>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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Yes, yes, we know already. We get at least two of these a week. Fuck off.
We're going to have a yet another shitfest aboit justifiable genocide, aren't we?
Let's not. I can guarantee nothing new will be said and no one will change their minds. It'll just bea waste of time for everyone.
Justback away from the keyboard and go back to whatever generals we like to frequent, all right?
>Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
Yes, Martin, because Orcs were created by an evil god as a perverse mockery of life and likely only appeared alive at all because he infused their bodies with parts of his unquestionably evil soul.
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His world is pretty much how a fat man would see this world.
Everything is horrible. Family is always disappointed in you. Its either too hot or too cold. Women are unattainable by means other than force or if they really want your wealth.
Use Moorcock's political arguments against Tolkien if you really want to start shit.
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And the food is really detailed.
>What was Aragorn’s tax policy?
The best, fairest policy, which was good to the rich and the poor alike.
>Did he maintain a standing army?
Yes, and it was the most disciplined and honourable army around.
>What did he do in times of flood and famine?
The best he could, which was generally enough.
>And what about all these orcs?
If they attacked Gondor they got rekt by the aforementioned army. Orcs in general are a disorganized rabble without Sauron, and probably just remained on the outskirts of civilization.
Martin is such a silly billy.
But shitfests about morally dubious things are fun!
Moorcock's essay where he rages about Tolkien being better than him is sidesplittingly hilarious.
It's a shame, because a lot of the Elric stuff is actually pretty good. Why couldn't the guy be content with a successful line of fantasy novels that, while maybe not as beloved as Tolkien, were influential in their own way? Not everybody can singlehandedly redefine the fantasy genre.
define "evil"
my sides
I'm more leaning towards Corum myself. Elric's just a bit too angsty to my tastes.
I keep hearing about this, something about being too Tory, right? Can someone give me a link?
So he was an edgy contrarian shitlord that made his entire fictional world a cesspit of people with no good in it. Literally westeros and the other wierd continent deserve tl be purged. Nothing of value in it.
>I never read the books
Emilia Clarke's arse begs to differ
This explains an awful lot.
yes, so?
It's not even her ass
Wew, that went quickly into the deep end.
I did, and most plebeians in westeros are pieces of shit, lowest of the low.
As mentioned before it's how a fat man would see the world.
Are you gonna give some details about most people being pieces of shit, or are you just talking out of your ass?
The Monarchies were the best form of government.
Nothing beats it, the king doesn't even have to be a good man, he just has to at least mediocre.
That being said the biggest problem with it is you literally only get ONE chance, if anyone down the line fucks it up it's over for good
Whatever happened to heroic fantasy? Where you could swing a sword at a goblin and be assured that you were in the right because goblins are 100% all evil all the time.
This.
>Stories being depressing in general means there is no hope on smaller or larger scales
>Main characters dying means they died for no reason other than shock factor
I will agree that the sex scenes are fucking awful. Doesn't GRRM DM? He should know how to fade to black to keep shit from being awkward.
We swung at goblins IRL and it turned out they weren't 100% evil, and it made us think about it.
>not all goblins
If it's not robust, that suggests it's not that great of a system.
That's a fucking idiotic way of saying "I want to make nitty-gritty stories that are more realistic whereas Tolkien's books were heroic fantasy." While also seeming to imply that Tolkien's heroic fantasy was wrong, instead of just a different way of telling a story.
Remember, it's a bitter fat man talking.
>This was maybe my answer to Tolkien
Well done answering a question Tolkien didn't ask, and feeling smug about your own answer.
Oh my god, why does this make so much sense.
While Martin has said dumb things about LOTR, in context the quote isn't deriding the book.
It's critiquing authors that rip off Tolkien but forget to write in a manner like his, where the questions he poses don't matter.
Adventure has fallen out of favour for romance. Instead of having stories about brave men adventuring we now have to have Twilight with bland female leads.
Basically only books for women are pushed any more. So you get this shit where it's all social interaction and no adventure.
Really? I thought that died with 50 shades.
Was he right?
It's probably true.
Nah, it's not dead it's just different genres.
>Bland heroine
>Everyone loves her
>Alphas fight over her
>She saves the day through pure luck
Didn't tolkien go back and forth on this? I thought the last canon point was the orcs were just twisted elf stock.
Anyone who opposes my views.
Oops.
The quote is take out of context.
If you read the whole thing you see that he's only really talking about ASoIaF being written with a very different goal and mentality in mind; not that he thinks LotR would be better off with tax policies
>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?
They're mundane questions, which is why. But even I, an uneducated 20-something with five minutes to spare can probably answer them.
>tax policy
Feudal. He collects tax from his vassal lords who have their own laws in place for tax collection. As a Good King, Aragorn would have kept his taxes fairly low to allow local businesses to thrive - and this would have been aided/made possible by his many and successful wars of reconquest, a boon to any economy.
>standing army?
Yes. We see it in the six books of the lord of the rings. Supplemented by levies in times of total war.
>Flood?
There were no floods, his was a blessed reign.
>Famine?
He fed the people.
>What about the orcs?
They were systematically hunted down when their raiding parties threatened human settlements. Without adult orcs to care for their spawn, the children died cold and alone.
In the books, no. For the Watch.
people started noticing it was racism and became uncomfortable with it
>noticing it was racism
But it's not. Goblins are evil.
Yes, but it doesn't mean he's flawless. He made a lot of mistakes, and they led directly to his death. Mainly
>Giving support to Stannis, a known rebel against the crown, and making less effort to distance himself from him each day.
>Not keeping Ghost nearby, at all times.
>Publically announcing his intent to commit treason to people, who already have reasons to doubt and fear his leadership
If he did literally everything the same, BUT those three things, he would have lived.
Probably killed by a lack of innovation
>farm boy is a lost king/child of prophecy
>random peasant discovers they can do magic, then end up doing magic better than people who trained all their lives at it
>rag-tag group of adventurers end up saving the world
>wizard gathers a group of unlikely, but individually skilled (apart from one random, who doesn't have an discernable skills but will save the day at some point) people to stop an evil overlords
Or maybe it is because people just dont try to use goblins and orcs in an interesting way. They just throw them in to be a threat at the start of the story and a body like at the end.
What are your views?
Are you Allah?
Sounds like any of the dystopians novels my sisters read.
Daily reminder that Hizdahr zo Loraq did nothing wrong, and the locusts were poisoned by Shavepate.
What was Robert's?
People were more and more often using the "evil" races as sockpuppets for whatever group they happen to dislike and cast as violent louts.
I'm still convinced it was the perfumed seneshal.
I was just poking fun at super-focused viewpoints/ black and white mentalities that often finds their way into generic fantasies. Objective evil is very hard to define, but you can definitely make a case for certain actions. It's a hugely subjective, well, subject though.
Robert's tax policy was "What do you mean, we can't afford another feast? Go find the money somewhere!". He was a shitty king.
Who? You mean, that guy at Daenerys's court, who she immediately thinks is the traitor from the prophecy?
He still wouldn't have done if he did.
Daeny's incompetent rule is destabilising an entire subcontinent.
>people started noticing it was racism and became uncomfortable with it
>But it's not. Goblins are evil.
Both can be true, it IS racism. But, goblins ARE evil.
The idea of a pure evil, irredeemable race went against his Catholic ideal of spiritual redemption. The way the books had it, Sauron was basically taking away their ability to feel fear in battle.
It's ok, you can just say Terry Goodkind here
Most of them followed the template of the Divergence series, just as many fantasy novels followed LotR.
One of the reasons I've heard of female protags is because people, whether or not they realize it, expect less of a female protag in terms of courage and accomplishment compared to a male one.
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But she fixed it by the end. Yes, some concessions had to be made, and the truce was shakey, but things were getting better. This is why the poisoning happened - to cause chaos again.
>greentext as op
>every day until you like it
You got me there.
At least no one in the books disputed that
LOOKS LIKE TAXPOSTING'S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS
But does it make a good story?
No system is great.
Who cares?
This is a thread about GRRM, we're not here for a good story, we're here for nihilistic murderporn.
That certainly tracks with the people defending Star Wars Ep7.
The economy was still in the shitter and she wouldn't have reintroduced slavery, meaning it would remain so for quite some time.
As sson as the other cities relized the marriage didn't mean a major course change, there'd be bloodshed again.
Yes, him. The Shavepate has everything to lose by poisoning Danaerys, since he is very tied to her faction and no one would support him if she dies. He encourages Barristan to make the coup because Hizdahr and his new noble advisers wanted to get rid of him immediately after Danaerys disappears.
I propose a selective breeding program for orcs with less aggressive behaviors. Eventually we'll end up with a civilized people.
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>We swung at goblins IRL and it turned out they weren't 100% evil
Fucking goblin sympathizers
>revolutionsf.com
I love that the ad at the bottom of that essay was for fidget spinners. Made me laugh.
So the only differences from the real world are dragons, magic and bullshit seasons?
It's the opposite. Shavepate has everything to GAIN. The moment Hizdahr was married to Daenerys, Shavepate lost his power, lost his place as an advisor and even the control of the Brazen Beasts went to his hated enemy. It was a fucking disaster for him, and he needed to act. So he did.
Ep7 had the problem of trying to squeeze the entire heroic journey of Luke into a single movie without his missteps or failures.
He tried to challenge Vader, and lost, it took 3 movies worth of growth for him to find what was in himself (the ability to forgive) to defeat him.
Rey, by the end of the first movie, is on even keel with arguably the second most powerful (and still growingf) force user in the galaxy with a weapon she had little experience with and is renowned to be difficult to get a grip on.
Not a bad idea. Breed the docile ones and put them to work
Proves my point then doesn't it? They take the same format and shift it. Hunger games is Katniss with 2 alpha males, Divergent is 1 alpha male in the first movie, I assume more appear.
But now you see why fantasy is dead. Women killed it and turned it into romance novels of different flavours.
But the point is, she allowed other cities to reinstate slavery. They even opened a slave market under Meereen's walls. No slavery was practicted INSIDE, but Daenerys agreed to leave the rest of the Slaver's Bay alone.
We know that Tolkien decided they weren't Elves. That's about it. (Christopher unfortunately didn't get that far into his father's notes before he compiled The Silmarillion.) What he decided on eventually -- if he decided on any one answer eventually -- is unknown. Though, his theory that they were forgeries (either entirely artificial in nature or simple animals made perverse and corrupt by Morgoth) answers the dilemma about them seemingly being born evil perfectly, and also fits nicely with other anecdotes about them in Tolkien's notes, such as the line:
>Orcs we may call them, for in the beginning they were strong and fell as demons
If they indeed are forgeries made to appear alive by having part of Morgoth within them, then that shard of Morgoth would have to be split up and divided as they multiplied. Divine power is very consistent in this way in Tolkien's world. The Ainur only have a set amount of power to use and grow weaker the more they act upon the world. There's no way to suddenly gain more of it except through direct intevention from Eru.
The original Orcs may indeed have been nearly as strong as Balrogs, but by the third age they had grown in numbers so much that every individual Orc was a weak and cowardly being, barely able to overpower a Hobbit on his own.
We were introduced to the idea that humans are equally evil and yet killing them just for being humans was not socially acceptable. Ergo killing evil creatures just for being evil is not acceptable either.
Is that how fatasses really feel ?
Well, he's more of a faggot than I thought.
Women can't insert into any one who isn't like themselves. They're unable to appreciate someone for who they are not what they can do for them. As such they have to make female leads all but blank slates for women to project into them. Which is why you have characters like Katniss.
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Bullshit; Rey taking on Crybaby McEmo is in no way worse than Luke becoming an instant fighter pilot and blowing up the deathstar.
And at least she already had some close combat experience.
Luke was likewise established to be a good shot and a decent pilot long before that point.
>The original Orcs may indeed have been nearly as strong as Balrogs, but by the third age they had grown in numbers so much that every individual Orc was a weak and cowardly being, barely able to overpower a Hobbit on his own.
Orcs are ninja?
Not him but he is right, but not just with women. Most people in general can't self-insert unless they can mold a character after themselves.
>The original Orcs may indeed have been nearly as strong as Balrogs, but by the third age they had grown in numbers so much that every individual Orc was a weak and cowardly being, barely able to overpower a Hobbit on his own.
Not the guy you're responding to, but unlikely. Consider the orcs that attack the Sindar and the Silvans in the pre-first age before the Noldor show up. It heavily implies that the main difference that changes the elves of Beleriand going to "Getting ass kicked" to "almost effortlessly crushing the orcs" is the development of iron weaponry and armor. That doesn't make them sound like demons, that makes them sound like orcs as we know it from later ages.
I tried to suggest to a friend that I thought it would have been better if Rey (with a lightsaber) and Po (with one of those electric stick things) had fought the bad guy together and barely held their own until something saved them. But that just triggered my friend and he went on a rant about Star Wars fluff, and I had no idea what he was going on about.
Pretty much, yeah. I suffered through the books at about the same pace as he was writing them, and kept reading only because I felt like something good was about to happen. It was only when some viking dude got his hand replaced with black goo that I realised that this is what a fat man under the constant feeling of hunger must feel. A small cookie feels like heaven.
Dystopian isn't fantasy, user, it's nearer to sci-fi/cyberpunk.
Even Twilight was stock WoD/Ann Rice style urban fantasy, which is not the same as fantasy as you are talking about, and has been popular with women for decades.
And Luke already had some piloting experience, pulled the equivalent of a force magic trick by auto angling torpedoes where he wanted them to go, and would have gotten scrubbed if he literally wasn't rescued by Han.
Hell, I'd argue that Vader went after the clearly more experienced pilots first, only going after Luke when he was the final remaining threat.