did and did not think about. As to why Tolkien does not give a detailed account of Aragorn's reign it is incredibly simple: Aragorn is not the main character of Lord of the Rings (for example Tolkien once mentioned if he had been writing the Saga of Aragorn he would have given a live narrative of the Path of the Dead, but since he wasn't a recap by Gimli and Legolas sufficed). Aragorn is an important character, but his importance has actually ended by the time he becomes king, hence why he drops out of the narrative almost immediately. Tolkien's aftermath is not fixated on the fate of kings but the fate of the hobbits. In the appendix we do get a lot on Aragorn's life, but there we see Tolkien's focus is more on fleshing out say Aragorn's relationship with Arwen than his rule, which is kept at a very high level.

And this opens up the obvious question: where are Martin's tax policies and standing armies? Martin's narrative is absolutely about the detail of ruling, both by his own remarks and by the structure of his books. King's Landing is the most common and featured location, and 3 of the 5 books have the ruler of King's Landing as the most prominent character. And yet his descriptions of finances are incredibly vague. So vague people are able to construct elaborate conspiracy theories in the gaps (e.g. was Robert actually a bad ruler who spent too much, or was it all just another supervillain-esque scheme of Littlefinger?).

I could go on about Martin's armies and how they help expose his faux realism with questions about their size, composition and his use of the myth of levied peasantry, or about how a reasonable reader can figure out what happened to orcs, but the post size limit is hitting me again.

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Posting superior fantasy series.

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>>80283461
>someone post the five-page passage wherein daenerys' diarrhea is deeply described

>people who like this faggot shit also enjoy harry potter and twilight
disgusting

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>>80283461
For memes, every single mention of the word tax (excluding things like "stretching my legs was taxing") in ASOIAF:

A GAME OF THRONES
>none

A CLASH OF KINGS
>He has imposed a tax on those wishing to enter the city.
>The Queen Regent and her son shall make no claims to taxes, incomes, nor service from my people
>Harbormasters, tax farmers, customs sergeants, wool factors, toll collectors, pursers, wine factors; nine of every ten belonged to Littlefinger.

A STORM OF SWORDS
>Lord Redwyne asked only for thirty years’ remission of the taxes that Littlefinger and his wine factors had levied on certain of the Arbor’s finest vintages.
>He claimed that you had put a tax on women’s privy purses.
>“It is a tax on whoring,”
>Even a prince must pay his taxes.
>In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers.
>so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell.
>You can keep your king’s justice too, and your king’s taxes.

A FEAST FOR CROWS
>his bailiffs to collect duties and taxes for his treasurer Alyse Ladybright to count
>And does it matter who is regent for little Lord Robert, so long as the Vale remits its taxes?
>Don’t stop them bloody Celtigars from sending men to t’ eastern shore to collect his taxes.

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
>it is customary for the city to claim one-tenth of all the profits from the fighting pits, after expenses, as a tax.
>Such taxes as we collect are paid in kind, your Grace.
>Call it a blood tax. I will have a hundred pieces of gold from every pyramid for each freedman that the Harpy’s Sons have slain.
>Reznak mo Reznak stressed the coin to be made through taxes.
>Mills were a valuable source of tax.
>“The blood tax …”
>mayhaps we will not have to raise the taxes.
>He dare not resort to new taxes
>Half the lords in the realm could not tell taxation from tyranny

>>80283920
where did his increasing obsession with taxes arrive from?

good to see based george BTFOing tolkien's simplistic childish story

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All these fucking threads on taxes and LOTR and I've never heard anyone mention the best lore of all.

Tolkien sold the film rights to the Lord of the Rings in 1969. He did so because he knew he was near the end of his life, and at the time the UK had an extremely high inheritance tax, so he wanted a bunch of cash on hand available to pay it off when he died so his kids wouldn't have to worry about it.

So the only reason Peter Jackon's trilogy exists is because of taxes.

>>80283461
>my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with
kek, as if he even holds a candle to Tolkien.

>>80283962
Earning more money from the books, more money goes to taxes, get angrier about taxes, bring taxes up more in books, die of tax induced impotent rage heart attack before finishing books.