The "I don't want to talk about AI" thread, and the new topic is: Use the Force to get them naked, Luke!

[Euphony]

IT'S A TRAP!!!

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'll bet you read the Star Wars fan-fiction twice, just to make sure you don't like it

Good man .

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I was going to say, in my original provocapost, that folk will try to convince me that LOTR is great literature. You lot need to read more, frankly .

LOTR is great world building and excellent storytelling. I will totally give you that it has too many too long descriptions of nothing happening, and the section(s) with Sam, Frodo and Gollum in the wilderness is glacial.

 

[TheLobster]

View attachment 2581227

IT'S A TRAP!!!

Nice, but what about A New Hoe and Return of the J-Cup?

 

[YmaOHyd]

I was going to say, in my original provocapost, that folk will try to convince me that LOTR is great literature, next. You lot need to read more, frankly .

 

[NuclearFairy]

View attachment 2581285

I sat here waiting for it to load properly for a bit before squinting at the text and realizing that it's not my crappy internet's fault. XD

 

[StillStunned]

LOTR is great world building and excellent storytelling. I will totally give you that it has too many too long descriptions of nothing happening, and the section(s) with Sam, Frodo and Gollum in the wilderness is glacial.

I recently listened to the whole thing on audiobook, narrated by Andy Serkis. It's actually very, very good writing.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

I recently listened to the whole thing on audiobook, narrated by Andy Serkis. It's actually very, very good writing.

I love Lord of the Rings, don't get me wrong. My dislike of Tolkien's long winded descriptions doesn't mean I think they're badly written, just too long too often.
In fairness though it has been over a decade since I last read it.

 

[StillStunned]

I love Lord of the Rings, don't get me wrong. My dislike of Tolkien's long winded descriptions doesn't mean I think they're badly written, just too long too often.
In fairness though it has been over a decade since I last read it.

My experience with the audiobook was that it barely dragged at all. I think it helps to see the conflict in the story as (at least in part) nature versus industry. From that perspective, the scenery becomes another set of characters: some good, some evil.

 

[ColtonWrites]

My experience with the audiobook was that it barely dragged at all. I think it helps to see the conflict in the story as (at least in part) nature versus industry. From that perspective, the scenery becomes another set of characters: some good, some evil.

I wonder if it's a bit like Shakespeare- its meant to be performed, not read? Or at least better when performed.
I remember finding Tolkien very difficult to read until I'd seen the movies - I gave it an attempt, had given up a bit into book 3, but restarted after the movies and enjoyed them all that time.
Like how A Midsummer Night's Dream was incomprehensible to me until I saw it performed, and then it made perfect sense.

 

[StillStunned]

I wonder if it's a bit like Shakespeare- its meant to be performed, not read? Or at least better when performed.
I remember finding Tolkien very difficult to read until I'd seen the movies - I gave it an attempt, had given up a bit into book 3, but restarted after the movies and enjoyed them all that time.
Like how A Midsummer Night's Dream was incomprehensible to me until I saw it performed, and then it made perfect sense.

What struck me was the rhythm of his sentences. It's something that I go on about here a lot, and I think it comes from the same place: alliterative poetry (not that I'm on JRRT's level, but I did spend quite a lot of time at uni studying Old English and Middle English).

I think English writing really benefits from treating it like it's going to be read aloud. Using sounds and rhythm to emphasise the story, and draw the reader's attention to particular details, and I recognised a lot of that in the audiobook. It helps, of course, if you have someone like Andy Serkis doing the narrating.

 

[TheRedLantern]

And (pretty sure of this, but my brain is feeling a bit fried so I can't think of concrete examples) in literature having a hand or arm chopped off is symbolic of castration/unmanning (it's a bit more subtle than "wounded in the thigh", which is just about as explicit as you can get).

At first I thought of this as an amusing fact, and then I was plotting a scene and I needed a swift, violent act that would signal that the protagonist had ended all possibility of physical threat from an antagonist but without killing him. I was like, "hand's gotta come off." The pattern's there for a reason.

 

[StillStunned]

At first I thought of this as an amusing fact, and then I was plotting a scene and I needed a swift, violent act that would signal that the protagonist had ended all possibility of physical threat from an antagonist but without killing him. I was like, "hand's gotta come off." The pattern's there for a reason.

And getting a prosthetic hand fitted is the second part of the sequence, from Nuada of Irish mythology to Luke Skywalker to Jaime Lannister.

Blinding is another literary euphemism for castration.