Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with...

>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?

>The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that’s become the template. I’m not sure that it’s a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that.

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

So why do you shit on gurrm so much? He sounds like a very wise fellow and a lot better than Tolkien

inb4 >genre fiction fags
Go read your dead greeks from a bygone age and see how much wiser you get

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truly a small mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

>possible
Impossible* Fuck.

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

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

Garlic
Leeks
Onions
Radishes (Raditz)
Lettuce
Peas
Potatoes

for winter and shit

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

oh GOD fuck you

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

Also Loquats.

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

Yes, you stupid nigger.

there are crops that grow in winter you idiot

Sustainably and commercially? try again tim.

Rye says hi, buddy

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

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

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

...

>tfw all Veeky Forums browsers are actually farmers who live within driving distance of each other

it's magical in nature :o)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>they were hunters, stockbreeders and fishermen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toppest kek of the week

>He only has the ending
>Everyone dies

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone freezes to death

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

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

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

that was a mud craddle

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

topsoil is kinda important senpai

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

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

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

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

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

ABSOLUTELY SAVAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>and a lot better than Tolkien
picrel

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

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

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

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

I don't. Enlighten me.

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

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

He's making fun of 's grammatical failures.

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

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

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

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

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

tfw no books portraying high impact sexual violence against dem orcs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>people take that hack seriously

I don't see the problem with that quote.

Very Pynchonesque

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do people want fantasy to be realistic?

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

WHEATFAGS ON SUICIDE WATCH

He's talking about rape.

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

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

>quiet agricultural medieval society
>MACHIAVELLIAN SCHEMING EVERYWHERE


Yeah, ok.

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

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