[ SECRET POST #1575 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1575 ⌋


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


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TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE

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TRIGGER WARNING FOR INCEST, RAPE

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 132 secrets from Secret Submission Post #225.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[akuryounoseiki.livejournal.com]

To be quite honest (and this is gonna make me sound like a douchebag), I have a hard time relating to people who don't like or get Tolkien. Especially when it comes to LOTR. I can understand not being a fan of the Silmarillion because it really does read like a textbook. But LOTR?

I think it's because I have such a significant amount of emotional attachment to it. When I encounter people who dismiss LOTR, my inner default reaction is "why don't you love this thing that I also love? :(" as if it's a given that you MUST love LOTR. Obviously this is not a given.

Although, to be honest, I think I'd respect someone more who actually read the whole thing before saying that they didn't like it, as opposed to the majority of people who don't even get through Bilbo's birthday party.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people don't actually read it but just tirelessly repeat the meme of "he writes like a textbook" which is absolutely not true.

The standing stone was cold, and it cast a long pale shadow that stretched eastward over them. The sun, a pale and watery yellow, was gleaming through the mist just above the west wall of the hollow in which they lay; north, south and east beyond the wall the fog was thick and white. I just opened up to a random page and got that. To me his prose is perfect- it manages to be dense and poetic without ever slipping into purple.

I get that a lot of people have a mental block against ugh it's so long and there's so many names to remember and this birthday party is taking forever, but LotR is such a thoroughly modern novel and despite it being about as thick as a human skull, it's actually pretty snappily written. I can't help but think people let the hype about it being "boring" and "sterile" affect their reading experience.

Oh man I am such a snob, who knows. ~(-_-)~

[akuryounoseiki.livejournal.com]

I'll be a snob with you because I agree 100%

[(Anonymous)]

And to me that prose is dry and dull. Different strokes, I guess.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

Different strokes to be sure, but seriously - and I'm not asking this to be a dick, but because I'm honestly curious and aware of the fact that I am a huge lit snob - could you give me an example of what you think is "good" prose? Like, just a novel or author or whatever?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you'll probably think I'm part of the unwashed masses (she said jokingly; not trying to start a war here) but I like John Green's writing style a lot (though his stories are eerily and kind of annoyingly similar). One of my favorite books is "From the Corner of His Eye" by Dean Koontz (but I wholly recognize that there's nothing high-brow and amazing about it, it's just really readable, to me. Ditto JK Rowling).

There's a book called "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank that I liked. Lamb by Chris Moore (though, not really Moore's other books) was good, and Steven King has a chapter in his memoir "On Writing" that goes into the time he was hit by a van and nearly killed in a very vivid way without being at all gory. Those pages were perhaps the best things I've ever read. If I owned it, I would copy a passage, but it was a library book. (But one day I will buy it and love it forever.)

And I was really surprised to like The Time Traveler's Wife.

So, yeah. I guess I'm kind of a mainstream, easy-reader. I don't really feel like pulling out the books I DO own and retyping right now, but maybe later.

[(Anonymous)]

"But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there."

From 'Neuromancer,' by William Gibson.

Gibson makes everything come alive for me. The stream-of-consciousness style, the sparse description -- something about it completely immerses me.

[childings.livejournal.com]

I read all three books and I still think his writing reads like the Bible (as in, like reading the encyclopedia in some parts, and really awesome and engaging in other parts). What about the part where he interrupts the action in the battle between Frodo and Shelob to give you Shelob's whole backstory? Like that was really necessary (or the definition of good writing)?

Flowery prose is great and everything, but Tolkein's pacing always seemed off to me. Whatever.

[meadowphoenix]

And to me, his prose is fatally flawed by that same evocative notion. Is it beautiful? Extremely. Does the plot, and therefore the prose narration, suffer for that. Yes, and that's a giant problem for me in prose writing. To me, prose description should be focused on plot movement. You describe so that the audience understands why the characters do what they do. If it doesn't help, then its unnecessary.

If he wanted to exercise the beauty of his language to his full extent, he should have just written an epic poem, completely and not tried to slip poetry in there. Language and its ability to speak to the audience is essential in poetry, and I think the way he wrote belongs there more. His books feel like he missed the true form his writing should have taken.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

I actually don't understand what you're trying to say here? His prose was good, and that took away from the work? Poetic prose can't move a plot?

What you don't seem to appreciate is that Tolkien was creating a new genre so it's kind of difficult to criticize his form objectively since he was making it up as he went along. I get why people don't like reading it, but if he hadn't written it the way he did there would be no Harry Potter or Final Fantasy or George R. R. Martin and my Thursday D&D game would be bust. You might as well be saying: "Virginia Woolf wrote beautifully, but I think her focus on metaphor and emotion detracted from the coherency of her plots."

[meadowphoenix]

I don't think he created the fantasy genre, and if he hadn't written something, somebody else would have. C. S. Lewis was writing at the same time. It's all derivative of folk tales and myth. He certainly didn't invent the hero cycle.

Which is my point. He follows epic tropes and folk cycles pretty solidly, but epic tropes, for example evocative language that is there for the sake of language, are meant for poetry and he didn't do a good job of communicating that excitingly or accessibly to prose, which is why I don't think the prose is very good. Beautiful, but not effective. I feel like it would have worked better if he had just written an epic poem, where language is more important than plot and descriptive digression are perfectly normal.

[cephiedvariable.livejournal.com]

Uhhhhhhhh, look CS Lewis was heavily influenced by his bro Tolkien (and vice versa in many respects, although I think the pendulum swung much further in one direction than the other tbh). Fantasy is a genre that evolved from myth and fairy tales (very purposefully, actually, on Tolkien's part), yes, but it's kind of an indisputable fact that no one ever who has studied literature (that I've met at least) will argue with that Tolkien popularized and shaped the conception of the modern genre as we know it. There's a reason so many universities tend to offer full year courses on his body of work.

Like, okay it doesn't work for you cool, but how is Lord of the Rings ineffective and inaccessible when it's one of the most popular novels of all time inspiring cult like devotion the world over and is cited by every fantasy author worth their salt from LeGuin to Moorcock to GRRM ect. as both the father of and pinnacle of the genre?

Not to get all histrionic here or anything but I dunno, the form of LotR is part of the reason it remains such an influential work of fiction to this day. The fusion of prose, history, poetry and metaphor (not allegory; Lewis was all allegory) can be clunky at times because I don't think anyone at the time really knew how to edit it because it was so different. But had it not been delivered in that format, it wouldn't have spawned the cultural phenomenon that it did. Saying that someone else would have written something eventually is just saying "If Tolkien hadn't written LotR, someone else would have written LotR."

[fireez.livejournal.com]

While Tolkien made the genre popular, he did by no means invent it. Just because nowadays people think that "fantasy" is synonymous to "something with elves and dwarves and epic quests" doesn't mean that's true. Most literary historians agree that the genre of modern fantasy came about around half a century before Tolkien wrote LotR.

Also, I agree with meadowphoenix in that flowery prose, when used to excess, can actually slow down a plot. I really don't need the umpteenth description of the swamp bog our heroes were just walking past. But I realize that's something of a personal preference.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

My eyes glazed over just reading that quote.

I've read some long and dense stuff. But drivel about pale watery suns gleaming through mist, jesus no. There are millions of books in the world; don't waste your time on one that takes 54 words to say IT WAS COLD AND MISTY, and doesn't even do it in a way that's new.

[(Anonymous)]

don't waste your time on one that takes 54 words to say IT WAS COLD AND MISTY

wow why even bother reading lol

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

You want a wordy book, find a better one.

[fairhearing.livejournal.com]

::raises hand:: I read the entire trilogy, as well as the Hobbit. There is no life or art to Tolkien's prose, in my ~humble~ opinion. if you want fantasy with lyricism and beauty, you should read Le Guin or McKillip, but even among the rest of the Workmanlike Male High Fantasy Writers, Tolkien is guilty of not knowing how to turn a fucking phrase.

Now, George R. R. Martin is a high-fantasy writer who can fucking WRITE.

[(Anonymous)]

Made it all the way through The Fellowship and thought it was boring has hell. It might have read better if I hadn't seen the movies first, as most of the suspense and discovery was sucked out.

And honestly, the people who I know who dislike Tolkien actually have read the entire thing. Just, people like different things. I don't really think it's a matter of respect, it's just a matter of tastes.

[akuryounoseiki.livejournal.com]

I can dig that, bro. I can see how seeing the movies before reading the books could alter your initial perception of the series.

Man, all the people I know who don't like Tolkien gave up midway through Bilbo's birthday party. Not trying to suggest that my experiences=everyone elses...but it's kinda uncool to talk to someone about why they didn't like LOTR and they're just like I COULDN'T EVEN GET THROUGH THE FIRST CHAPTER IT WAS SO BORING.

[(Anonymous)]

I liked the beginning, I liked the scenes in Shire - the opening depiction of rural, simple life was great, as was the return to Shire. The stuff in between? Didn't care for it at all.

[unicornherds.livejournal.com]

I find it so odd how some books or sources can trigger such rabid love. This isn't meant as an insult, it's honest curiosity. Most books people like or dislike, but then every now and then comes along a book that people don't just like, they adore and love and cannot understand how anyone in the world could have a different opinion on. And Tolkien is definitely one of those topics of rabid devotion.

I've read Fellowship and started the next and just..did not get though it. I found it boring. There were nuggets here and there and beautiful imagery and, as someone who has taken a lot of anthropological linguistics classes, I can even admire his use and creation of language. But still, mostly just boring.

But I totally get what you're saying. I feel the same way about Nature (basically the world in general). I find forests and animals and the ocean so heartbreaking breathtakingly beautiful and amazing, and I am just baffled by people who dismiss it.

So, I get it, I'm just saying the different ways in which people view the world, and what gets to them, is just weird and curious and interesting.

[akuryounoseiki.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that I have a rabid devotion to Tolkien, because then that makes me seem rather delusional and obsessed. Just as nature inspires that ineffable something that resonates within you, so too does Tolkien with me. I read the series when I was 11, and was completely captivated.

Honestly, I think it's cool how different things inspire and move different people :)

[unicornherds.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, rabid wasn't meant to be a negative. Maybe wrong word choice. English, it's not my friend.

[akuryounoseiki.livejournal.com]

No worries! :)

[subarashiine.livejournal.com]

I completely agree.