[ SECRET POST #3921 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3921 ⌋

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

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[Sekirei]


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07.
[Baby Driver]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #561.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Tolkien was not a worldbuilder. It's really frustrates me when "fans" misunderstand, if not actually piss on, his work, method, and reputation in this way.

[philstar22]

Uh, yes he is? He started with languages and drew from myths and legends that already existed, yes. But he did built a world that is fully fleshed out and realized. Just because that wasn't his primary purpose doesn't mean he didn't also do that too.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

The man staked his entire academic career on the radical proposition that Beowulf was to be interpreted as fiction and not as a historical archive of the lives of the Geats. And he says right in letter included in the frontmatter of the Silmarillion that he's creating mythology centered on "fall, mortality, and machine." Which is is the theme that makes sense of everything.

But he did built a world that is fully fleshed out and realized.

It's not. His text is riddled with anachronisms and retcons, some of which he attributes to a series of unreliable narrators (Bilbo primarily) and unnamed translators. The politics, social structures, and economics don't make a lick of sense compared against history. His geography famously doesn't make geologic sense. His historiography is nonsense even by the standards of his peers. It all makes storytelling sense, which is what matters.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that ship has long since sailed.

[(Anonymous)]

rude

[(Anonymous)]

I know it's not the same thing, but it's still really weird how in one moment you'll get a raging boner for Death of the Author, and the next go frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of Tolkien the World Builder. Also, to second the previous anon, that was rude.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I know it's not the same thing, but it's still really weird how in one moment you'll get a raging boner for Death of the Author, and the next go frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of Tolkien the World Builder.

Because his work doesn't make a lick of sense when read in the same subgenre as Ringworld, which is 90% about the goofy imaginative stuff Niven put into the setting. (Not that Niven's physics really stands up all that well.) Given a choice between praising Hobbit, LOTR, and Silmarillion as good fiction developed around a shared theme, or especially bad history, geography, and economics, why not look into what makes the work strong?

And it's a bit rude to complain about rudeness and then use phrases like "raging boner" and "frothing at the mouth."

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt - Maybe those phrases aren't polite, but it doesn't mitigate the rudeness of going out of your way to be rude to people who think Tolkien is a good world builder. It's a matter of opinion. OP and the people you responded to with your less than civil ranting managed to express theirs without tearing anybody down. It's a pity you couldn't do the same.

[(Anonymous)]

THE RINGWORLD IS UNSTABLE!
THE RINGWORLD IS UNSTABLE!