[ SECRET POST #3234 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3234 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.
[Golden Girls]


__________________________________________________



02.
[Boku no Hero Academia]


__________________________________________________



03.
[C.S. Lewis vs. J.R.R. Tolkien]


__________________________________________________



04.
[Pokémon, Leah Remini]


__________________________________________________



05.
[Tales of Zestiria]


__________________________________________________



06.
[The Man In The High Castle]


__________________________________________________



07.
[Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, Monstress]


__________________________________________________



08.
[Sleepy Hollow]








Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #462.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 2 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I agree in some sense. Tolkien's writing isn't necessarily bad, but he's trying to recreate that historical flavor of Beowulf or Norse sagas. It can be beautiful at times, but it doesn't really feel authentic. Tolkien's characters especially rarely feel like actual people, they more often feel like mouthpieces for random quotes of wisdom/whatever.

Lewis was much better at writing characters and his writing style is a lot more modern. It'd be interesting to see how he tackled LOTR, as long as he refrained from making it too preachy.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree in some sense. Tolkien's writing isn't necessarily bad, but he's trying to recreate that historical flavor of Beowulf or Norse sagas. It can be beautiful at times, but it doesn't really feel authentic. Tolkien's characters especially rarely feel like actual people, they more often feel like mouthpieces for random quotes of wisdom/whatever.

Well, yeah, but he only does that for the characters who are supposed to be saga-like heroic figures. And they're not really supposed to be actual characters. When you look at the characters who aren't supposed to be saga-like heroic figures (mostly, the hobbits), he writes them in a totally different way that's much more contemporary to his time. It's very noticeable.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

When I was thinking about this, I had that thought too. The hobbits are generally the only characters that feel "real". There are some moments here and there where that applies to other characters, but he basically writes the hobbits as the average joe everyman who are plopped into a saga of mythic-heroic semi-characters.

I also reckon that's why The Hobbit felt different from LOTR.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

This is why I feel he's a good writer. He changes his writing style for the story he's telling. He puts as much characterization as is necessary. He makes excellent use of hobbits in juxtaposition to these great epic characters and events to give context. Look at Merry with Theoden, and how they say the same thing to each other but the tone of it is very different. If you do some close reading, some of the more epic characters also get some good character arcs and complicated characterization (I'm thinking of Eowyn here but there are others). I initially thought his characters were flat too but when I started to look at LOTR more closely, there's more depth than it at first seems.

[philstar22]

Yup, this, completely.

[(Anonymous)]

When I was thinking about this, I had that thought too. The hobbits are generally the only characters that feel "real". There are some moments here and there where that applies to other characters, but he basically writes the hobbits as the average joe everyman who are plopped into a saga of mythic-heroic semi-characters.

I'm like 95% sure that's an intentional stylisic choice

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure it is, but that doesn't make it a good decision. I had zero attachment to any of the characters (that weren't hobbits) and even found it pretentious and obnoxious that they had such hollow dialogue.

[kryss_labryn]

It might matter what sort of stories you grew up with as a child.

I grew up with all the usual ones for my generation, like "The Pokey Little Puppy" and "The Saggy Baggy Elephant"; but I also grew up on some beautiful old fairy tale books that my Mum had, telling traditional stories not from the Brothers Grimm (although I read those as well), but from Scandinavia, and Belgium, and France, and England. Things like "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" and "The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body" and "The Serpent Prince" and "The Firebird". And something I found when I was exposed to that background is these archetypal characters do become deeper; you don't need a whole lot of backstory about who Hans is and what he's like because you've seen what he's like, over and over and over again, and so you know perfectly well that he's the only (or youngest) son of a poor widow but clever and self-reliant; and if he prefers his pease porridge hot or cold or angsts about his dead father, who cares? We aren't told because it's irrelevant to whether or not he finds the giant's heart and saves the Lassie (who is not only pretty, but also perfectly willing to go around to the most fiercesome characters to go and save the Prince, if needed).

Modern writing explores all the full nuance and details of a character's life; but who they actually are as a person can get swept away in the detritus of the minutiae of their lives.

Tolkien allows us to get to know about his characters the way we get to know other people: by seeing their actions and words without knowing their inner thoughts.

I would argue that if one grew up on the sort of heroic Northern European stories that Tolkien was drawing a lot of his influence from, his characters are not flat at all but instantly recognizable and familiar, as is his writing style.

[philstar22]

I don't think Lewis was any better at writing characters, he was just bad in different ways. His characters also feel very flat to me. I never feel their motivations at all. And even his adults feel very child-like in not good ways. I understand Tolkien's characters better, even when they are used for roles rather than deeply characterized.