>Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. 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. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? 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?
Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with...
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Dum fat contrarian fuck
Finish the damn book you lazy fatass.
GO FIND THE BOOK STRETCHER!
>Fuck this fat faggot.
I mean yeah, that shits interesting if you're the sorta guy that can't enjoy sci-fi that hasn't accurately explained why FTL is possible or how artificial gravity works on starships.
But not at a single point throughout the duration of the LOTR book or movie trilogy did I find myself wondering about tax policy.
Christ, Tolkien's writing is dense enough as it it.
>people giving a shit about taxes in epic fantasy novels.
Unironically defending orcs
Fuck.me those pol memes are turning into reality
how come Sup Forums fags can't understand this simple quote? Martin loves Tolkien but he also likes political and moral complexity
Tolkien countered GRRM's point before it was even made
>She was sopping wet when he entered her. “Damn you,” she said. “Damn you damn you damn you.” He sucked her nipples till she cried out half in pain and half in pleasure. Her cunt became the world.
>And suddenly his cock was out, jutting upward from his breeches like a fat pink mast.
>The ship groaned and growled beneath him like a constipated fat man straining to shit.
>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.
>The three men were erect. The sight of their arousal was arousing
AMERICAN TOLKIEN
finally realized why I hate Game of Reddit.
fantasy is an escape, and this fuckface doesn't understand that.
Sounds like it just wasn't to his taste.
God, autistics still aren't over this
>not worth doing
summarizes gurm's entire career output
At least Tolkien finished the two major works he's known, blimpbeard
This. GRRM is so far ahead of Tolkien its not even funny. His characters are so much more iconic and memorable than the bland ones in lord of the rings. Think of Jon Snow, Daenerys, Jaime Lannister - household names, they all have real in depth character development and the audience feels attached to them. This is no contest against fucking Aragorn and Frodo, and the entire plot of Lord of the Rings is so convoluted and confused that it's not even worth talking about. Whereas GRRM's plot, full of twists and turns, is compelling and engaging. He portrays war so much more realistically, and his story is gritty, human, real, and authentic. He actually draws from real history, and unlike Tolkien doesn't rely on meme languages and """lore""" to make his work great. His work is already great because it stands on its own merits, and his is the story of our generation. It is for this reason that Game of Thrones is the current pinnacle of television, and why ASOIAF is so iconic and beloved, and why its legacy will far outlast Tolkien's.
He isn't the American Tolkien because he is far beyond that level.
We're not on his level of intellect. We cannot fully comprehend.
why do you people keep posting this
i love LOTR but he has a point, the morality in it is very simple-minded and doesn't explore much beyond "aragorn was a good awesome king"
that isn't to be a pretentious fuck and say ASOIAF is smarter or some shit, but it has nothing really to do with tax policy and more to do with how he likes to write differently from Tolkien which was the fucking question he was asked in the interview.
>the queen slid her finger into that Myrish swamp
>Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper.
To be fair that's kind of what makes Robert Baratheon such a good character, right? He was the classic brave hero but it turns out that when you take a guy who just wants to fight bad guys and sleep with pretty women he's not actually any good at being a politician.
GODS I WROTE DECENT BOOKS THEN
>the morality in it is very simple-minded and doesn't explore much
That's because you're reading it at only the surface level. You've never really thought about the specifically religious symbolism in the story and its applicability to so much
Yes yes, Tolkien, well done, well done...
HOWEVER
stupid fatass sex weirdo
It's a classic good vs evil story you fucking autist
Yup. When I first read the LOTR books I felt like I walked away feeling like I learned something. I felt like I read a story about what it means to be heroic and virtuous. Sure the world isn't perfect but when we are willing to make hard choices and do what is right, everything will turn out okay in the end. It's really a rather uplifting moral to the story.
GrrMs work is pretty much the opposite. It's a secular, soulless expression of people endlessly backstabbing and fucking each other. What am I supposed to get out of that? If I wanted to experience human failings, vice, and the hopelessness of the human condition, I would have gone outside. It's one thing to write stories that are gritty or realistic, but why should I feel a connection to a story only to see which asshole is going to be King of the Assholes?
I really want to read this, and I think Tolkien could pull off a story about societal decay, having experienced so much of history's ups and downs himself, but I understand not wanting to tarnish the legacy of the books with a bleak future
>But what about Faramir's cock? What if it was too small to satisfy Eowyn and she began an illicit sexual affair with Eomer? These are the questions Tolkien doesn't address and that I wanted to answer because real life isn't a fairy tale.
>iconic and memorable
Nigger he writes 10 personalities for 300 characters. Roose/Stannis/Tywin and the stern hardass ITJ personality types. Joffrey, Gregor, and Ramsey are the psychos who do what they want without thinking. Davos/Ned/Barristan/Brienne are all about honor and loyalty. What makes George RR Martin special is that he gives every character a quirk or physical trait.
Because opening up a 7th grade history book and adding magic and sex to feudal Europe is the epitome of originality, right?
>I think Tolkien could pull off a story about societal decay
He kind of already did.
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 Manichean 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.
I mean uncommon ones that save them from being the archetypal character.
>Danaerys
The character who half the fanbase thinks is literally named Khalessi?
What was his tax policy?
>t. Absolute pleb
Tolkein was a hack
Probably very high. Death Stars ain't cheap, people!
Doubt it costs too much to build a small moon-sized battle station when you control tens of thousands of planets. It's like a real-life country building a large military base.
this can't be a real quote
>I wanted to answer because real life isn't a fairy tale.
He's right. Fairy tales make much better stories than real life does. Besides, I think Tolkien had experienced enough "real life" during WW1 to last him several dozen lifetimes.
please tell me that these quotes are fake.
theres room for all types of stories
It is
nobody is saying it is
he's just saying the morality in LotR is not all that interesting
>and more importantly, how did they do it? Did Eowyn wake up in the moring, flip the covers back and run her cure pink little tongue up and down Faramirs shaft and suck him till he was as hard as he could ever be? Did she continue to do so until Faramir groaned and filled the mouth of Theodens daughter with his milky seed? Or did she suddenly find herself pining after Aragorn again, shying back from Faramirs touch, until he grew so frustrated one day that he pinned her down, and against her protest and anger ripped her dress off and, in ever increasing fury, rammed his painfully swollen mast into her till his anger subsided and he, half ashamed, collapsed upon her? These and the taxation questions were the questions i always found myself asking while reading Tolkiens works, and which i set out to explore in my own writing
kek
Literally all of them are real.
They are not.
fucking Space Obama
TFA made it clear that there are only about a dozen habitable planets in the galaxy.
Tolkein fought in WWI, including the battle of the Somme where he saw literally a million men die. The most violent thing Martin's ever seen was probably a robbery when he drove into a black neighborhood by accident one time. Where he does he get off pretending to be all gritty and realistic?
I'd much rather the rest of the world judged American fantasy writing by greats like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and others.
The ironic thing is that the economic system of the ASIOF world is functionally retarded.
Though Braavos is still the most retarded part of the whole world.
What's the highest level being in the Tolkien legendarium that the Night King could beat?
I haven't read the books at all but I'd like to hear more. Isn't it just medieval European economics? You pay tithes to the guy above you?
Aragorn, probably. Anything above that and you run into literal angels.
>sees all the worst humanity has to offer
>writes about heroism and the struggle for good
>lives a safe sheltered life
>writes a series of gritty books about backstabbing, misery and politics
Really jogs my nog
>Lovecraft
He may be a meme but he was a notable author who advanced the field of American literature.
Epic
... you're literally proving his point by pointing out that a story deeply rooted in Christian symbolism is in fact, morally childish, i.e. good versus evil
There is literally zero morally complex character in LotR, even when someone commits an evil act, it's because they were corrupted by the bad guy and/or the ring! it removes a lot of agency and humanity from them, which is why the story comes off as simplistic
Tolkien gets an A+ in lore and world-building and a C- in character writing
>Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
i thought orcs weren't born though. weren't they made by fucking up goblins or something?
He might be referencing the way that everyone takes out huge loans from the Iron Bank for decades without ever having to pay a single penny of it back and then one day the bank just calls in everyone's debts simultaneously for no apparent reason. Then, having thrown the whole place into turmoil, the bank happily funds multiple candidates for the iron throne even though none of them can pay back that debt.
Only way it makes sense is if the Iron Bank is deliberately destabilizing Westeros and the Iron Throne was deliberately trying to help it by being pants-on-head retarded with its finances. On an unrelated note, Littlefinger was in charge of the crown's finances and his family is from Braavos, same as the Iron Bank.
Are you full of shit or just retarded?
Assuming the were true (it's not) then the First Order blew up like 1/3rd of them. Why even build such an enormous station if you're going to fire it 3 times max?
The problem with fantasy and LOTR is that LOTR is such a huge franchise that's almost impossible to escape from comparison. To fantasy writers like Pratchett and GURM LOTR must be fucking irritating because whilst it is clearly such an important trilogy, they want to tell their own story.
It must be the most grating thing to explain to normies why they aren't just copying from Tolkein, which is what a LOT of modern fantasy writers (Paolini and Rowling for example) are guilty of.
Unlimited deductions
Have you ever once stopped to think what the ring represents?
Orcs and goblins were created by torturing and mutilating elves to the point of madness. I don't think it's directly stated where all the new orcs are coming from. Uruk-Hai are some kind of human/orc hybrid, the movie does show them being made in a pit.
>Killing off characters is a great gimmick. But what do you do when you've killed off all the men leaving behind only women and darkies? And you get writers block and can't finish the book. That's my question to GeorgeRRRRMartin.
en.wikipedia.org
More often than not we see humans standing around without suits or breathers on these planets, implying a nitrogenous atmosphere with breathable oxygen.
Nothing. Tolkien despised allegory.
It's a cheap plot device, a cop-out to remove yourself from the responsibility of writing realistic characters who commit morally questionable actions in times of stress, like real people.
YUUZHAN VONG
No but seriously there were threads about this when the accompanying picture book was released, the galaxy map listed only a handful of planets.
I figured it was much like how America supports the Taliban and when the Taliban gets too strong it suppots Al Qaeda and then when Al Qaeda gets too strong it supports ISIS and when ISIS gets too strong it supports Al Qaeda again. Like Littlefinger says, 'chaos is a ladder'.
Invasion
He despised allegory, not applicability you buffoon. Have you even read the actual quote?
Paolini copies from George Lucas more than anyone else
>Hello farmboy who lives with his uncle, I'm Ben-err, I mean Bronn
>I was a jedi kni-dragon rider, just like your father
>Before the dark times, before the empire
>Morzan, a jedi who was a good friend of mine, betrayed the dragon riders and helped the emperor conquer the world
>Oh no the Empire killed your family, that sucks
>Here's a magic sword
>We need to go rescue the princess and deliver her safely to the rebellion with the help of this mysterious rogue who's only in it for himself
>Oh no, I have sacrificed myself to save you while rescuing the princess
It's just Star Wars in a medieval setting.
They're corrupted elves, literally corrupted by a physical force of evil that isn't a concept, but actual evil as a manifestation. Souron is basically the an anti-christ figure to Morgoth who is Satan. Uruks are born from earthen cocoons through sorcery using mankind as a template for added strength.
>I figured it was much like how America supports the Taliban and when the Taliban gets too strong it suppots Al Qaeda and then when Al Qaeda gets too strong it supports ISIS and when ISIS gets too strong it supports Al Qaeda again
First of all, that's not even remotely how it works. The US would happily see all these groups vanish off the face of the planet tomorrow. It's not handing out loans to them or trying to keep them balanced. What you're describing is a lot more like Britain's foreign policy in Europe for centuries, keeping the continent divided and always siding with the second-strongest power. But that still doesn't apply to a bank.
What Braavos is doing in Westeros is more like when America funds a rebel faction in a country it doesn't like, only Braavos is also funding the government, and everyone else. None of it makes any sense, unless Braavos is deliberately destabilizing the place in order to invade. Imagine if the US was funding Assad, and the rebels, and ISIS, and also giving some money to Russia, all at the same time. That's the Iron Bank in ASOIAF.
>Christian symbolism is in fact, morally childish
So childish it's been with us for the past 2000 years?
Man, nu-atheists are so fucking dumb. It wasn't until Nietzsche's time that people began looking critically at some of the moral tenets of Christianity. But no, you're more morally mature than almost two millennia of great thinkers.
He deserves some credit, man. Would stuff like Alien exist without him?
someone post "sunset found her"
>I've never read Plato's Republic
>I've never read any medieval literature
So this is the Gurm fanbase, huh?
...
But they do expect to be repaid don't they? Additionally, lending to everyone allows them to have control of the eventual winner no matter who it is.
butthurt subhuman nigger
>It wasn't until Nietzsche's time that people began looking critically at some of the moral tenets of Christianity
He wasn't even about shit-talking the death of God either. When Nietzsche said God is dead, he didn't mean it literally, he was talking about the sense of spirituality in the Age of Enlightenment. It was more about how he saw the degradation of morality.
>TFA made it clear
>only about a dozen habitable planets
fuck off, the galactic senate meetings proved otherwise.
>But they do expect to be repaid don't they?
How can they when half the people who owe them money are dead, the realm's population has been cut in half, and everyone is about to die of starvation in the winter because they've been too busy fighting to harvest? Braavos is setting up Westeros to completely implode. Only explanation is that they no longer care about the debts and actually want to rule the place themselves.
>Additionally, lending to everyone allows them to have control of the eventual winner no matter who it is.
Doesn't matter when the winner is completely destitute.
>The split loyalties of Boromir, tied between his loyalty to his fathers country and to the Fellowship
>The internal struggle between Smeagol and Gollum, who represented self-loathing due to the fact his addiction to the ring forced him to hate the only people who ever showed him an once of kindness in years
>Faramir choosing not only to take part in a suicide mission, but also choosing to stay behind and cover the rearguard of their retreat all on his fathers obviously incompetent orders
>Frodo desperately trying to offer Gollum redemption even until the very end
>The Elves choosing to fight and die at Helms Deep rather than flee to safety
>The King of Rohan choosing to spare Wormtongue by offering exile rather than execution
I guess none of this has any moral interest because there are no tits or shitting involved.
>AMERICAN TOLKIEN
But that's not Robert E Howard (who was before Tolkien)
In fact, sexuality of any kind was mystifyingly absent from all of Tolkien's writing. In nearly every single fantasy story before the 1900's, sex and/or romance played at least a minor role. And then you hear stories about how he would dress up in era-accurate armor when reading Beowulf to his class, and you realize "oh, the guy was a fucking larping man-child."
Has nothing to do with atheism you tryhard, or are you denying Christian symbolism is morally simplistic? it's about as lazy as you can get to write a story about good vs evil and not go beyond; the great stories have always been about exploring human nature, which is what Tolkien deliberately avoided by creating races that are inherently pure and races that are inherently destructive/evil
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand GRRM. The critique is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of medieval history most of the depth will go over a typical reader head. There's also GRRM's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his writing- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Genealogy of the Morals, Nietzsche works, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these, to realise that they're not just sharp- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike GRRM truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the depth in Dany's existential shitting scene "The more she drank the more she shat but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew" which itself is a poignant reference to Joyce masterpiece Ulysses. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as D&D's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them.
And yes, by the way, i DO have a Stannis tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
I get what you're saying actually. It's basically that because they're a bank, they should pretty much only care about money, and because there's absolutely no way for them to make their money back through the current system, they're either fucking retarded or else they'll seek to become a more political entity in the very near future.
To be fair, many countries have invested billions upon billions of dollars in nuclear ICBMs and nobody has ever actually launched one in anger.
>In fact, sexuality of any kind was mystifyingly absent from all of Tolkien's writing.
Fucking good. tossing in romance for no reason often ruins stories.
The ring doesn't dominate or force you, it influence you. It whispers and appeals to your worst sides to tempt you with the power it offers, the prize is you will slowly lose your good side, your humanity to your lesser, baser animal instincts.
Tolkien's entire work is built around the struggle between good and evil but the external struggle are merely reflections of the internal struggle with your own Ego. It's about how we are always tempted in some ways and always will struggle with ourselves from taking the low road, and how it twists us if we do (see Gollum, orcs, Balrogs, etc.) or choose to defy circumstance and our own weakness and fight for what is good and higher than our own immediate desires, to defy your own frailty and weakness in the face of a seemingly overwhelming force that appears without end. In the tradition with the Nordic elegiac tone of the sagas, about ancient times of heroes long past and how even the gods eventually will face destruction and fall; but that it doesn't matter, that life doesn't promise victory, only struggle, and that the temptation of taking the easy low path is a lie, because any material comfort of victory it leads to will be hollow and full of lief because the prize is your soul/goodness/humanity, and it is only in defiance of this and by fighting it you can cultivate and grow a noble and heroic spirit that can actually do some good, even if it is only for a time before the next generation must take up the struggle. Only such a soul is worthy of heaven.
>sex makes things mature
Are you in middle school
Howard was the man. Either the nerdiest Chad ever, or the chad-est Nerd ever.
"Money and muscle, that’s what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won’t do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won’t enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it."