[ SECRET POST #4273 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4273 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #612.
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

[(Anonymous)]

I just want to say that I fully agree with this secret, and I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I would even say that I consider it a *positive* statement about Tolkien. And I don't remember the exact context of the original discussion, but I don't get the sense that cbarararary dislikes Tolkien as a writer in general.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Yeah, it's more a criticism of the last few decades of fantasy-as-anthropology stans than Tolkien. I suspect a part of that comes from fantasy's inferiority complex in relationship to "hard" science fiction stans, but rather than point out that "hard" SF is an overly restrictive and untenable position, we all have to piss on Tolkien's grave as a literary critic.

Given that Tolkien was a bit blatant about retconing key facts of his story, and wasn't even coy about it on the page, I suspect he had more in common with Le Guin than the wannabe anthropologists of fantasy fic. Le Guin admitted that the Hain stories are not always consistent because some ideas became kinda creepy the more she thought about them. (And they were written over 40 years.)

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's just a way of engaging with a work that a lot of people (for lack of a better term, 'nerds') find intrinsically satisfying. Which isn't a bad thing, in and of itself, but it's it's not really a literary or aesthetic way of looking at the work, and it's frustrating when it's taken to the extreme and to the exclusion of other ways of engagement.

I think there's also a connection to D&D and other RPGs and wargames - they really encourage the mindset. If you want to adventure in the world of Tolkien, instead of reading Tolkien's books, you need to look at the text entirely differently. And people get used to that mindset

[(Anonymous)]

LeGuin was creeped out by her own ideas? I didn't know that! Deets, pls?

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Some of her early novels had telepathy, later she dropped it because she thought it would be deeply problematic.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I wasn't expecting that! I'll have to chew it over. Thanks!