[ SECRET POST #3238 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3238 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 043 secrets from Secret Submission Post #463.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Writers: World-building and character designing

[(Anonymous)]

But the details of how the peasants get their food, where the farms are, how the armies are organized, etc in Tolkien are essentially left blank, except where it intersects with his concerns as a storyteller or his linguistic play. Where does Rivendell get its food? We don't really know. We can supply the answers, and assume they're going to be broadly comparable to the state of affairs in the societies that Tolkien was drawing from, but that's a long way from saying that Tolkien was building a world that was realistic and worked in that sense. What it means is that his world was for the most part not flagrantly unrealistic & that we're willing to fill in the lacunae.*

And I'd argue that side of things does not have any relation to the qualities that make Tolkien a worthwhile writer. Tolkien left them blank because none of them mattered; they would have mattered just as little if they had been 'unrealistic' in comparison to our world, because those were not Tolkien's concerns - Tolkien's concerns were with the story. But on the other hand I don't suppose its possible to argue against your subjective enjoyment of its perceived sensemaking.

*(this is much less true with regards to the Shire and the Hobbits, but the Hobbits are unrealistic in a much more specific sense, IE being essentially a profoundly idealized version of English rural life, so I am willing to regard them as simply an exception)

Re: Writers: World-building and character designing

[tabaqui]

And ...I have never said anything about Tolkein being a 'worthwhile' writer. He didn't dwell on the mechanics of where Rivendell got its food from, but he was drawing (even with the Hobbits) on a world that *did* exist, and *did* work. And yes, we fill in the blanks, so to speak, on that, because it's not an important element of the story for him to give us details on.

The *important*, to me, part of it is that they *didn't* rely on magic. They didn't rely on some kind of weird trade with Elves for everything they needed. They didn't have to sneak into some other realm to get sewing needles, if you see what i'm saying. He put the perfect English village down into his world and populated it with Hobbits rather than Brits, but the framework was the same, and you can assume there was a wheelwright and a cheesemaker and a blacksmith and everything else the ideal English village would have, because that's what Tolkein was writing.

He didn't substitute regular work/abilities/talents for magic, or for mysterious elven 'machines' that magically made linen or something.

I dunno if I'm explaining my point clearly or not.

Re: Writers: World-building and character designing

[(Anonymous)]

But that's my whole point! If it's not an important element of the story, then why does it matter whether those details have coherency in an our-worldly sense? They're unimportant whether they make sense or not. So why does it matter at all? What is the practical difference between details that don't work right, and details that are left unspecified so we just assume that it all works out, when it doesn't matter to the story either way?

Re: Writers: World-building and character designing

[tabaqui]

Because if they don't work right, at least for me, it takes me right out of the story. It makes me stop and go 'man, that's stupid, that doesn't even make *sense*!' and that's just...no fun.