>writes a juvenile book with simple black and white morality for children>filled with plotholes>bad guys are all cartoonishly evil and have no redeeming features>80 years later manchildren still think he's a geniusIs he the biggest hack to ever hack? Being an adult fan of Tolkien is the easiest way to tell someone is low IQ.
>>24846292Bait used to be believable. I miss those days.
>>24846294You're mentally ill if you think disliking LOTR/Tolkien should be bait.Why should anyone respect a writer that gives villains names like "Grima Wormtongue"I noticed the punchline was missing from my picture.You can't defend it.
>>24846299MorgothUngoliantSauronThe Great GoblinGollumSmaugSarumanDurin's BaneUglukGrishnakhThe Witch King of AngmarThe Mouth of SauronGorbagShagrat"Old Sharkey"
>>24846299>Why should anyone respect a writer that gives villains names like "Grima Wormtongue"I don't see the problem.
>>24846292No man, this is wrong
>>24846299Just fuck off
>>24846292>Is he the biggest hack to ever hack?No, Tolkien was actually pretty chill and hated his obsessed manchildren fans.
>>24846804Really?
>I need a name for the supreme being of ultimate good.>Hmmmm . . . good, good, gooood, god . . . I've got it!>Now I need a name for the supreme evil.>Evil, evil, hmmm . . . aevil, bevil, cevil . . . oh ho!Who writes this shit?
>>24846292>the ring's whole point is that everyone is corruptible, and the most noble beings are those furthest on the edge of the abyss>le black & white moralityI really hope it's bait and you're not really that much of a sheep redditor. The hate for Tolkien is entirely astroturfed on the fact he was a Christian. Read the book you secondary parrot.
>>24846957>The hate for Tolkien is entirely astroturfed on the fact he was a Christian.What? Lotr isn't a christian story. It's trashy pro-anglo teutonophobic WW2 propaganda. The uruk hai are SS ubermensch made by Himmler (Saruman), Sauron is Stalin who wants to shroud the world under the shadow of communism under meat waves of orcs. Of course the good guys are silly innocent English villagers.There's nothing christian about lotr, you're buying propaganda.
his name wasn't "wormtongue"
>>24846971>Lotr isn't a christian story.Are you saying Tolkien himself was wrong about his book? He said he didn't want to make explicit references to Christianity but his books are very deeply rooted in it. He explicitly stated this lol. Stop parroting this reddit revisionism, they want to disassociate the Christian author from the butchered franchise.
I intentionally pulled this from Wikipedia which is a left-biased source so you can't bitch at me,>J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. He described The Lord of the Rings as rich in Christian symbolism, as he explained in a letter to his close friend and Jesuit priest, Robert Murray:>"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."
>>24846997>catholicOf course. That explains everything. Only a delusional satan/idol worshipping zealot that believes he's right about everything could write something like this.
>>24847011All right it's just bait. Kill yourself.
>>24847025Wishing others to kill themselves?That's not very christian of you!Give me 45 ave marias after after kissing a picture of the pope and his golden toilet in the vatican.
>>24846292>writes a juvenile book with simple black and white morality for children>bad guys are all cartoonishly evil and have no redeeming featuresWell, he's a Catholic. He does put it all together brilliantly. There's a tradition of fabricated mythology that the fantasy genre stems from. Call it pulp, or children's lit if you will but it isn't hack work. (GRRM is hack work) Even non-Catholics can enjoy these good adventure tales
>>24847029Your LOTR name would be Ormir the Bad-Baiter.
>>24846957>going through various first letters for the character nameWhy is this specific thought so funny
>>24846292George?
>>24846292post your top 3. i'll wait
>>24846971
>>24846938Very first Bible was written by King James tho and he didnt talk like that
>>24846322Erdogan the RoachMogadishuThe Hole of AśsTyron the BlackAmir of the FentMahomet the ZuttedNiggerionSmegma
>>24846292>Is he the biggest hack to ever hack?He's not an hack but his obsessed manchildren fans who treat his work as if it was this divine untouchable masterpiece of artistic genius are annoying and pretentious in the same way some rap fans are when they start blathering about the "genius" of the latest Kendrick Lamar album.
It’s arrested development.
Imagine if you went back 2000 years and handed out copies of LotR. We'd have had Christian morality minus all the Jewish baggage/ cognitive dissonance, thus we'd be interplanetary by now.
>>24846292>bad guys are all cartoonishly evil and have no redeeming featuresThis is ironically more complex than the recycled sob stories you love shoehorning into villains solely to deprive catharsis from their downfall.
Completely true, OP. The Lord of the Rings is not merely a story about good triumphing over evil — it is a theological fever dream of racial purification masquerading as high fantasy. Beneath the pastoral pipe-weed and the quaint Shire cheer lies a myth of moral and racial hygiene so absolute that it annihilates nuance itself. Tolkien’s world is divided not by ideology or class, but by blood and essence. Elves are angelic, Men are fallible but redeemable, Dwarves are stubborn craftsmen — and Orcs? Orcs are the damned: industrial, faceless, and irredeemably other.The orcs are the colonized, the enslaved, the dark-skinned laborers of Middle-earth’s moral economy. Created through torture and corruption — a mythic eugenics parable — they are denied even the possibility of grace. Their every act is wicked by nature, their voices a cacophony, their speech mocked as gibberish. They are the brown masses upon which the shining West defines itself. When the “Free Peoples” march to destroy Sauron, they are not liberating Middle-earth; they are enacting a crusade of cleansing, a pogrom sanctified by divine light.The destruction of the Ring — the so-called victory of Good — is the moment of absolute spiritual colonization. The Ring, symbol of power, desire, and autonomy, is cast into the fire not to save the world but to reaffirm that no subaltern hand may ever wield mastery. Power itself must be destroyed rather than allowed to fall into the “wrong” hands, meaning of course, the hands of the impure. Frodo’s journey is not redemptive; it is penitential, a pilgrimage of racial purity culminating in the ritual erasure of the very possibility of orcish sovereignty.And the aftermath? Mordor burns, its peoples slaughtered without mercy. The text offers no mourning, no remembrance, no funerary honor — because in Tolkien’s theology, the orc is not a being but a blasphemy. The “new age” of Men is nothing less than the triumph of a monotheistic, agrarian, Euro-Christian order over the polytheistic, industrial, and “sin-stained” pagan realm. The orcs’ defeat is genocide written as eschatology — the total obliteration of the racialized Other as the final step toward divine harmony.The world ends in pastoral silence, the machines stopped, the forges quenched, the “monstrous” races vanished. It is the peace of the grave — the dream of a racially and spiritually pure world. And in that silence, one can almost hear the ghosts of the orcs whispering: We were here! You just called it evil.Tolkien is a racist hack.
>>24848530AIslop
>>24846971Saruman is a Hitler caricature - the first of many in the fantasy genre. I think you're right about Sauron being Stalin.LOTR is Christian but it's also clearly influenced due to being written during WW2, even if on a subconscious level. Just comparing the differences in themes and style to that of the Hobbit (written before the war) should make this obvious.What's funny is Tolkien even spelled this out by claiming the dwarves are based off Jews but his fans never concede this point
>>24848530Actually Mordor's destruction is a reference to Germany getting firebombed or Japan being nuked. The Council of Elrond is just the Yalta conference.You're assuming a book written during the 1940s is referencing 2020s racial issues for some reason? Instead of the massive war that occurred during that decade?
>>24846957NTA but I don't hate Tolkien because he's christian I hate him because im a pseud and fail to take genre fiction seriously in any level. People like to pretend Tolkien is deeper than he is and write this whole ass fucking mythos around his made up autist world he had in his head while clapping about like seals to his idealistic and quite frankly simplistic themes like "power can corrupt anyone", "even small people can do great things if determined enough", "dont drag around toxic people in your life they won't redeem themselves" yada yada yada yaba daba doo. It's the same issue of people taking superhero comics or videogames way too seriously when sure, the themes are there, but they're usually relativly shallow and not that developed, and while Tolkien is way better than literally any other fantasy author that's not a high bar whatsoever and his little fantasy world only makes them meaningless and harder to absorb when they have to share the same place as talking trees and giant spiders
>>24849224>NTA but I don't hate Homer because he's polytheist I hate him because im a pseud and fail to take epics seriously in any level. People like to pretend Homer is deeper than he is and write this whole ass fucking mythos around his made up autist world he had in his head while clapping about like seals to his idealistic and quite frankly simplistic themes like "the misery of war", "even the heroes cannot deny fate", "dont be all angry it won't help" yada yada yada yaba daba doo. It's the same issue of people taking superhero comics or videogames way too seriously when sure, the themes are there, but they're usually relativly shallow and not that developed, and while Homer is way better than literally any other epic poet that's not a high bar whatsoever and his little fantasy world only makes them meaningless and harder to absorb when they have to share the same place as talking ogres and giant dogs
>>24849229The message of LOTR is that weak mortals can defeat evil gods while the message of Homer is the exact opposite. Comparing them doesn't make any sense
>>24849229Kek
>>24849229See that's exactly what im talking about! For Heaven's sake the first thing you have to compare LOTR to The Illiad as if it's even thematically, structurally or historically close to an epic! Comparing 2 people with completely different styles, goals and ideas from completely different time periods and putting them on similar grounds doesn't make sense. Homer didn't spend intricate hours making made up languages and a deep history for his made up races he just told very dramatically about the history of his people under a mythological and dramatic lensLOTR is not bad but cmon equating it to an epic? That's a bit too much
>>24849241>>24849251>the weak can conquer le gods is... le slop!>the weak can't conquer le gods is... le not!You actually can compare inversions and subversions of literary themes. What is it about the weak conquering the gods that makes it inherently slop? Nevermind the many cases of gods and such being outwitted or defeated by those much weaker throughout literary history.
>>24849254The hobbits don't outsmart Sauron though. They don't even meet him. They just win because they were more pure of heart.If anything Saruman is the one trying to outwit Sauron, and he's villainized because 'two wrongs don't make a right'
>>24849276>the trojans didn't even defeat Zeus>they didn't even meet him>they just win because the gods wanted them toThat's not the point of this post >>24849229Specifically, I am demonstrating that none of the critiques make a substantive case against Tolkien and some of them are just plain bad, namely the end>his little fantasy world only makes them meaningless and harder to absorb when they have to share the same place as talking trees and giant spidersbecause this is a very aesthetic preoccupation without any reason that it is negative. Homer quite literally has magic equipment, mythical beasts and random gods roaming around.The comparison between Tolkien and Homer can happen because the point of contention is explicitly in the themes, and the critiques of the themes in Tolkien's case are quite comparable to someone complaining that there are weird things in the Iliad. Now I agree that Tolkien's works don't really hold a candle to Homer's, but I wouldn't base it on not liking a story like David and Goliath, Abram or Prometheus. I liked it a lot as a child but I would struggle to argue in its favor against other, better works. Though could structure like so:>Two sets of godlike beings each supporting mortals in the battle over a city. In both cases, the victors reign over one side of gods.Sauron would of course represent the wishes of Zeus and company, while the hobbits would have intercession on behalf of Hera and company (Gandalf, another Godlike entity who is intrumental) to triumph. In both cases, they confront elements of the enemy (Hector, the sons of Priam, the Nazghul and Urukhai), demonstrate their own skills and bravery, and neither is strictly a "weak prevail over gods" or "the mortals cannot prevail over the gods." It is not a direct equivalent, but one would have to substantiate the claim that the weak or the strong cannot or should not prevail to make a good story. In any case, they are both carried by how they execute these themes, whether subverted or not in relation to one another.Actually, I posted only because I thought it was funny and the argument "poor"; I agree with the sentiment for the most part. It's just a critique of the substance of the argument. Because this is 4chan and I thought it was funny.
>>24849312There's some truth to that I suppose. The comment you were responding to was silly. And it's true you could see LOTR as a battle between gods (although not really as the universe is ultimately monotheist, but that isn't actually made clear in the text itself)My problem with Tolkien isn't that he shows a weak person can become strong, but that he venerates meekness in and of itself. But I'm not a Christian so I suppose that's my bias
I don't like tolkien for two reasons. The first is that its christian themes are too on the nose. The characters basically let themselves be guided by providence and know that, because they're just and righteous, Eru/God will lead them to victory. The entire premise of the fellowship is based on a gigantic leap of faith, since gandalf himself doesnt know which way to take, always asking frodo because he's the ring bearer, and nobody know what they'll do when and if they reach mordor. I like heroes who defeat insurmountable odds through sheer cunning and tenacity, not providence. I would've liked lotr more if they spent time and resources carefully designing a plan and making contingiencies. The other reason is the songs. I FUCKING HATE songs.
>Is Tolkien a hackNo he did exactly what he set out to do, it isn't his fault society is so infantilized they think he is high literature.
>>24849354the real redpill is that nobody cares about the original themes of tolkien, and the real reason behind his success was his insane worldbuilding that set the precedent for every fantasy opera after him.
>>24848040>GRRM is hack workelaborate
>>24849376>Walk with me, my sweet summer child, and hear the tale of fat pink masts jutting into sopping wet myrish swamps and black nipples brushing against silk until her cunt became the world while in the privy the princess guzzled arbor gold and shat but the more she drank the more she shat until she was shitting brown water and around her the planks of the ship groaned like a fat man taking a shit while she cursed the gods and nuncle smiled as he broke his fast on black bread, bacon burned black, and mulled wine while capon-grease dribbled down his chin and onto the boiled leather of his jerkin for she was wet with love and did she not know words are wind and dark wings bring dark words and a lannister always pays her debts and mayhaps this is nothing but a mummers farce and useless as nipples on a breastplate and the princess has been fucking lancel and moonboy for all nuncle knows and he is the blood of the dragon for the night is dark and full of terrors but where do whores go and jon snow knows nothing and near enough makes no matter so nuncle smiled and dipped the heel of his bread into clam chowder and prayed for half a hundred more heh har HODORShould this suffice ?
>>24849312>because this is a very aesthetic preoccupation without any reason that it is negative. Homer quite literally has magic equipment, mythical beasts and random gods roaming around.Context, both historical and narrative, is key towards the difference. Homer's epics weren't too far off for the standars of his time and mythology seeped naturally into the flow of a lot of the greeks' art world. Tolkien is attempting to inorganically capture a sentiment in a way more crude and childish way, he wrote kids books for most of his life after all, than what was expected from serious literature at his time. If all the musical numbers, funny names and anecdotes and so on didn't give it away the tone is completely different from that of a traditional epic and THAT'S FINE, the giant eagles and hobbits with hairy toes only adding to a overall more whimsical and lighthearted tone as opposed to a grandiose one. I believe retards trying to equate or elevate it to that level are absolutely acidic. I enjoy LOTR, I think it's the best written fantasy story after all and it's themes are definitly something I would want my kids or whatever learning from a young age, but I personally think people exagerate the weight it has and how big of a deal it is. I usually equate these things to people not reading better things or being poorly read but I can't claim that for LOTR fans, maybe a sense of nostalgia or something. Either way it's a personal thing I always struggled to take genre fiction seriously and specially fantasy but it ain't like the genre is doing itself any favors
Shut up, bitch.
>>24846292I agree that the fanbase is terrible. Tolkien isn't a hack writer and LotR is not a bad book, but it's a good book for children and adults enjoying it is a red flag.I read LotR at age 8 and I liked it at the time. That's probably the appropriate age for it.Adult fans of LotR, more broadly high fantasy in general, are something I'll never understand.
>>24849844you sound like an insecure faggot. go read the silmarillion and then tell me if it's supposed to be read by grade schoolers.
>>24849376/lit/ (and 4chan as a whole) is full of pseudo-intellectuals who think hating popular things makes them cool. GRRM isn't a hack, but you can't see the real genius of his work unless you have 160+ IQ and high-functioning autism like Preston Jacobs. he tells a parallel story in the history of the noble houses, and their relation to the story requires reading between the lines and careful study, which the pseuds of /lit/ can't pick up on, so they call GRRM a "hack"
>>24849459Top kek.Gurmtrannies completely destroyed.
>>24846299Bad people are always, ALWAYS, ugly. They have ugly names, ugly habits, and ugly faces. Find me one evil man who looks handsome and trustworthy, I dare you. Every serial killer's name sprawls over the page like a crushed spider. Every dictator's name is wrong, off in some way you can't explain. Tolkien knew this.
