>Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
what did he mean by this
Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with...
what a faggot
>god emperor of westeros
>year 459 of his reign
>attendant rushes before the immortal king, now stirring in his tree throne
>”He awakens! He speaks!”
>the ancient visage of bran opens his dry, cracked mouth
>”taxes for the riverlands....raise....by 2%”
I bet he watches Star Trek and gets indignant when something scientifically inaccurate happens.
He meant that he was interested in the aftermath.
It honestly sounds like he's never read lotr, just going by everything he's said about it.
>Ned, Cat, Bobby get resurrected and then GRRM dies
>series is finished by a man who made his bones shitting out Star Wars EU novels
I'm with it.
Reminder that there has been a consistent cadre in fantasy and sci-fi writing over the last 30 years that have attempted to kill off Lewis and Tolkein. They hate them because they were Christian men who wrote Christian sci-fi (The Space Trilogy) or fantasy (Lord of the Rings) with decidedly Catholic or Anglo-Catholic messages.
Martin, Melville, Gaiman, Pullman - they've been working for decades, writing books that aren't actually all that memorable in the long term, to undermine those two writers.
Neat, I like it.
>what did he mean by this
He means that he doesn't have an original idea in his fat head and just adds shitty political ideas to the fantasy tropes thought up by better men.
>believes in conspiracies this pointless.
Fuckers just want to write books
I must not be taxed. Tax is the money-killer.Tax is the little-death that brings total destitution.I will face my tax.I will permit it to exempt me and through me.And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.Where the tax has gone there will be nothing. Only my income will remain.
i agree wit hthis guy so if you're disagree fuck you
>orc cradles
confirmed for never having read lotr
I'm not a devout LotR enthusiast, but my impression was that Tolkien's writing was deliberately fanciful and idealistic, almost to the standard of a fairy tale. To read into it as his assessment of real-world affairs, or a description of the human condition, seems like pseudointellectual contrarianism to me. But if all he means is that Game of Thrones a counterpoint to the restraints other high fantasy writers placed on their work, fair enough.
I DESIRE
QUANTITATIVE EASING FOR THE DORNISH ECONOMY
>who puts air in the BatMobile's tires?
Ataturk
Charles IV of Bohemia
Catherine the Great
A lot of monarchs and autocratic rulers who were good led their lands to prosperity
What about this quote makes incels seethe so hard?
He isn't even insulting Tolkien he's basically just outlining the difference between his and Tolkien's writing.
>Catherine the Great
G*rman hag
>asks a series of irrelevant questions about books that were written nearly a century ago and shaped the entirety of what we know as the fantasy genre
>similar questions on taxes and such could be asked about his own book series, which is unfinished and currently being written, yet he does nothing to establish answers to them himself.
Fat hack bitter that his series will never reach the acclaim or appeal of Tolkein, nor be remembered as classics
While Jaehaerys's new master of coin, Lord Rego, proved able to halt the Crown's debts enough for work on the Dragonpit to resume, it was not enough. So Jaehaerys had taxes placed on luxury and exotic goods, which would not impact the smallfolk and would not be oppressive to the high lords. Jaehaerys predicted correctly that any lord who wished to flaunt his wealth and power to the outside world, would still desire to purchase these goods, and thus pay the taxes placed on them. And so the crown's revenue slowly increased. An additional tax, with a dual purpose, was also proclaimed: henceforth, any lord who wished to repair or expand his castle, or raise a new one, would pay a heavy tax based on the number of crenellations, which Jaehaerys hoped would discourage them from building
Genius, how does he do it?
>As much as I admire Tolkien, you'll find my books much better and me a much better writer, please stop calling me American Tolkien to mock me it hurts my feelings
That's what American Tolkien meant by this. It's coincidentally wrong, and he should feel bad
>that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple.
Yep. He sort of defeats his own argument
Alfred
>Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?
Orcs are birthed as adults from spawning pits.
>An additional tax, with a dual purpose, was also proclaimed: henceforth, any lord who wished to repair or expand his castle, or raise a new one, would pay a heavy tax based on the number of crenellations, which Jaehaerys hoped would discourage them from building
that's fucking moronic, so much for the greatest king of Westeros
Absolute state of American Tolkien
Is the point here is that GRMM is so fucking stupid that he needs to be spoonfed details of every little thing or he throws an autistic shit fit?
Of course he's stupid. He thought R+L=J was difficult to figure out so he made it a test for the showrunners.
>Fuckers just want to write books
Here is Pullman literally saying that His Dark Matetrials was written to spite Narnia -
theguardian.com
>Philip Pullman, whose His Dark Materials trilogy presents as a sort of anti-Narnia, regards Lewis's religious writings as "bullying, hectoring and dishonest in all kinds of ways", and the Narnia books as actually "wicked". He says: "I find them very dodgy and unpleasant – dodgy in the dishonest rhetoric way – and unpleasant because they seem to embody a world view that takes for granted things like racism, misogyny and a profound cultural conservatism that is utterly unexamined."
And here's China Melville shitting on Tolkein -
socialistreview.org.uk
>Tolkien was no political ally. He was a devout Catholic who moaned incessantly about the modern world - not capitalism, not exploitation, but modernity itself, which he saw as the triumph of a sinister 'Machine'. His was a profoundly backward-looking reaction, based on a rural idyll that never existed - feudalism lite. As socialists, we don't judge art by the politics of its creator - Trotsky loved Céline, Marx loved Balzac, and neither author was exactly a lefty. However, when the intersection of politics and aesthetics actually stunts the art, it's no red herring to play the politics card.
They don't write to say something beautiful or profound. They write angry polemics dressed up as fantasy and sci-fi.
>Absolute state of American Fatty.
FTFY.
>moaned incessantly about the modern world - not capitalism, not exploitation, but modernity itself, which he saw as the triumph of a sinister 'Machine'. His was a profoundly backward-looking reaction
what an absolute fucking clown of an "artist" they ought to respect that he saw the fruits of modernity more than anyone else's sorry asses and his insight deserves respect at least.
Which is irrelevant, as the story is about the journey of the Fellowship. Just because GRRM would have liked to read about what happened afterwards doesn't diminish Tolkien's work because he didn't detail it. Tolkien stated that Aragorn was a good king, things were peaceful, etc. That's the aftermath. GRRM really should avoid trying to "quibble with" the works of better writers, as it makes him look more like a hack and brings his own trash fiction under greater scrutiny.
>Is the point here is that GRMM is so fucking stupid that he needs to be spoonfed details of every little thing or he throws an autistic shit fit?
Pretty much. Everyone knows that Medieval Kings maintain an army, borrow money, and prepare for emergencies.
Next to no one gives a fuck about the how in entertainment. They want to see the results.
didn´t Tolkien also describe orcs as wild animals which who only are capable of sentient and complex thought with the help of a dark lord?
It took a German to unfuck Russia after Peter the Great, who knew
>what was window tax in Europe
Wild animals in that they could never ever be unified to do anything unless the influence of a dark lord, be it Morgoth or Sauron, was willing them to. Without them orcs would live in packs and fight each other and never be able to form a fully realised army
Funny that, since Tolkien and Lewis remain as the unchallenged masters of fantasy writing. So much for writing out of spite.
>policy isn't retarded because it's based on a real thing that happened, and real things can't be retarded
durr
so Aragorn would have never been forced to genocide them all in the first place
Fellow Econ/Business/Finance fags, how would you improve the economy of Westeros? If it were up to me, I'd follow a policy of heavy investment in education and try to make it compulsory for every small folk. Sort of like a mini citadel in every holdfast. More human capital = more productivity = more prosperous economy. Less taxes on the nobility because they're cunts but also don't tax the smallfolk too much since there's little economic mobility. Instead place tariffs on imports so smallfolk/nobility won't have to rely on Myrish/Lyseni goods and instead have an incentive to produce their own goods more.
>didn´t Tolkien also describe orcs as wild animals which who only are capable of sentient and complex thought with the help of a dark lord?
is the best explanation.
fucking destroyed
>so Aragorn would have never been forced to genocide them all in the first place
He killed them anyway for the sake of national security.
>Fatty apparently thinks that we need some complex foreign policy, too.
>Middle-Earth after Sauron is just three nations with a few city-states thrown in.
>what is easing your subjects into income tax
Taxation has to be gradual, you can't slap 20% on noble property just like that without getting a rebellion on your hands.
I'm litterally doing a PhD on those aspects in a region of late medieval France, to a bit prior of the Revolution. As much as I'm interested in it, there may be ten-fifteen people who will read the dam thesis during my lifetime, including the five jury members. It's simply too specific. The only aspects I can tell to people without sounding like a damn autist are the violent ones: fiscal jacqueries, murder of tax collectors, fraud and such shit. The fat fuck is bent on the autistic aspects, which are not fit to give the readers a good time. You may reflect on it, but eventually you'll abstract some of those aspects to make the damn thing comprehensive.
Also, Tolkien didn't gave a fuck about that shit, rightfully so: he was inspired by heroic tales created to push virtues in a warrior society. He wasn't trying to emulate the functionning of medieval western Europa with dragons and zombies.
Pullman and Melville are known shitheads, this is no surprise.
because Tolkien was the Chad fantasy author. Others all just emulate him like the virgins they are.
>The fat fuck is bent on the autistic aspects, which are not fit to give the readers a good time. You may reflect on it, but eventually you'll abstract some of those aspects to make the damn thing comprehensive.
Well, you can include stuff like that, but he does it where the story doesn't require it.
>No one gives a fuck about 200 pages of description about having duck for dinner.
> Jew questions bedrock of white societies
Pottery.
He seems to think his work addresses that but it really doesn't...ooh the Lannisters are rich because they have lots of gold mines
Hes a great writer but sounds like a pseudointellectual dumbass
Huh guess he subverted my expectations of who he is irl
Does inflation exist in Westeros?
Only if you marry Sam
Well to be fair Tolkien himself hated Narnia, and reading as an adult you can see where he was coming from
we aren't ever going to get a coherent explanation for why the children of the forest made these stupid tree faces, are we?
we aren't ever going to get a coherent explanation for why the children of the forest knew magic and looked like a race of midget deer people (in the show at least) too.
we aren't ever going to learn why magic seems to be tied to whether or not any one or more dragons happen to be alive at any given given and regardless of location (3 baby dragon's alive in essos? suddenly magic reappears in westeros)
we won't ever know who or what magic created westeros's freakish weather patterns and whether or not the night king's death has caused things to return to normal.
>Well, you can include stuff like that, but he does it where the story doesn't require it.
It needs to be well integrated. I'll use an example from my thesis: the province I'm working is militarily "protected" by a Gouverneur: said guy takes his share from the province via physical donations. Hence, some towns prohibited the access from certain woods to protect the animals, who were then hunted to pay the noble. You have many ways to integrate it in a story: for example, the high noble could be contested in his legal rights by some noble neighbor with a claim (it happened), creating a court feud right under the king's eyes.
I've not read GoT (a few of his earlier works, yes, which I found quite boring). I don't think he did go that far, because he can't: before the noble feud, he would craft a story about the oppressed peasants who were executed for poaching, effectively bloating the storyline with useless plot.
Well, one is a children's fantasy with elements of power, while other is a slowly-crafted world built to service a fictional language, with an epic in style of old sagas on top of it.
Tolkien is, but Lewis has fallen by the wayside in the past few decades.
Not that Pullman has fared much better.
Soon
>effectively bloating the storyline with useless plot
These are the perils of being a virtue-signalling meatball trying to mesh modern ideals with the sociopathic reality that was our heritage...
Could be worse: if you want to make Martin screm, just tell him "Hugo award 2001", he'll cry at the memory of losing to Harry Potter.
Based Georgy boy
He is so rich, why he doesn't get thin with a treatment or something similar?
You can't buy willpower with money.
Why does this quote still make Tolkienfags seethe to this day? Is it because it exposed Tolkien as a hack and his supporters as dicklet virgins
Will they do it? Will they stay true to George's vision? Will they redeem the entire show by addressing Bran's tax policy in tonight's episode?
The fundamental misconception lies in how liberties were perceived before the two first Revolutions. Economic liberalism wasn't simply a thing: you had a massive chance to follow your father's work. Social mobility was, funnily, more prevalent for womens. Every time those socialists authors write in a semi realistic fantasy, they associate violence with economic liberalism on a day-to-day level. Everytime, I'm laughing my ass off. There was little to none social mobility, even inside the pre-industrial stratas. And you were more often than not in an oligopolistic situation. Imagine an AT&T and Verizon-tier level of concurrence, but for shoemakers in a town, with practically no means to go to the other one to check the prices without ruining yourself.
Martin, and many others, in their virtue signaling, seems to think the world back in the days worked like today. How wrong they are still baffles me, and it only works because either people are ignorants or choose to suspend their beliefs.
I wish I was a flemish tapestry designer circa 1400, fucking around in Bruges and Ghent.
Your life would have been awesome: you were litterally in an oligopolistic trade, producing and selling highly valued goods. Your corporation would be so loaded you would have been able to buy your municipal liberty from the Duke of Burgundy, and then you would make your own set of customs and laws to consolidate your power, while marrying the hot daughter from a rich merchant family (probably in the same business, but hey, if anyone is wanting to give you more money for the bride, why would you say no?). You'll be drowned in administrative and economic work, making money both for your family and the city, fighting other families in more ways than one to maintain your supremacy on the market and on public life. About everyone would suck your cock, both figuratively and effectively. And I'll miss a lot of things, like financing some Cathedral or shit to make your name known to God himself, since he would be the first guy to say how awesome you were.
So how come faggots get their undies in a bunch over this? LOTR marked the beginnings of a literary genre, and because of it, is simplistic when compared to modern interpretations of said genre which evolved from it, characterized by how nuanced they are. GRRM is just saying you can't keep writing the same shit and falling into the trap of literary tropes.
Except that evolve implies improvement and GRRM's writing is shit
I know, I know. I would even send letters to the english king, so he can intervene and protect my trade, and wreck the Valois for good. I would end my days paying a painter to portrait me right besides the virgin.
The classic fantasy tropes are tropes for a reason. Subversion is fine, but subversion for the sake of subversion is bad.
Nah, Tolkien is literally baby first fantasy author.
>popular good
lmao, hypocrite
> and wreck the Valois for good
For good would probably not be in your best interest. To be a true merchant, you'll want the English king to beat the French until you could help him make his comeback by asking you for a money lease. Then, as he would have been incapable of paying back the sum (and it would be quite a good amount since you'll have used all your power to make the war longer than needed) you'll have asked him to play an important part in is tax system, effectively nesting you in his state. Historically, Genoa did this during the Italian wars with the Spanish monarchy, and it worked like a charm until they were isolated by France and bombed the shit out. Be a true Machiavelli's Prince: don't just kill your enemy, bend him to your will.
What about Dunsany?
And yet, Tolkien actually push an economic setting more credible than Martin: most of the town communities in LOTR are isolated from each other, barely trading between themselves, except when an actual kingdom is upon them. It fits more a medieval setting than the so-called "economy" of Westeros, which is based on anachronistic social stratas.
But hes absolutely right
Books are literally pure kino
read books.
jesus christ you fucking retards will believe or push any dumb fucking conspiracy.
So if we don't get Bran's tax policy tonight is he an official hack?
he has no say in the series
Not an argument. Besides, there's no evolution if writers keep relying on the same tropes.
The show subverts for the hell of it (e.g. Arya killing NK). GRRM subverts to show that actions have real consequences and the protagonists aren't exempt from them (e.g. the beheading of Ned, the Red Wedding, Jon getting stabbed, etc.).
Funneling wealth from the vassals to the crown is good for the king, what is the issue here?
wrong wrong wrong there are female orcs and they fuck and give birth thats how orc-men and man-orcs exists, making humans and orcs fuck
do any of you dumbasses not realize he loves Tolkien and defines reading LotR as a turning point in his life?
Would you?
> Funneling wealth from the vassals to the crown is good for the king, what is the issue here?
"le vassal de mon vassal n'est pas mon vassal", the vassal of my vassal is NOT my vassal. Hence why nobility was so powerful against their own kings, as this quote was the base of the feudal system in France and beyond. If the king even managed to coerce a direct vassal into such taxation, said vassal would just have to put the pressure on his underlings to mitigate the effects. And, to make it happens, he would promise war for loot to compensate. Such a retarded tax would inevitably generate feuds, in the literal sense of the word.
Martin fucking loves Tolkien, he ran a discussion panel on the biopic
That ...thing... is out today, isn't it? We're going to endure a lot of Martinposting in the following weeks, aren't we?
Friendly reminder:
1) "I do quibble with" is not a sign of disrespect. It is only american contemporary thinking with its moral absolutism that makes you think you have to "choose a side" between Tolkien and Martin. You don't.
2) An author can hold another author in high regard while also writing a work that differs from them. Another example from literary history: People don't generally feel they have to "choose" between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, even though the latter work is basically nothing but "Nuh-uh! Rochester didn't deserve to be loved and Jane Eyre stole ma sistas man!" (Sidebar: Wide Sargasso Seas should be laughed out of every curriculum, it is shit)
3) In Tolkien's letters, he outright aknowledges Martin's point: He says that writing "Aragorn was a good king" was a literary device, meant to signify "and here comes the happily ever after".
4) Having said that, Tolkien's letters go a long way to bridging the gap between "happily ever after" and "muh tax policy".
5) Martin repeatedly said that he didn't want to attack Tolkien, his problem was with the paint-by-number "Fantasy novel series" phenomenon, where everyone stole the basic structure of Lord of the Rings, mangled it badly by making it adhere more slavishly to the hero's journey, but very few used it for anything other than basic self-insert chosen one bullshit daydreaming.
Martinposters have the mental capacity of two rocks banging together.
Blessed post.