Dragon Age: Origins PC Gamer preview out, tidbits...

[Gragt]

Is it just me or has Cleve spread his nefarious influence around the Codex the same way an Asian monster spreads its tentacles?

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Western Civilization spread its influence around the world much the same way an Asian monster spread its tentacles.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

Excellently-phrased argument, Lesi. Whether or not I am in agreement (something that doesn't need to be outlined here), I tip my hat to how you've stated your point.

Something did catch my eye, though. I DO agree that the ethnography of Tolkien doesn't appeal to me much either - there is in it the sort of "X is ALWAYS Y" kind of stringency of the D&D Monster Manual, even though there is in the text itself a push towards personal responsibility (in the form of Aragorn's refusal of the ring and Frodo's falling into its corruption). However, it seems like this push isn't something that's really followed-up (especially when Faramir's all "fuck the ring yo" - something I do applaud the movies for changing), and though the next age is supposed to be "The Age of Man" I always wondered WHY. Why the hell ARE the elves leaving? Doesn't it seem more like Man's decline, since Gondor's no longer an empire and Rohan itself is failing? And where the devil do hobbits fit in? And why do we hear no more of orcs or goblins but they get all the treatment of boogums under the bed? And impressive creatures and beings like Tom Bombadil walk the land, but get only a passing mention - what's their deal? They're dressing in a story, and while I did enjoy the structure of it I did find Tolkien's prose less than entertaining. Funny, because I did love The Hobbit very much - it seems like a lighter tone that didn't strive to match an "epic" feel was something the unfolded far easier.

Anyhow, I'm getting away from my point here. Ethnography. I had to endure a post-modern 19th century English class where there was actually a discussion on whether Moby Dick was a "racist novel," and when I made the argument that one had to take into account the prevailing opinions of time period in which it was written, someone sniped "No you DON'T." I seriously disagree. YES, Tolkien did hold opinions as a conservative which weren't likely the popular norm (but very well might have been within Oxford literary circles). Do you feel the work is trying to reinforce the social standing of lord vs. servant and good vs. evil, or sort of makes those things an afterthought (i.e. do you think Tolkien put that in there as a deliberate function of the way Middle Earth as a setting should operate, or not)?

I ask this because I'm sort of mentally trying to draw a circle around the elements that people think comprise "Middle Earth" as a setting (separating it from LOTR as a single set and putting it the context of Tolkien's larger body of work). Defining these things is interesting to me because I'd like to detail where "LOTR"-like projects (like D&D, the Witcher, etc) have diverged from this set, and HOW. If we don't bother trying to really define these set of characteristics, we're sort of pissing in the wind when we attempt to say that a game is "copying" it or "going against it" or not.

/academicnerd

 

[Qwinn]

Western Civilization spread its influence around the world much the same way an Asian monster spread its tentacles.

Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, not just from us, from our fathers and from our fathers' fathers.

Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

Reg: Yes.

Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.

Reg: All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?

Xerxes: The aqueduct.

Reg: Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true.

Masked Activist: And the sanitation!

Stan: Oh yes... sanitation, Reg, you remember what the city used to be like.

Reg: All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done...

Matthias: And the roads...

Reg: (sharply) Well yes obviously the roads... the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads...

Another Masked Activist: Irrigation...

Other Masked Voices: Medicine... Education... Health...

Reg: Yes... all right, fair enough...

Activist Near Front: And the wine...

Omnes: Oh yes! True!

Francis: Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if the Romans left, Reg.

Masked Activist at Back: Public baths!

Stan: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now.

Francis: Yes, they certainly know how to keep order... (general nodding)... let's face it, they're the only ones who could in a place like this.

(more general murmurs of agreement)

Reg: All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?

Xerxes: Brought peace!

Reg: (very angry, he's not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh... (scornfully) Peace, yes... shut up!

Qwinn

 

[hiver]

I am thoroughly enjoying what must be an explosion of cognitive dissonance in hiver's mind. He must now be realizing that Lesifoere is right... Hiver just never noticed before that the things I stand for (and God knows hiver considers me the epitome of all that is evil) are also the things Tolkien, someone whose writing he's always admired, stands for. I can feel the neurons sizzling from here.

Oh god. i really had a actual very loud LoL now. Thanks Qwin i didnt think you have it in you.

(and God knows hiver considers me the epitome of all that is evil)

this is especially hilarious.
Damn i wish i had some Nixon pics for real right now... damn!

cheers buddy, you really made my day now.

I fully predict that in 2 year's time, hiver will hate Tolkien with every bit as much passion as he's defended it in this thread.

LOL
You wanna take some bets on that one?

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Monty Python: the number one source of historical facts.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

I am not very good at explaining my point, but I think where we differ on opinions is in the style category. I prefer having to wade through a dense thicket of Victorian prose that describes everything in elaborate, flowery language down to the most miniscule detail. In other words, I prefer atmosphere over plot. Lord of the Rings didn't do it for me, and I can't rightfully consider Tolkien a great writer (at least in the prose category) compared to the like of Poe, Peake, Lovecraft (yes, he is considered one of the greatest by those literary majors I've talked to), and Dunsany.

 

[Deleted Member 10432]

The Siege of Jerusalem (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you aren't as well-versed in this as you'd like to think you are, are you?)

Been ~10 years, but I don't remember any baby-eating in Minas-Tirith, but maybe I've got the wrong Siege of Jerusalem.

It's so hilariously, incredibly privileged

This I think can to some extent be explained by time and class - and I do mean specifically the later '30s through to shortly after the War - read Brideshead?

~snipped for space, sorry~

/academicnerd

OK, it's been about 10 years since I read LotR, but as I remember Tolkien's primary source of inspiration was Old English/Norse literature and language (funny, that...) and so I'd imagine most of the political and social elements of Middle Earth flowed from the political and social structures of those ethnic groups (not really sure 'country' is an appropriate term). Don't know much about that stuff, tho.

I do think part of the problem with his ethnography is that he uses the races to embody his thematic points to some degree rather than as distinct cultural groups.

But I get the feeling that Lesifoere objects primarily to it being a jumble of older myths - fair enough - but also to its retelling in such an 'insipid' Christian way, so I have to ask... what did you expect from a Catholic convert?

Personally, I like Tolkien. Perhaps he appeals more to me as a white male Celt living in the UK, though. We're a drippy lot, all things considered, and pastures green and dark satanic mills are hardly a new theme - do you dislike Blake, too?

*Shrug*

I ask this because I'm sort of mentally trying to draw a circle around the elements that people think comprise "Middle Earth" as a setting (separating it from LOTR as a single set and putting it the context of Tolkien's larger body of work). Defining these things is interesting to me because I'd like to detail where "LOTR"-like projects (like D&D, the Witcher, etc) have diverged from this set, and HOW. If we don't bother trying to really define these set of characteristics, we're sort of pissing in the wind when we attempt to say that a game is "copying" it or "going against it" or not.

Not sure how to answer, but I'd say one aspect was depth of vision. It's rather hard to beat designing three-to-four artificial languages to support your text. That, and frankly a lot of D&D/etc. lore seems so... anodyne. I remember trying to read Ursula LeGuin after reading Tolkien for the first time, and having a similar feeling that her world was terribly... thin, by comparison. You could almost see through it to her saying "Well, we need a big range of mountains, and wizards and witches and magic spells, and a quest, and...".

 

[hiver]

(especially when Faramir's all "fuck the ring yo" - something I do applaud the movies for changing)

Yeah, it makes much more sense in the movie where Faramir decides to let Frodo go after seeing him offer the Ring to a nazgul with out of the blue words "Now we understand each other, You may go."
Yep, that makes sense.

And really, in the books he actually did go "fuck the ring yo".

Why the hell ARE the elves leaving?

What kind of question is that? They werent supposed to be there anyway. Valinor is their home not Middle Earth.
You did read what i said about Feanor and wars for Silmarills? No? Why would they stay anyway?

Not all of the elves will leave. Those in Myrkwood will stay since they belong to another lineage.

And impressive creatures and beings like Tom Bombadil walk the land, but get only a passing mention - what's their deal?

Its all there if you study the lore a bit. Tom Bombadil is a Maiar - a higher spirit similar to what Sauron use to be long ago. Or Gandalf.

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

He said something akin to "if I saw that lying by the side of the road, I would not take it." He refuses to even look at the Ring in the books, which I DO feel makes Frodo seem like somewhat of a wuss for falling to its power, and Aragorn for having to struggle to refuse it, and Boromir for being driven to madness for wanting it.

I think the scene is confusing, but I think basically Faramir looked at the Ringwraith scene and saw how much it - to sum it up - fucked Frodo up. But he continued to fight, and Sam was there to help him. That's my take on it, at least, and while I'm not ZOMG THAT SCENE WUZ TEH BEST, I think having Faramir blithely refuse any pull of the Ring does make it seem less powerful.

Forgive my lack of knowledge on the subject, but again - this is me attempting to define the setup here.

So - the Mirkwood elves stay, though their home is also on Valinor? What makes them different from the Rivendell elves? They come across very differently in The Hobbit, yes, but what is it about their history that makes them this way? Out of any group that would be more tied to Middle Earth, I'd think it would be Elrond's people, since he's half-elven himself. Also, if it's the Age of MAN upcoming, why would the Mirkwood elves stick around?

If Tom Bombadil is a Maiar (whom are themselves much like angels, if I'm not mistaken) why is his role so passive, versus Gandalf and Saurman, who answer(ed) to a higher authority? What exempts him, and if Gandalf fades into the West, does Bombadil as well? I had somewhat of a feeling that he (and Beorn, I believe) were tied to the nature of Middle Earth itself.

Whether or not it makes sense, there IS a distinct feeling in the setting of Middle Earth of transition - one system falling before another, and a sense of departure and loss. I'd actually venture that despite this being "a new age of Man dawning" it's far MORE about another one ending - even victory is bittersweet, and whether or not Sauron wins, the elves are fucking off to the West or wherever. Obviously this feeling is getting scrubbed out in games, as nobody likes to feel like they're part of a real world ENDING instead of making shit shiny and new again - part of a fix instead of fucking everything up. HM.

One thing I'd like to clarify here is that I don't think any literature - even shit I really LIKE - is without flaw, and I think the worst thing you can do as a fan of a certain work is to defend it as if it HAD none. That's fanaticism, not fandom, and it speaks ill of the work itself. Often I've found that the shittiest writing (Twilight, anyone?) has the most rabid fans, and discussion with these individuals is utterly impossible because they're unwilling to believe that what they defend is in any way imperfect.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

One thing I'd like to clarify here is that I don't think any literature - even shit I really LIKE - is without flaw, and I think the worst thing you can do as a fan of a certain work is to defend it as if it HAD none. That's fanaticism, not fandom, and it speaks ill of the work itself. Often I've found that the shittiest writing (Twilight, anyone?) has the most rabid fans, and discussion with these individuals is utterly impossible because they're unwilling to believe that what they defend is in any way imperfect.

Dear God, thank you for noticing this! In my creative writing class, my professor was talking about the classics, and some idiot brought up the Twilight series alongside authors like Mark Twain. I criticized her for this, and did a bit of name dropping of other famous others, and she rabidly defended it to the end. The professor, naturally, said nothing. I was VERY disappointed to see this type of behavior at a college level. It's no wonder my writing doesn't go over well. People aren't very smart anymore. And that's not saying I'm brilliant--I just have standards and expectations when it comes to good writing.

 

[Qwinn]

One thing I'd like to clarify here is that I don't think any literature - even shit I really LIKE - is without flaw, and I think the worst thing you can do as a fan of a certain work is to defend it as if it HAD none. That's fanaticism, not fandom, and it speaks ill of the work itself. Often I've found that the shittiest writing (Twilight, anyone?) has the most rabid fans, and discussion with these individuals is utterly impossible because they're unwilling to believe that what they defend is in any way imperfect.

/logic off

There is NO one like this in all of teh Codex.

I will now post photoshop pictures mocking you for suggesting that something I like might have a flaw, by depicting you as an extremist black-and-white zealot.

/sarcasm off

Heh. I agree with you completely, Annie. Well said. (Though I haven't read Twilight and probably won't, I cannot imagine any possible take on vampires I haven't already seen portrayed a dozen times. Enough with vampires already)

Only quibble - I think the point of Faramir being able to ignore the Ring was based on the (IMHO true) idea that temptation is much easier to deal with by avoiding it altogether - which would fit with his Catholic viewpoint.

I also don't think it speaks ill of those who were near the ring a long time that they felt the pull stronger, since long term proximity seemed to have a major impact. Course, Smeagol was an exception, he was corrupted almost immediately, but he was also arguably already corrupt and exceptionally weak willed.

Qwinn

 

[Annie Mitsoda]

ArcturusXIV: One thing a professor said that he admired about my work is that "if you think something is bullshit, you'll call it bullshit, no matter who wrote it." I hold that is one of the best compliments I have ever gotten in my entire life.

Also it has gotten me into trouble occasionally.

But yeah. I imagine it's difficult as a professor to really be able to slap down stuff like that - I'd imagine (well, more accurately, I'd HOPE) they were cringing inside, but hoping that if they would wean the student off of the crap and help them study GOOD works, they'd eventually realize the flaws in what they liked previously and start reading some QUALITY stuff instead. Again, that's the VERY STRONG HOPE.

But - what do you guys feel are the distiguishing characteristics of the Middle Earth setting? Beyond just "it's got humans and hobbits and elves." The thing that keeps picking at my brain is that the AGE OF MAN IS COMING!!!! and yet hobbits are around, and yet the Mirkwood elves are around, and dwarves are around, and yet orcs are in there still somewhere. If the Fourth Age is supposed to be the MODERN one, what happens to these groups, and what roles do they play? If they're archetypes, how are they really defined?

As much as I hate to bring up the Dragonlance setting (know how I mentioned "recognizing good writing so you leave the crap behind"? Yeah, guess what I read when I was young and eventually discarded?), they actually DID seem to take time to reconcile Tolkien's two interpretations of elves with a more traditional concept of them: the Silvanesti are like the Rivendell elves, who like graceful cities of marble and stone - the Qualinesti are an offshoot of the Silvanesti, who shape nature to their ends - and the Kaganesti ("wild elves") are basically the more mythical forest spirit-like ones. In Forgotten Realms terms: gold elves (Rivendell), moon elves (somewhat Rivendell, also Mirkwood), wood elves (Mirkwood), and green/wild elves (traditional). Drow seem like window dressing of "let's make them EEEEEEEEEEVIL" and thus I sort of sniff at them.

But that separation muddies this archetype into several aspects. Is it the same for dwarves, hobbits, humans, orcs?

 

[hiver]

Okay, here we go.

Oh great! Lets all clap to Lesi for managing to write something at last!

But wait... its all crap!

People who defend Tolkien try to cite "product of his time" and "mythical epic style" as their bases, but this fabled time must be something rather different from the twentieth century I know of: writers who were his contemporaries--and even writers who lived and published and died before he--were perfectly capable of writing concise prose. Dismissing people who don't like Tolkien as simple whiners who want modern action-packed thrillers is nonsensical, polarizing and rather sad.

Who are these "people" you are talking about? if you mean me then thats a strawman.
If you really mean some other people then it has nothing to do with this discussion.
Because what you imagine "other people" think is nonsensical completely and irrelevant.

How can you complain about dismissing people who dont like Tolkien when you are dismissing people who like his works as Tolkien fantards or some sort of unreasonable group dismissive of all other opinions.

Not to mention how glaring this strawman is:

Dismissing people who don't like Tolkien as simple whiners who want modern action-packed thrillers

Do you want to praise his precious landscape Romanticism? But it's been done before, and so much better, but even if not that's a strain of writing that's so inherently insipid that it parodies itself.

Pure personal opinion not worth anything as actual argument about quality of Tolkiens descriptions of nature.

It clashes intensely with the attempt to be epic and mythical.

How so?

If anyone's read Old English or Old Norse texts, even in translation, you will notice a distinct lack of elaborate, wordy descriptions.

Tolkien drew inspiration from those instead of making a copy out of them. So?

Gudrun feeds her children's flesh to her husband before proceeding to murder him and burn his hall. She's not condemned for this: if anything, this is considered as right and dutiful, since as the last member of her family, it falls to her to take revenge, female or not. Next to her, Eowyn is a suckling babe.

Was Eowyn in a situation that required feeding anyone his children?
Suckling babes dont go into battles against wishes of their king and dont fight the Witch kings either.

Compare that to... well, anything from Tolkien. He draws from Norse and Old English sources, which are terse Germanic things, powerful and ruthlessly efficient in their scantness. In short, everything Tolkien's prose isn't. He tries to shoehorn Germanic warrior code into Rohan and even the grisliness of The Siege of Jerusalem (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you aren't as well-versed in this as you'd like to think you are, are you?) into the siege of Minas-Tirith. Except without the unapologetic brutality. He does what Disney does to fairytales: sanitize and water down until there remains only vapid family-safe sludge. Those things were already reinterpreted and refitted for Christian sensibilities by silly monks, and they hardly need a second dumbing-down to fit a bloodless, New Testament paradigm.

Really? Maybe his real life experience while serving in the WWI and living through Battle of the Somme had something to do with his refusal to write and describe bloody carnage in detail.

The first day of that battle was the bloodiest in the whole history of the British Army. By the end of the day, the British had suffered 60,000 casualties; almost 20,000 were dead, including 60% of all the officers involved.

But yeah, comparing him to Disney with words:

what Disney does to fairytales: sanitize and water down until there remains only vapid family-safe sludge.

Really makes for some fascinating argument. Gosh!

Another point is something most Codexers won't see anything wrong with: Tolkien's an ethnocentric bore. Notice that I don't use the word "racist" because I'm sure he held no active, conscious opinion of non-English people, let alone participated in bigotry (whatever else people might shout about "orcs are black but humans and elves are white!").

Again your personal opinion without any connection of quality of the work. Honestly i never noticed any special ethnocentrism in his books.

It's not so much that I find his setting unoriginal because I've already read other fantasy; it's that I see absolutely nothing in the so-called beauty of Middle-earth. It's dead to me.

I have no patience for a dead white man lamenting the tragic loss of gray, insipid countryside in the most self-indulgent way possible.

Dead white man huh?
Anyway, your personal opinions and dislikes are irrelevant.

It's so hilariously, incredibly privileged (let all know their places, let Sam always call Frodo "master" because we can't have servants and country gentry be equals, and shall we get started on his attitude toward industrialization and progress?) that I can't take it one bit seriously.

Sam calls Frodo master most of the time because his old man and him were employed by Frodo as gardeners and out of respect not because of some feudal system hobbits had.
Attitude of industrialization and progress? What of it?

And Tolkien takes his work terribly, awfully seriously--apart from the flashes of weak humor here and there, it's all a long parade of serious business written in absolute earnest. There's no room for anything else but this grim march toward trumpeting epicness. You're either swept along, or you're left feeling nothing at all because the melodrama just doesn't work for you.

Of course he does. Its a work he spend a whole life creating. Doesnt have anything to do how good he writes or not though.
Not is his work all low brow grimm seriousness.
Both Hobbit and LOTR have some relaxed even funny moments, where appropriate.
What do you want it to be? A comedy?

 

[Qwinn]

I think there were enough examples of good and evil humans, good and evil (or at least overly greedy) dwarves, and good and evil halflings.

Yes, Middle Earth elves were pretty much uniformly good, and orcs were pretty much all evil, but this makes more sense when you realize that orcs were elves corrupted by Sauron. Still, the elves in the Silmarillion are both good and evil, so I don't really know why the elves in ME are so consistently of one alignment.

One minor thing I disliked in the movie was the elves coming to help Rohan, which didn't happen in the book. Elven participation in the War of the Ring seemed to be 1) Legolas, and 2) minor advice and a couple of magical trinkets. Ditto the dwarves. Otherwise, they pretty much sat it out and let the race of Men do all the heavy lifting. Boo. By that reasoning, I think Men -earned- their ascendancy in the Fourth Age.

My -worst- beef with the movie adaptation was their removal of the end where the Shire has been corrupted and the 4 hobbits clean it out. I suspect the idea that not even the Shire went untouched by the War was pretty important to Tolkien's worldview.

Qwinn

 

[Tigranes]

It's been years since I last touched Tolkien's 'other' works (Silmarillion, etc), but here I thought the entire point of the scouring of the shire, and it being so important, was that at the start of LOTR, the Shire was pretty much the last part of Middle-Earth that was untouched by the inevitable decline. Again, my memories are shaky, but I believe most elves in Rivendell leave soon after; forget what happens to Mirkwood ones; the Ents don't really have a 'resurgence' but continue on their slow death; so on and so forth. The Shire was really the only place that seemed unaffected and unaware of this slow process (save for a few rumblings), but during the scouring they are finally exposed. Not so much that they are damaged or scarred, but exposed.

And yes, it was possibly the worst thing to cut out of the movies because without it the narrative is considerably cheapened.

Anyway. I do agree that the distinguishing characteristic of Middle Earth at that time, and LOTR, would be the decline and ending of such things rather than the coming of the age of Man. I think it's telling that the only involvement of Dwarves is in the Mines of Moria, where you find that despite the promise and confidence of rebirth and rejuvenation the reality is death and failure.

One minor thing I disliked in the movie was the elves coming to help Rohan, which didn't happen in the book. Elven participation in the War of the Ring seemed to be 1) Legolas, and 2) minor advice and a couple of magical trinkets. Ditto the dwarves. Otherwise, they pretty much sat it out and let the race of Men do all the heavy lifting. Boo. By that reasoning, I think Men -earned- their ascendancy in the Fourth Age.

The funny thing is that in the books, the elves do this not because they are truly powerless, but because they have already accepted the role they are to play in ME (i.e. to fade away, and to leave it all behind). There is almost a paternal element in the way the 'wiser' elves suggest how it has already been ordained that they are to decline and leave, and to act as a fast-fading crutch for the Men would benefit no-one.

 

[hiver]

He said something akin to "if I saw that lying by the side of the road, I would not take it."

That would be after he figured out what Frodo is carrying exactly. That it was a thing that killed his brother who succumbed to it, a thing he was meant to go in search for and a thing that would destroy Gondor and his father who would surely take it.

Faramir is actually much smarter then he is in the movies.
And educated by Gandalf but some people choose to ignore all of this and only pay attention to the last sentence of his refusal.

but I think basically Faramir looked at the Ringwraith scene and saw how much it - to sum it up - fucked Frodo up. But he continued to fight, and Sam was there to help him.

Yeah... it would really make me feel sorry for troubles of someone who just offered the Enemy his ultimate weapon so much so that i would let him go because of it. Let him go straight into Mordor. On his own.
Frodo didnt fight anything in that silly scene, he made that stupid face and offered the ring. Sam actually jumped on him and knocked him away... which is also incredibly stupid all things considering.
And then Nazgul went "shucks he fell down the stairs... what can you do... i must go away".

So - the Mirkwood elves stay, though their home is also on Valinor? What makes them different from the Rivendell elves? They come across very differently in The Hobbit, yes, but what is it about their history that makes them this way?

As all elves they could have chosen to go to Valinor but they were a more naturalized lineage who never went to Valinor.

In ancient times when the Elves began their Great Journey westward to the Undying Lands, some of the Elves were reluctant to cross the Misty Mountains and decided to settle in the woods along the Anduin. These Elves were of the kindred called the Teleri, and those that remained in the woods came to be called Silvan Elves, or Wood-Elves.

When elves were created they lived in the lands that later became Beleriand (now sunken beneath the sea) and Middle Earth.
Valars invited them to Valinor and that journey created first different lineages or tribes among the elves.

Some never went there.

Those Elves who refuse the summons of the Valar or did not complete the Great Journey to Valinor are called the Úmanyar, meaning "Not of Aman" and "Moriquendi," or Dark Elves (those who had not seen the Light).

Here you can see where from the so called drow are coming. But it was originally only referring to those who have not seen the light of two great trees in Valinor, nothing else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundering_of_the_Elves

If the Fourth Age is supposed to be the MODERN one, what happens to these groups, and what roles do they play

Not the modern age, no.

All the creatures of Sauron such as orcs and other are hunted down in the oncoming years and slowly exterminated completely. Also it seems that their numbers grow with power of dark lords and with them more or less dead they also naturally dwindle and retreat.

Mirkwood elves and Beorns are said to have lived happily for quite some time more. Dwarfs too.
Moria was reopened and so on. No one really disappeared suddenly.

Out of any group that would be more tied to Middle Earth, I'd think it would be Elrond's people, since he's half-elven himself.

He was a half elf but he and his kin can have a choice of becoming fully elves or mortal men.
His brother chose to be a man and so Numenor line was born.

reconcile Tolkien's two interpretations of elves with a more traditional concept of them

no they just ripped off his work i think.
I wasnt aware there was any traditional concept of elves before Tolkien. Just various folk tales of fairies and sprites and such except maybe Irish Celtic tales of the "fair folk".

If Tom Bombadil is a Maiar (whom are themselves much like angels, if I'm not mistaken) why is his role so passive, versus Gandalf and Saurman, who answer(ed) to a higher authority? What exempts him, and if Gandalf fades into the West, does Bombadil as well? I had somewhat of a feeling that he (and Beorn, I believe) were tied to the nature of Middle Earth itself.

Because he has a mind of his own and doesnt have to play a obvious role?

Gandalf and Saruman were sent with specific tasks to Middle Earth, something they probably volunteered for.
Bombadil was there from creation of the world and to him all that business of Rings and wars is something like short term distraction he isnt connected with in any way.
Its difficult to explain it in greater detail since he was made to be an enigma intentionally and there isnt much info about him.
http://www.tuckborough.net/otherbeings. ... 20Bombadil

I'd actually venture that despite this being "a new age of Man dawning" it's far MORE about another one ending

That would be correct.

 

[hiver]

Yes, Middle Earth elves were pretty much uniformly good, and orcs were pretty much all evil, but this makes more sense when you realize that orcs were elves corrupted by Sauron.

Orcs were actually created by Morgoth the Valar who rebelled against high God.

According to the oldest "theory" proposed by Tolkien (found in The Fall of Gondolin, from The Book of Lost Tales, circa 1917 — the first tale of Middle-earth to be written in full), Orcs were made of stone and slime through the sorcery of Morgoth ("bred from the heats and slimes of the earth" — The Book of Lost Tales, Vol. 2).

It was a direct attempt by morgoth to rival the God by showing he is also capable of creating life. naturally he failed and all he could do is create Orcs.

Tolkien later changed the legendarium so that Morgoth could no longer produce life on his own, and amended the origins to the "theory" that would eventually be published in The Silmarillion: that the Orcs were transformed from Elves — the purest form of life on Arda (the Earth) — by means of torture and mutilation; and this "theory" would then become the most popular

While Tolkien at some point saw all Orcs as descended from tortured Elves, later comments of his indicate, according to Christopher Tolkien in Morgoth's Ring ("Myths Transformed, text X"), that he began to feel uncomfortable with this theory.

The word *orcné (attested in the plural orcnéas) is a hapax legomenon in the poem Beowulf. It is generally supposed to contain an element -né, cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár, both meaning "corpse"

 

[Infernaeus]

Tom Bombadil is certainly not a maiar! Tolkien said himself that he had no idea what Bombadil was and that some things were better off left as mysteries to everyone including himself. A lot of you guys are discussing things that have already been debated for years now and conveniently cataloged at this website

http://tolkien.cro.net/

I won't really bother rebutting Lesifoere fully since the tail end of that post was just seething hatred for England and old white men. hiver addressed the beginning of the post adequately, so that leaves the center.

Compare that to... well, anything from Tolkien. He draws from Norse and Old English sources, which are terse Germanic things, powerful and ruthlessly efficient in their scantness. In short, everything Tolkien's prose isn't. He tries to shoehorn Germanic warrior code into Rohan and even the grisliness of The Siege of Jerusalem (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you aren't as well-versed in this as you'd like to think you are, are you?) into the siege of Minas-Tirith. Except without the unapologetic brutality. He does what Disney does to fairytales: sanitize and water down until there remains only vapid family-safe sludge. Those things were already reinterpreted and refitted for Christian sensibilities by silly monks, and they hardly need a second dumbing-down to fit a bloodless, New Testament paradigm.

Do you really think that his stories would have had anymore value if they contained highly detailed barbarism and brutality? Do those things transmit some kind of intrinsic quality? They can be used as a literary device, but if you're saying that by their absence his work is somehow less good, you'll have to explain more. Yes, he draws from old Germanic sources. And no, his books are not written like them. His tales are not old Germanic myths, they are not sanitized or watered down. They are as much their own creature as any writing no matter what inspired it. He wanted to create his own mythology for England because he thought it should have one. He liked and was fluent in and knowledgeable of old norse and anglo-saxon, so various themes and ideas contained in the myths of those cultures reappeared in his stories. But they are by no means the same thing and comparing them both doesn't show that he was a bad writer anymore than calling his prose insipid and leaving it at that.

Lack of detailed violence is not an objective sign of bad writing. Being a Christian with Christian sensibilities and values is not an objective sign of being a bad author.

 

[Volourn]

This thread is fucked up.

 

[Gragt]

ArcturusXIV > Lovecraft was a pulp writer, altough one of the better ones. His strenght is that he managed to capture some archetypes that go back very far, like the fear of the unknown that we can't possibly understand. There is quite a lot of telling in his stories because he dealt with things that couldn't be shown, which is why they are so horrifying.

"Show, don't tell" is actually basic advice for writing workshop, repeated ad nauseam until taken for granted and not questionned. A great writer can do both and I'll even say that telling is what stories are about. Of course showing isn't without merits but it shouldn't be given such an important place.

Lesifoere made a few good points. Tolkien dealt mostly with watered down arthurian legends but even then that wouldn't be a problem, even the byzantine style could be bearable if the characters were a bit more alive. They are all one-dimensional, there is almost no change, you discover a bit about someone and you will see it again several time before you get to the last page. And then there is the woden dialog. Characters are the major flaw of his work; the second is that the story is simply contrived, lead by the dumbest-possible-action or deus ex machinae. As the saying goes, it's as if Tolkien was so interested with the world he created that he couldn't care less for the characters, while they are the most important part of a story. Middle Earth does not turn around them, they turn around it.

Fantasy is pretty much the only genre where people expect the focus to be on the description of the world and then after that to get to the characters, and I guess Tolkien is responsible for that. Might happen with sci-fi but then it usualy has a purpose.

Do you really think that his stories would have had anymore value if they contained highly detailed barbarism and brutality?

Violence can be very direct and to the point. If used correctly, it can tell a lot because it's something we all have inside of us.

Lack of detailed violence is not an objective sign of bad writing. Being a Christian with Christian sensibilities and values is not an objective sign of being a bad author.

I agree with that. Take C.S. Lewis for exemple: friend of Tolkien, fellow scholar, Christian as well, and better writer.

 

[kris]

He said something akin to "if I saw that lying by the side of the road, I would not take it." He refuses to even look at the Ring in the books, which I DO feel makes Frodo seem like somewhat of a wuss for falling to its power, and Aragorn for having to struggle to refuse it, and Boromir for being driven to madness for wanting it.

That's just your interpretion. I see it more as him being so scared of it that he doesn't dare look at it, nor even go close to it, less so would he dare pick it up.

 

[Brother None]

So - the Mirkwood elves stay, though their home is also on Valinor? What makes them different from the Rivendell elves? They come across very differently in The Hobbit, yes, but what is it about their history that makes them this way?

I think the Silvans are amongst the elves that never saw the light of Valinor, but I might be mistaken. In any case, there's a lot of strains of elves and some have no reason to return across the sea.

Another point is something most Codexers won't see anything wrong with: Tolkien's an ethnocentric bore.

Lesifoere, your critique is clear and mostly correct, only it is imcomplete and as such I don't think you'll convince a lot of people. Obviously, a full critique of any literary work would take a full article or book, and even a butchering of the English language like Atlas Shrugged...if someone loves it, I'd be hard-pressed to convince him otherwise in a few simple paragraphs.

But here I feel a particular weakness. Not that criticism of ethnocentrism is valid, but trying to divorce it or discussing it without mentioning the strains of Christianity running through the book is way too limited.

In a lot of ways, Lewis' status as apologist influence Tolkien's thinking directly even while he turned away from it. In his ethnocentrism, you can easily identify strains of his own Catholicism but also of a kind of Gomarian laziness, in his general attitude not just to a digital view of morality as something primarily divided in a dichotomical way allowing very few shades of grey (this always annoyed the heck out of me), but also in assigning every race a kind of "original sin" in the tradition of Catholic bible lore, one that is not just there in a vague oblique way but that is present in such a dominant way that even an intelligent race as orcs is never offered a choice in which path to take in life - much in line with Gomarus' teachings.

Taken as a whole, this ethnocentrism based on digital morality drains the setting of much of its depth and thus makes it less interesting to many of us. Even apart from the dullness of writing. But in your critique and follow-ups, you skip over this Christian factor that almost defines Lord of the Rings too much. I don't think you can properly assess the book without taking that factor into account.

Also, I guess the lack of graphic violence is a part of that lack of (interesting in) depth, though I as the others here fail to see why this detracts from the book, and to assign all covering up of graphic descriptions of violence as Hollywoodism feels a bit narrow to me.

(note that I like Tolkien, but I'd be hardpressed to defend the literal value of his writings)

 

[ArcturusXIV]

So - the Mirkwood elves stay, though their home is also on Valinor? What makes them different from the Rivendell elves? They come across very differently in The Hobbit, yes, but what is it about their history that makes them this way?

I think the Silvans are amongst the elves that never saw the light of Valinor, but I might be mistaken. In any case, there's a lot of strains of elves and some have no reason to return across the sea.

Another point is something most Codexers won't see anything wrong with: Tolkien's an ethnocentric bore.

Lesifoere, your critique is clear and mostly correct, only it is imcomplete and as such I don't think you'll convince a lot of people. Obviously, a full critique of any literary work would take a full article or book, and even a butchering of the English language like Atlas Shrugged...if someone loves it, I'd be hard-pressed to convince him otherwise in a few simple paragraphs.

But here I feel a particular weakness. Not that criticism of ethnocentrism is valid, but trying to divorce it or discussing it without mentioning the strains of Christianity running through the book is way too limited.

In a lot of ways, Lewis' status as apologist influence Tolkien's thinking directly even while he turned away from it. In his ethnocentrism, you can easily identify strains of his own Catholicism but also of a kind of Gomarian laziness, in his general attitude not just to a digital view of morality as something primarily divided in a dichotomical way allowing very few shades of grey (this always annoyed the heck out of me), but also in assigning every race a kind of "original sin" in the tradition of Catholic bible lore, one that is not just there in a vague oblique way but that is present in such a dominant way that even an intelligent race as orcs is never offered a choice in which path to take in life - much in line with Gomarus' teachings.

Taken as a whole, this ethnocentrism based on digital morality drains the setting of much of its depth and thus makes it less interesting to many of us. Even apart from the dullness of writing. But in your critique and follow-ups, you skip over this Christian factor that almost defines Lord of the Rings too much. I don't think you can properly assess the book without taking that factor into account.

Also, I guess the lack of graphic violence is a part of that lack of (interesting in) depth, though I as the others here fail to see why this detracts from the book, and to assign all covering up of graphic descriptions of violence as Hollywoodism feels a bit narrow to me.

(note that I like Tolkien, but I'd be hardpressed to defend the literal value of his writings)

This lecture gave me a braingasm. Amen, brother.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

"Beat up by a girl" tag for hiver.