"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."
Was he right Veeky Forums?
>>>/reddit/
Not an argument.
"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?"
What did he mean by this?
This is always fun to think about though, it's obviously just not a part of LOTR though. Think of PJs movies even, the denizens of Minas Tirith are entirely uncharacterised, there's a shop visible in one scene and I always wonder if in Gondor where men are made of valour if he ever under cuts his competition.
I'm not trying to debate you, faggot. I'm telling you to go back to where you came from.
The Lord of the Rings is a world where Divine Providence is a real thing, so in Middle-Earth if the king is wise and good then YES, everything DOES work out. Martin is either incapable of understanding this very simple thing, or worse, he understands and chooses to be a shit about it.
If god was real then why didn't he just zap all the evil away fagget?
fuck off
That actually happens in the Silmarillion.
C'mon my little man slut, answer the question.
>But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that.
That's the entire fucking point in Tolkien. He learned that firsthand in the trenches of the Somme. He wrote letters to his son Christopher during WWII about how the British war cabinet had almost as many "orcs" in it as the Nazis.
People always forget that the victory of the good guys in Tolkien is not easy. There are many moments in which excessive pride or desire for power threaten the fight against Sauron. Tolkien created a world in which humanity (and its analogues in the more fantastic races) had the choice to defeat evil or succumb to it. His Christian worldview gave him faith in the ultimate victory of good, but he looked at his own historical moment very pessimistically.
Conceptually, it's fine and he has a point. Not all fantasy needs to try and fail to be Tolkien.
I don't know why Veeky Forums needs to get triggered by every goddamn thing.
Of course he's right. Bad Tolkien and Howard imitations make up most of the past half-century of fantasy. Who would dispute this quote?
>Tolkien spends months fighting on what is undoubtedly the worst battlefield mankind has ever wrought, The Somme, experiencing the death and decay and the sound and the fury of men ripping each other to shreds as they fight for not much, the horrible inhuman nightmare of meaningless slaughter and sacrifice for nothing, watching friends and foe alike get mowed down by machine guns or gassed by mustard gas or blown up by artillery shells, yet rises above his hateful and miserable surroundings to have a life altering epiphany that there exists good and evil on both sides of the war, that no matter which side they fight on, there is good in the hearts of men be they German or English, and writes the blueprint for an entire genre of story that teaches us that if mankind, no matter it's allegiance or creed or culture or background, can unite in times of great trouble, wickedness and evil can be vanquished through the God-given goodness that rests in the hearts of men.
>GRRM sits on his ass watching football and writes stories about how shit sucks
Wow really makes me think
Well yeah Tolkien thought about it and had a whole mythology behind middle-earth, but I feel like what GRRM is getting at is that all the Tolkien imitators just ape him unthinkingly, leading to a bunch of half-baked dross without any of the aspects that make Tolkien good.
>writes stories about how shit sucks
Eh. ASoIaF has a reputation for being about this massive shithole, but for all it's flaws (and there are many) it's more nuanced than that.
It's not that fun to think about. is right. Also, we're putting a modern discontentment onto middle earth. Medieval taxation rates were significantly lower, on average, than modern taxes. Aragon literally saved the world, the people know and respect him. The individualism of modernity and the bitterness that comes with entitlement does not exist in Middle Earth. There's no normal peasant looking at Aragon thinking 'what's he got that makes him so great. I ought to be sitting where he's sitting' because none of the environmental factors are there to create those kind of people on a large scale.
tldr George "fuck trying to create myths I want you to copy historical squabbles then insert cultures I created in high school off of racial tropes" R.R. Martin
>template
Someday you'll understand that, if you write about people, you'll write about people stuff. Same as with everything else. Just kill yourself
He's right but his books are still boring trash.
>cultures I created in high school off racial tropes
nigga wat
>>>/reddit/
George "Why can't fantasy be more like real life" Martin, everyone. People shouldn't just copy Tolkien though.