D&D General Are You There D&D? It's Me, J.R.R. Tol-KEEEEN!

[Parmandur]

Tolkien's talk of "greater" and "lesser" men (and the same with different types of elves) is a bit smelly by modern standards, but one of the points of his works is that while the Men of Numenor are stronger, larger, more clever, etc. than "lesser" men, that doesn't make them morally superior in any way, shape or form.

And in particular it is important that the most iconic son of Numenor, Aragon, is basically defined by never, ever treating any person as lesser than himself.

 

[Mistwell]

I’m not familiar with Timothy Hunter but it sounds like it might be too modern.

It is not. It came out just before she says she wrote the first glimmerings of the first book, in 1990 in the UK. It includes a dark-haired English boy with glasses, who discovers his potential as the most powerful wizard of the age upon being approached by magic-wielding individuals, the first of whom makes him a gift of a pet owl.

Worst Witch is set in a school for girls, "Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches", reminiscent of Hogwarts. The story concerns Mildred Hubble, an awkward pupil at a boarding-school for witches who does not at first know that witches and wizards are real, who faces a scheming, blonde and snobbish high-born rival student, and she is best friends with a know-it-all witch and a prankster witch. Her professors include a kindly and elderly headmistress and a bullying, raven-haired potions teacher.

 

[Chaltab]

Gosh this thread is just full of people whose early work is darkly shaded by their moral failures these days.

 

[Zeromaru X]

While I respect your opinion … I don’t agree even a tiny bit

Well, is not a secret that D&D took inspiration from animes such as Record of Loddoss War, and (in the case of 5e), the current isekai animes. Which is a full circle, because those animes in turn were inspired by D&D lol.

 

[Chaltab]

Lodoss was even based on an actual campaign.

 

[Charlaquin]

No idea. I have never run, played in, or even talked to anyone who ran nor played in a WOD game.

Since you’re engaging with RPG players on the internet, that probably wasn’t actually true before, you just didn’t know it. Certainly it is no longer true now.

 

[Charlaquin]

Tolkien neither overwrite, nor was he underwrote: he wrote precisely as much as he meant to.

I don’t know about that, given his comment in the forward to LotR that the one criticism of his work he unreservedly agreed with was that it’s too short.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was referring specifically to Rowling's comments on her sources of inspiration. Tolkien was pretty open about where he was coming from in terms of sources.

Amanda Palmer (hey, speaking of celebs who are no longer in the public’s good graces!) once used an analogy about artists putting all of their influences into a blender, and different artists putting that blender on different settings, so the resulting soup may have large, easily-identifiable chunks from different influences, or may be so thoroughly processed as to be impossible to identify any specific parts apart from general flavor notes, or anywhere in-between. Tolkien kept his blender on a very low setting. Rowling seems to want to keep hers on a high setting, but it must be a cheap blender cause there are often pretty identifiable chunks, she just tries to pretend they don’t exist.

I apologise for de-railing this railess thread. Let's get back to what it's really about,
Snarf-tickles.

This thread never had rails to begin with

 

[Mannahnin]

I teach literature, and am a bit befuddled when trying to critique Tolkien's writing. By conventional standards...yeah, he overwrites! And is too expository! And uses awkwardly anachronistic language, like the King James and Beowulf had a baby! I could go on, but...Tolkien makes it work. Somehow. And did it in the face of Modernism.

It's a singular text. A one of one category. Anyone else tries to write that and it's a bloated mess. Tolkien pulls it off. It's astonishing.

Yes. Part of that I'm convinced is the language used. He makes heavy usage of shorter, anglo-saxon derived words, for example, which sound more poetic and grounded. And light usage of later addition latin-derived words, which feel more "modern" and scientific.

I don't find the language used anachronistic at all, though. I'm struggling to think of examples of actually archaic words Tolkien uses in the prose. I can't recall a lot of "thou", "anon", "betwixt", or "shalt". It's not like E.R. Eddison writing in 16th century style in his 1922 The Worm Ouroboros, which Tolkien liked.

One of the interesting tricks Tolkien plays in Fellowship is starting in Hobbiton, which is portrayed as a deceptively modern English place (with its umbrellas and clocks and distasteful relations stealing the silverware and so forth), before venturing FROM there into a more elder fairy-tale world.

I would say real life is a bigger influence. I went to a British boarding school, and it really was just like Hogwarts (without the magic and the girls). We had four boarding houses, each of which was named after a supposedly famous man, and had a reputation for a certain type of student. Romney was very sporty, Crabbe was academic m, Talis was dossers and Scott - had me, which probably made it Hufflepuff.

Absolutely. Ursula Le Guin famously pointed this out.

Q: Nicholas Lezard has written 'Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.' What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I'd like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling's writing style

UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the "incredible originality" of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a "school novel", good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

...I am getting concerned that my non-post has a lot more comments that some of my actual posts do!

Subtle as a finance bruh driving a bright orange cybertruck. I get it... popularity is the one insult that has not yet been offered to Snarf.

You mentioned Tolkien and D&D and then let us all project, Rorschach blot-style, our own ideas all over the thread!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You mentioned Tolkien and D&D and then let us all project, Rorschach blot-style, our own ideas all over the thread!

In fairness, the original post was going to discuss it!

Maybe I should take this as a warning.

I don't understand the value of Rorschach blots, anyway. What's the big deal about cards that all have pictures of gin and sex?