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Lemniscate Blue posted:"With blackjack! And hookers!" More like boats and murdertrees.
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Apr 9, 2021 19:49
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Lemniscate Blue posted:"With blackjack! And hookers!" I think that's Bored of the Rings.
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Apr 9, 2021 21:28
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So Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are the two biggest fantasy book series ever, right? Just idle musings as I read a paper on the ethics of HP and they quote Dumbledore's condemnation of Voldemort's knowledge and wisdom: “That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing." Instantly reminded me of Gandalf's condemnation of Sauron: "For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it." Now this could easily be a case of direct inspiration but my main thought is how these biggest fantasy works are profoundly Christian in their morals. And an odd thought occurred to me just now, Sanderson is a Mormon. Rowling's (so far as I know) non-denominational Christianity, Tolkien's Catholicism and Sanderson's Mormonism are all surely different in the precise details. But they still represent an overpoweringly Christian morality in their stories and maybe that contributes, at least somewhat, to their popularity. I can definitely say it's part of why I like them.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:22
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NikkolasKing posted:So Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are the two biggest fantasy book series ever, right? I would point out that Rowling admitted that Dumbledore is a straight up copy of Gandalf, so him having the same world view isn't exactly unexpected.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:28
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sweet geek swag posted:I would point out that Rowling admitted that Dumbledore is a straight up copy of Gandalf, so him having the same world view isn't exactly unexpected. Well I don't much listen to Rowling as you might expect but a confirmation is nice to hear. But it goes much deeper than a character here or there. The themes of the two series are pretty much identical with a battle of Power vs. Love. The paper I was reading was comparing HP to St. Augustine and his famous work the City of God which is basically about the same thing. In fact, I was trying to read up on Augustine and happening upon a scholarly paper on HP was just an intriguing bonus (Here it is if anyone else is interested) And then I just started reflecting on Tolkien and I didn't even think of Narnia until now which is even more overtly Christian (so far as I know, never read it) than these two and is another incredibly influential fantasy series. At least, I think so. I recall its movie was one of the top grossing films of 2005 so I imagine the novels are pretty important. Maybe? In any event, just struck me as interesting these two giants of fantasy literature are in effect telling the same story with the same themes, possibly the same inspiration.
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Apr 9, 2021 22:42
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They were all playing in the same sandbox, or at least certainly Lewis and Tolkien were having a friendly duel with their parallel careers. It sounds like you may only just be stumbling upon this, in which case god drat is this a deep rabbit hole to go down. One thing you might find is that Lewis' (Anglican) treatment of religion is very much more explicit and surface-level; whereas Tolkien's is very understated and a lot subtler. His whole thing is about the nature of faith — how if you trust that the world is in the hand of a higher power to make the Good Thing happen, then it's only down to you to do your part to do the right thing, to follow the path laid out for you, and trust in the promise that the world will come good. This is the amdir versus estel thing in Tolkien which is only available if you dig down deep including into unpublished stuff: amdir is "hope" in the sense of "I hope I get that promotion" or "I hope we beat Sauron", but estel (i.e. Aragorn's namesake) is basically "faith", i.e. that God is in charge, or that even if you die horribly, if you do your part the world will be redeemed and you will have your just reward millennia hence. I have a friend who keeps trying to tell me Tolkien sucks because he wrote himself into a corner and had to rescue himself with the Eagles, and I just zip my lips and refuse to engage on it because what the gently caress. That plot point was there from the beginning, it isn't a compromise, it's a eucatastrophe, and it's there as the far-less-important denouement after Sam wins the real climactic victory of the whole story which is to give up all "hope" (i.e. the amdir kind of hope), just trusting in providence to see the quest through. Frodo fails in the quest, after all. It's only Gollum's intervention which brings it to success — which is read as God's hand, which you would have seen coming with enough estel. You should read the Narnia books, it's a trip. Don't infer a working knowledge of the allegorical readings of it just from the movies, any more than you should with LotR, all that gets you is "lol Eagles  "Rowling, eh... I kinda doubt she thought that hard about it.
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Apr 9, 2021 23:17
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Rowling is absolutely just walking in Tolkien's footsteps here. Leaving aside criticism of Rowling herself, in the end as I recall they basically beat the bad guy in a big fight, he has just been weakened by subtle questing beforehand. It would be like if Frodo cast the Ring into the fire and that lowered Sauron's healing factor enough for Aragorn to chop his head off without it growing back. I would say that Tolkien is definitely the better writer between him and Lewis (though I wouldn't say Lewis is bad). I do wonder now, when Tolkien bitches about Allegory, how much of that is a shot at Lewis?
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Apr 9, 2021 23:18
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A big shot imho Tho I’ve seen LW and the W like 10 times now and the allegory is still abstract . But I’m used to American Christians not old stuffy anglicans
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Apr 9, 2021 23:20
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NikkolasKing posted:Well I don't much listen to Rowling as you might expect but a confirmation is nice to hear. There's a saying that goes something like "Great fantasy steals from mythology, good fantasy steals from Tolkien, bad fantasy steals from D&D." Christianity is the default mythological source for the west (I say this as a practicing Christian), so it makes sense that it has a lot of play in most of the biggest fantasy series.
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Apr 9, 2021 23:23
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Oh goddammit that's why she decided Dumbledore was gay isn't it Ian mckellen
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Apr 9, 2021 23:56
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh goddammit that's why she decided Dumbledore was gay isn't it Lol of course Anyway Gods & Monsters is worth a watch
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Apr 10, 2021 00:02
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Data Graham posted:They were all playing in the same sandbox, or at least certainly Lewis and Tolkien were having a friendly duel with their parallel careers. It sounds like you may only just be stumbling upon this, in which case god drat is this a deep rabbit hole to go down. Well, the scholarship I've seen on HP has focused on its more Platonic elements and interpretations. (Augustine was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism) Plato and Christian morals are not so obscure that I think it's a mistake these found their way into the consistent themes of her books. I'm not saying she's comparable to Tolkien or Lewis who both had far more education than her but ever since I read the Republic a few years ago, the similarities have always been apparent to me and then smart people vindicated it. I always remembered Dumbledore's line that the people most suited for power are those who have never sought it and so when I read Socrates' proclamation in the Republic that the best rulers are those who don't want to rule...just kinda clicked. And again this is just as big a theme in LOTR. Frodo failed because he was human and to be human is to sin. No one could have resisted the Ring there because no human is immune to sin. Frodo didn't want power or glory but ultimately we are all the creations of God/Eru and if we believe we can through our own efforts totally resist evil, then we are lost. This is why Saruman is my favorite Tolkien villain. Because he makes sense. He was a man - er, being - of logic. There was objectively no hope in trying to resist Sauron. That is very plain from text and supplements. Militarily, he was invincible. What's more, it's also an objective fact that no being on Middle-earth could throw the Ring into Mt. Doom. No being could resist its power at the end. So Saruman made a perfectly logical choice. If you could not defeat Sauron this way, why not just overpower him? There's a lot about Saruman's fall in side stuff. He really did spend a long, long time trying to think up ways to defeat Sauron but fell into despair because there really was no sound, tactical way to do this. Defeating Sauron was the result of a pure act of faith and faith is by definition illogical. Well, Tolkien as a Catholic would disagree with that. Maybe I'm too Protestant but faith has always seemed to me to be far removed from reason. Faith can lead to reason but reason can never lead to faith. But anyway, thanks for the info. I have a huge reading list as is but I'll see if I can add Narnia on there. sweet geek swag posted:There's a saying that goes something like "Great fantasy steals from mythology, good fantasy steals from Tolkien, bad fantasy steals from D&D." Christianity is the default mythological source for the west (I say this as a practicing Christian), so it makes sense that it has a lot of play in most of the biggest fantasy series. This is reminding me of high school when I took a Mythology class and the teacher asked what is the most popular mythology in the West and I said Greek. lol Never even occurred to me to think of Christianity as a mythology. I think it's because "myth' is associated with 'blatant falsehood" in our minds. It was for me at the time. But yeah, you're probably right.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:26
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What I like about Tolkien is that the Christian underpinnings are undeniable but he also tries to respect the mythologies that came before that as much as he is capable. The 'On Fairy Stories' essay was a big defense of Beowulf and why it mattered and why it shouldn't be discarded just because 'pagans' told it, right? There was a lot Tolkien did wrong but he was a lot more aware then many people of his time or so it seems to me...I could be wrong though idk.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:28
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Well he sure didn’t have to do a syncretism of all the Greek/Roman/Norse myths into his Catholic apologia, but he did it anyway because I guess he thought it was all cool and all part of the same human effort to understand creation. Plus if he can make it all support a consistent central thesis, why settle for any lesser premise? e: of course the cruel irony of it being that he DID end up writing himself into a corner with the Orcs and the idea of free will, and put himself into a mental gridlock for the rest of his life  Data Graham fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 00:32
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Chesterton wrote apologia, Tolkien's is just fantasy
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Apr 10, 2021 00:41
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NikkolasKing posted:But anyway, thanks for the info. I have a huge reading list as is but I'll see if I can add Narnia on there. Two comments. First: The Chronicles of Narnia is a relatively quick read for a seven-book series. Each book averages only 50k words and was written for children. The night before the first movie came out, I reread the first book in a couple hours. Second: Read the books in the order of publication. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, read the books in order of publication. When the property passed to new hands (Wikipedia tells me this was in 1994, and to Harper Collins), the new publisher re-numbered the series based on the chronological ordering of events within the series, placing the sixth-written book (which I feel works best as a setup for the finale, and which was written with an assumption you were already familiar with the series) at the very start of the order. (The fifth book takes place during the first book. Moving it isn't as bad as moving the sixth, but it makes the progression of the first four disjointed.) edit: VVV Yeah, I mention it mostly just because Harper Collins prints the wrong numbers on the books. An aunt started reading the series to my cousin and they stopped because the cousin wasn't super into it. Surprise, going 6-1-5 gives a really rocky start to the series even when they're labeled 1-2-3. Vavrek fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 01:00
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Always read (or watch) in publication order is a good rule of thumb. I started reading Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series in the 'chronological' order at first, and the quality was kinda inconsistent. Now I'm sticking to the irl order that he wrote them in and it all reads much better!
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Apr 10, 2021 01:18
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Goes for Star Wars especially.
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Apr 10, 2021 01:22
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Blood Boils posted:Always read (or watch) in publication order is a good rule of thumb. I started reading Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series in the 'chronological' order at first, and the quality was kinda inconsistent. Now I'm sticking to the irl order that he wrote them in and it all reads much better! ...how is Fafhrd pronounced, anyway?
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Apr 10, 2021 02:00
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Tree Bucket posted:...how is Fafhrd pronounced, anyway?
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Apr 10, 2021 02:19
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Tree Bucket posted:...how is Fafhrd pronounced, anyway? Fap-Hard "Fafhrd stopped, again wiped right hand on robe, and held it out. 'Name's Fafhrd. Ef ay ef aitch ar dee.' Again the Mouser shook it. 'Gray Mouser,' he said a touch defiantly, as if challenging anyone to laugh at the soubriquet. 'Excuse me, but how exactly do you pronounce that? Faf-hrud?' 'Just Faf-erd.' 'Thank you.' "
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Apr 10, 2021 02:24
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NikkolasKing posted:Defeating Sauron was the result of a pure act of faith and faith is by definition illogical. Well, Tolkien as a Catholic would disagree with that. Maybe I'm too Protestant but faith has always seemed to me to be far removed from reason. Faith can lead to reason but reason can never lead to faith. From my incomplete understanding of Catholicism, the idea is that faith and reason aren't supposed to be opposites. Reason leads people to a part of the truth, whereas faith is a sort of improved reason that reveals what ordinary reason doesn't - as in Dante's Divine Comedy, where Virgil/reason can guide Dante towards Heaven, but to actually enter it he needs Beatrice/faith's guidance. In LotR, Saruman's logic was right as far as it went, but incomplete because he forgot Eru is real and has a plan for the world that doesn't involve evil's ultimate triumph.
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Apr 10, 2021 21:07
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Data Graham posted:Rowling, eh... I kinda doubt she thought that hard about it. Rowling 100% didn't think that hard about it. This is the woman whose answer to the ethical problem of a species that says it wants to be enslaved and it's happy like that no matter how badly its members are treated is "lol look at silly Hermione caring". Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh goddammit that's why she decided Dumbledore was gay isn't it Oh god it's so obvious once it's pointed out.
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Apr 10, 2021 22:36
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Global Disorder posted:From my incomplete understanding of Catholicism, the idea is that faith and reason aren't supposed to be opposites. Reason leads people to a part of the truth, whereas faith is a sort of improved reason that reveals what ordinary reason doesn't - as in Dante's Divine Comedy, where Virgil/reason can guide Dante towards Heaven, but to actually enter it he needs Beatrice/faith's guidance. There are a lot of strains in Catholicism as you might expect. But generally, yeah, reason and faith are supposed to be complementary but faith comes first. There was a lot of tension given the love for Antiquity and debating what happened to Plato and Aristotle and al those other pagan thinkers the Catholic theologians loved. Some said they were damned and I think a consistent Catholic doctrine has to maintain that position. They couldn't have had faith in Christ who did not appear yet. But anyway, your final point on Saruman reminds me of when I read The Silmarillion: quote:So there was something I had to wonder after finishing The Silmarillion. For Sauron and Saruman, embodiment seems to have really taken its toll on them. There's a note somewhere about how Sauron had convinced himself Eru abandoned Arda. The people I asked about this point to how both of them thought "well, Eru isn't stopping me so it must be okay." Also poor Saruman. He id nothing compared to the crimes of First Age Sauron yet his punishment was so much worse.
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Apr 10, 2021 22:58
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Saruman was betraying his specific responsibility. The gods never gave Sauron a mission to save the world from domination by dark sorcery, which he then did exactly the opposite of. They just kind of wrongly assumed he wouldn’t sell them out to Melkor. That’s why they don’t go cracking the planet open to stop him after the first age is over. They basically figured him for a victim of Melkor but didn’t understand how badly his relationship with Melkor had messed him up. Living prolongedly in Middle-earth seems to be kind of bad for Ainur. Which I guess makes sense when you consider that the planet has been irreversibly spiritually polluted by Morgoth
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Apr 10, 2021 23:24
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skasion posted:Saruman was betraying his specific responsibility. The gods never gave Sauron a mission to save the world from domination by dark sorcery, which he then did exactly the opposite of. They just kind of wrongly assumed he wouldn’t sell them out to Melkor. That’s why they don’t go cracking the planet open to stop him after the first age is over. They basically figured him for a victim of Melkor but didn’t understand how badly his relationship with Melkor had messed him up. This conversation is bringing Paradise Lost to mind for me, wherein Satan convinces the fallen angels (and himself) that after they've rebelled once that there's no going back, that God will never forgive them, and so that they need to dig in and keep fighting (even though God keeps giving them tons of chances to repent). I think that Melkor and the Ainur map onto that, if only implicitly: Melkor's pride and envy become malice and cruelty, and he initially seduces the Ainur into self-destructive disobedience, and then once Morgoth is gone, Sauron has been fighting for so long that he acts as if there's no other path.
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Apr 11, 2021 00:51
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I love how that also contextualizes modern-era stuff like Preacher, which follows the exact same template.
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Apr 11, 2021 00:59
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NikkolasKing posted:Some said they were damned and I think a consistent Catholic doctrine has to maintain that position. They couldn't have had faith in Christ who did not appear yet. Allow me to introduce you to the idea of invincible ignorance.
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Apr 11, 2021 03:44
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CommonShore posted:This conversation is bringing Paradise Lost to mind for me, wherein Satan convinces the fallen angels (and himself) that after they've rebelled once that there's no going back, that God will never forgive them, and so that they need to dig in and keep fighting (even though God keeps giving them tons of chances to repent). I think it again falls to them ‘measuring others by their own half-bushel’ as the old farmers say. That is, ‘if I were Eru, why would I offer up someone like me, who’s done terrible things, a chance of forgiveness?’ And all they can come up with is ‘to trick me and lull me into a false sense of security so when I let my guard down they can bring the hammer down with little risk to themselves.’ So they literally cannot conceive of forgiveness just like Sauron couldn’t conceive of anyone even thinking about destroying the ring instead of using it against him. Because that’s what he would do, nothing else makes sense because there’s nothing in it for him.
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Apr 11, 2021 03:56
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Anshu posted:Allow me to introduce you to the idea of invincible ignorance. This is what i get for only reading Catholic theology from the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Thanks for the link.
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Apr 11, 2021 04:41
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Anshu posted:Allow me to introduce you to the idea of invincible ignorance. Valarian and maiarian ignorance would be at least somewhat vincible due to their participation in the Music. Autocorrect had a hell of a time with that sentence.
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Apr 11, 2021 05:14
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Ainurian if you don't want to get too technical about the subject classifications of Ainur.
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Apr 11, 2021 05:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Valarian and maiarian ignorance would be at least somewhat vincible due to their participation in the Music. Oh, absolutely. I was responding specifically to NikkolasKing's speculation about the fates of those who lived before Christ came.
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Apr 11, 2021 05:37
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There’s a part in the Sil - I forget where exactly - where Morgoth is surprised by an event or at least unsure of what happens next because he was too absorbed in his own thoughts and didn’t pay attention at the relevant part of the Music. I would be surprised if he was the only one in that regard, so while in theory all the Ainur should know how things are gonna shake out, in practice many of them will be ignorant or at least unsure of various parts
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Apr 11, 2021 07:44
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NikkolasKing posted:There are a lot of strains in Catholicism as you might expect. But generally, yeah, reason and faith are supposed to be complementary but faith comes first. There was a lot of tension given the love for Antiquity and debating what happened to Plato and Aristotle and al those other pagan thinkers the Catholic theologians loved. Some said they were damned and I think a consistent Catholic doctrine has to maintain that position. They couldn't have had faith in Christ who did not appear yet. i thought that catholics believed that the fair browed philosophers were freed in the harrowing of hell
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Apr 11, 2021 09:48
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Dante has them in Limbo, the first circle of hell (except for the handful of biblical figures he specifically rescued).
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Apr 11, 2021 12:02
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ChubbyChecker posted:i thought that catholics believed that the fair browed philosophers were freed in the harrowing of hell IIRC that was just the Biblical patriarchs, yeah.
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Apr 11, 2021 12:10
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that always struck me as ridiculous and childish. why would some random greek guy be in hell just because he was born in BC
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Apr 11, 2021 12:26
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Shibawanko posted:that always struck me as ridiculous and childish. why would some random greek guy be in hell just because he was born in BC It is pretty absurd, and sort of goes against the idea that the afterlife is a sort of eternal place beyond time; it's not very elegant, that's for sure. It's funny, one of my favorite novels that deals with the mechanics of Christianity was actually Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice, which I always felt was a pretty interesting perspective on the mythology of Christianity, for all its flaws and contradictions.
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Apr 11, 2021 14:02
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kaworu posted:It is pretty absurd, and sort of goes against the idea that the afterlife is a sort of eternal place beyond time; it's not very elegant, that's for sure. It's funny, one of my favorite novels that deals with the mechanics of Christianity was actually Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice, which I always felt was a pretty interesting perspective on the mythology of Christianity, for all its flaws and contradictions. Memnoch has always stood out to me because, while it's by no means as good a story as Interview with the Vampire, which is both philosophically and narratively interesting, it's fascinating for how blatantly it's "Anne Rice tries to figure out her religious beliefs." And I entirely sympathize with her there, I've pondered many of the same questions and paradoxes she tries to tackle in the book. So it was really neat to have her struggle alongside me in this regard. Shibawanko posted:that always struck me as ridiculous and childish. why would some random greek guy be in hell just because he was born in BC Same reason unbaptized infants are in Hell, they were tainted by original sin and never received God's grace. There's a lot of cool stuff in Christian theology, but a lot of poo poo, too.
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Apr 11, 2021 15:07
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