Simplistic morality ruins LOTR

These retarded threads are getting tiring, desu

Morality is black and white. Only degenerates want it to be otherwise.

I know it's bait, but there are genuinely people who believe moral relativism is inherently good.

Good bait

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It's not good or bad, it's just the way things are.

What’s simplistic about the morality in LOTR?
Prove it.

Mt. 12:13 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.

>A Song of Ice and Fire. Now there's a nuanced and morally ambiguous fantasy story.
I know some people who unironically believe this and I don't understand it because I don't see anything gray or ambiguous about Martins writing. When he's at his best he'll find ways to justify or seemingly justify evil actions but that doesn't makes those actions any less evil. Usually he's very black and white. The Others are evil, the Bolton's are evil, and the mad King is evil no matter how reasonable their actions seem to them.

I don't think he's much of an artist at all. Martin imitates artists and events from history, nothing in his work really conveys his experience as a person or his feelings as an author, unless you want to count the repetitive descriptions of food. This is why the series increasingly relies on the same cliches and tropes you see in movies and TV. Fakeout deaths and rape are the only ways he knows how to affect the reader.

>DUDE MORAL GRAY!!!!
so fucking pathetic and pseudcore

I said prove it, not quote your 2000 year old political manifesto like it’s some kind of established truth you deranged /pol/tard

It is the word of God; therefore it is the truth. Whether you choose to accept it is irrelevant.

And as such it is excellent.

Who says?

>morality isn't as simple as Tolkien portrays it.
>even pedophiles can be the good guys
>even Elrond, Aragorn and Galadriel were partly evil, since they were orcophobic.

liberals/leftists are the SCUM of the earth

it's Catholic and richer than any other fiction

Tax policy. Now THAT'S interesting.

*Dodges Vietnam* Now let me show you what war is really like.

>ASOIAF is objectively better
Lel the fat man hasn't even finished his books.
And, it struck me recently just how much his characters suck. They aren't even grey. You have evil dude 55 (Ramsay, Viscerys, etc) and the good people that sometimes screw up get tormented and lose , and then instead of making a come back, they keep losing, over and over and over. Why? Because the fat man is a product of the baby boomer generation. A fat nihilistic turd that rejects the idea of good triumphing over evil, tries to subvert your expectations because "muh grey" and leaves you with a story in which the only thing subversive is that the bad guys are on top for a longer time than usual.
If I want grey characters I can look at nigh bronze age texts like the iliad and find characters with greater depth from a man who was blind than the fat man can crap out onto his computer
And since he's such a fat nihilistic pos he can't finish his books because he might have to provide a not sucky ending or risk hurting the gravy train HBO created for him.
ASOIAF is overrated heavily and things like it are why so much new literature and film sucks.

the greatest meme of the modern world is the idea that 'grey' morality is somehow right, and that petty 'relatable' villains are superior to genuine forces of evil

Morgoth has a far greater depth and complexity, not to mention authenticity, than any of these 'reasonable' villains you see in forgettable modern fiction.

you see the pure evil of Morgoth all around us in the modern world. go to any city and look at the disharmonious architecture arrogantly constructed almost as a mockery of the beautifully harmonious buildings that used to make cities a pleasure to look at in the 19th century, just as orcs are a mockery of elves.

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God, retard.

>it's just the way things are
Yes GoT is how thinks are, a few virtuous men who get perpetually betrayed by the wicked around them.

>Prove it.
Prove that 1+1=2, it's simply true by definition.
Moral relativism us an absurd meme conjured up by the virtueless so they can pretend everyone is as bad as them.

Nice circular logic my air-headed friend.
Dishonest argument.

If there are objective morals, what are they?

They are laws established by the Christian God.

>Good vs. Evil
Based Tolkien, a honorary zoroastrian

>If there are objective morals, what are they?
OP is a fag
Yea Forums was never good
I fucked ur mom

>There’s no silly childish simplistic “good vs bad”
Good vs Evil still exists in ASOIAF, it is simply mixed in the world and characters. (Hence ambiguous)

Based dualism wins again.

>Dishonest argument.
Half of it is a description of people like you, who seek to reject virtue and the other is a demonstration of the absurdity of your demands.

>If there are objective morals, what are they?
"Show me a "1", oh it's obvious to anyone what it is put you can't point to it so it doesn't exist."
If I tell you that murder is bad, will you conjure up a situation in which murder seems to be justified? Just like a retard not wanting to understand what "1" is will start arguing that, if I show him a pebble to demonstrate the concept, the pebble can be broken in half and thus doesn't represent "1"?

ASOIAF has the stupidest characters I've ever read.

all Tolkien's villains are in some way pitiable, while George R Martin simply makes cardboard psycho characters like Ramsay Snow, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Lannister etc. etc. who are more like pantomime villains.

>it is simply mixed in the world and characters.
No, it really is not.

>Cersei
Not a villain

She is a generic evil "witch", wicked to her core.

this.
that building looks like the sawed off carcass of a xenomorph from movie Aliens.

I don't view her as a villain. She loves her kids and most of her actions are based on protecting them.
That's about it though.

she's an incredibly stereotypical villain.

just a selfish, power hungry woman. I think Martin attempted to make her 'ambiguous' by trying to display her maternal nature, but that was a total failure and never gave her any depth or made her sympathetic.

>I don't view her as a villain
Maybe not, she is doing very little, usually just screaming or crying about what her previous wicked action have brought over her.

that was such a hamfisted farce. I suppose you can't blame Martin for not having a clue on how to write a motherly character, being the repulsive shut-in pervert that he is, but her wicked actions never had any correlation with a protective motherly instinct. she never even displayed any emotion or care for them until they each died individually.

Martin waited for them to die, and THEN had Cercei have a cheap moment of grief before moving onto her next evil action.

viserys wasn't evil, he did nothing wrong

just tainted from dany pov.

Joffrey ramsey gregor are fully evil tho

No. Most of the “fan favourites” like Tyrion are extremely morally ambiguous. In the first two books he’s portrayed as a funny, witty, sharp little dwarf who doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind and has tons of classic lines that people quote. He’s also not evil for the sake of it. But as the story goes on he does some pretty bad shit (such as rape, murder, threats and some other things) and sometimes even senselessly. He isn’t solidly good nor solidly bad, he’s neutral. Same can be said even for Joffrey, who’s less of a sexual sadist in the books and more of a sociopath-lite who’s heavily influenced by his actual sociopath mother. He’s way younger in the books and is just an edgy spoiled brat. He doesn’t sexually get off on other people’s pain like in the show; most of what he does is for his family’s approval. Therefore he’s also a morally ambiguous character, but perhaps slightly more on the ‘bad’ side. Book Ramsay is pretty solidly “evil”, he’s a pure sadist (both sexually and nonsexually) who just loves and delights in causing maximum amounts of suffering and pain. This is one of the few cases where “bad” does clearly exist in ASOIAF, but Martin said Ramsay was mainly created for Theon’s development as a character. Stannis is also somewhat humourless and a dick in the books, but a lot of the things he does are simply because he’s a legitimate heir and has a right to the throne. He’s for justice and law and the show made him much worse than he was. Same with Twyin. I could list characters all day from GRRM’s series who are morally ambiguous and go against the false dichotomy of good vs evil.

It is black and white, but everyone sees different blacks and whites. Some are superior or inferior.

>Dude let's have characters everyone thinks are good and virtuous and then let's like kill them lol so amoral such grey areas of humanity lmao
And it's not even done in an interesting manner.

...you do realise most of the characters that are dead in the show are not actually dead in the books, right? D&D’s adaption/writing is not canon. They usually butchered character roles and made everyone “kind of forget” about them until they were brought back randomly just to be given some stupid shitty underwhelming death. Stop watching so much TV and maybe read for once you piece of shit.

youtu.be/KrGQDLOZWXg
Fat fuck eternally btfo

Never watched a single episode, never read a single page. Never ever will I read George RR Martins disgusting drivel. All my knowledge of the series is what I've heard and read online.

His point is absolutely right though,no matter if you read the books or watch the show. See Ned, Robb and do on, it 100% applies to them.

And miraculously you have perfectly captured the morality of the first book and parts of the other books, where *exactly* that keeps happening.

in a just society Martin would be strung up with double-thick rope for his degeneracy.

our own consolation is that his poisonous seed will never pass on.

I can't believe anyone treats this drivel written for children as actual literature. The totally black and white morality is like something out of a Goofus and Gallant book.
The scene at the end where the moral paragon Sonya turns the wholly wicked Raskolnikov over his head and condemns him into the ice of Siberia, putting an end to the story forever, made me cringe so hard, it's just so unsophisticated.

Dorian Gray. Now there's a nuanced and morally ambiguous story.

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If a pebble is broken in half it then represents 2, my friend.

Come on guys. My post was obviously satirical and making fun of people who don't grasp the complexity of the depiction of good and evil in LOTR. I thought I was tipping my hand too much with the joke about Gollum and Frodo.

Not every instance of irony on here is bait lol

In the books she doesn't give a shit about her kids at all other than as a vehicle to gain power.

>assuming moral ambiguity is always better than simplistic morality

There's a place for both my nigga.

it's weird reading the first book now because the Starks are blatantly the good guys and the Lannisters are blatantly evil aside from Tyrion. this whole "morally grey" vs. "black and white" argument that Yea Forums obsesses over doesn't even feel relevant. Jaime does later have a redemption arc, and Tyrion becomes more unstable, but ultimately the heart of the story is just Stark revenge porn. they suffered for a while, but in the end the Boltons, Freys, and Lannisters will be defeated and the Starks will reign. then there's all the stuff with Dany going from an idealistic liberator to a brutal tyrant but who cares.

This is complete dumb downed bullshit as well as ignoring a bunch of other important plots, houses and characters. Congrats. You’re a retard

ignoring what exactly? Stannis? people mainly like him because they relate to his aspergers, and also because Ned supported his claim, so it fits together with the Stark circlejerk.
some people find the Ironborn interesting but nobody really cares about Dorne.
Frey pies and "The North remembers" are the most epic moments with fans because muh Starks will finally have their revenge.

>ultimately the heart of the story is just Stark revenge porn
Lol?
In the books nothing of the kind happens, it's just the virtous suffering at the hands of the wicked.

Catelyn Stark doesn't come back to life and fall ass first into a group of loyal soldiers who are happy to hunt down Freys? Yeah, nothing of the kind.

Oh God, yeah faint memories. Maybe Martin was an even worse Hack then I thought...

>Dorian Gray

I can't believe anyone treats that drivel written for children as actual literature. The totally black and white morality is like something out of a Goofus and Gallant book.
The scene at the end where the moral paragon Lord Henry turns the wholly wicked Dorian over his head and traps him inside the magic painting forever, putting a permanent end to his wickedness, made me cringe so hard, it's just so unsophisticated.
Lord of the Rings, now there's a nuanced and morally sophisticated story.

I can kinda see the depth in Melkor, but what depth does Sauron have?

Neither of them are prominent characters in the Lord of the Rings. They're in the backdrop.

>people will fall for this bait

The very fact that Sauron is in the backdrop is his depth. Sauron is portrayed as the dark lord, but is actually a complete coward.

Throughout the series the fellowship deduce Sauron’s state of mind based on the actions of his armies and on his failing intrigue. Through this, you can sense Sauron’s state of mind begin to unravel as Gandalf and Aragorn assume their mantle as he grows increasingly more paranoid about his own borders as two (three) little insignificants crawl into his domain.

In the movies they don’t go into detail about “what Sauron is thinking right now,” but in the books they (Aragorn and Gandalf namely) base a lot of their actions on deceiving and exploiting Sauron’s cowardice and fear

Bait, but it's a shame how many people unironically believe all that.

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I didn't even notice that part. The discussion's so common and tiresome that literally everything in between "I can't believe anyone treats this drivel..." and "A Song of Fire and Ice" becomes completely invisible. The CIA could be sandwiching subliminal programming between those first and last bits all of Yea Forums and we'd never even know.

Language is hard. This was maybe my answer to Martin, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. A Song of Ice and Fire had a very modern philosophy: that if the king was a good man, he would get his dick chopped off. We look at history and it’s not that simple. Martin can say that Bran became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Martin doesn’t ask the question: How was High Valyrian conjugated? Does the pluperfect tense of Bravosi derive from the suffix? How did dragons understand the verb “dracarys”? And what about all those lost Westerosi languages? By the end of the war, the Night King is gone but all of the autists aren’t gone – they’re in the Godswood, watching beautiful sisters be beautifully raped. Did Bran pursue a policy of monolingualism and kill all other languages? Even the little baby dialects in their little dialect regions?

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The film adaptations were better anyways

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>Now there's a nuanced and morally ambiguous fantasy story
>there's evil ice necromancer zombie monsters that all the living must band together against in a clear metaphor for climate change
Such subtlety, such nuance

>the verb "dracarys"
Can someone PLEASE fix this pasta

>The scene at the end where the moral paragon Frodo lifts the wholly wicked Gollum over his head and tosses him and the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, putting an end to their evil forever, made me cringe so hard, it's just so unsophisticated.

yeah no shit, believe it or not, this is peak genre fiction (despite fanboys claiming otherwise)

if you want high brow stuff just read homer and goethe

>'grey' morality

no such thing, label only used by moralfags

>and goethe
A perverted imitator of art

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>The scene at the end where the moral paragon Frodo lifts the wholly wicked Gollum over his head and tosses him and the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, putting an end to their evil forever, made me cringe so hard, it's just so unsophisticated.
wew

Read the Silmarillion for complexity then

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>a david vs goliath reference

wow so deep and complex!!!!!!

How is that a David vs Goliath reference?

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It's not black vs white though. The world is not made out of struggles between black and white on a grand scale, just struggles, and black and white are mixed everywhere.

I, too, enjoyed Legolas using a shield to slide down stairs

Everything big vs small is now a David vs Goliath reference

Tolkein's dialogue is drier than a nun's vagina.

but a nun in GRRM's books would be doing nothin but suckin and fuckin

>complexity is superior

related question, are there any good fantasy books/series without explicit antagonists? I'm exhausted with all the Big Bad this and Forces of Chaos that and Big Demon Destroys World bullshit

Prince of Nothing maybe

It’s an imperative verb, what’s wrong about it?

This.
And all these while Tolkien witnessed the horrors of two world wars, participating in one

Yeah I'm the idiot for asking because it's obvious

Someone who rapes and murders is "solidly bad". Your sense of morality is fucked beyond repair if you think the fact that he is funny and witty somehow makes a rapist and murderer into a "neutral" character.

Please read the books before posting :)

>>Someone who rapes
Except he didn’t rape anyone. Take your SJW shit elsewhere.

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This
I know this is bait, but I hate edgy contrarians who only protest Tolkien's moral system (much like GRRM) and never once realize not his beautiful world building and ethereal words which no one has surpassed to date.

dialogue isn't that important
every time you see some shitty fanfiction the story is consisting mostly of dialogue

*and never once realize his beautiful.

GURM said it was a quibble
so any GOT fag taking his words seriously is a pleb.

that doesn't even happen in the book you based retard

fuck off, tolkien is pseud trash

spit in my asshole and gurgle the mixture you myth-less american

fiction>non fiction>genre fiction

Dumb meme

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People tend to mistake darkness for moral ambiguity and confuse that in turn with moral depth and complexity.

ASoIaF is mostly just dark. Bad shit happens all around, and people die. Dark books, however, still can easily have very well defined heroes and villains. For example the Warhammer setting is exaggeratedly dark, but most books in it have clearly defined heroes and villains.

Now we can discuss whether ASoIaF is morally ambiguous, that is, whether we're supposed to be in doubt about the side we should root for. I'd argue that it mostly isn't, and even when it is, that is achieved by making all sides equally bad, which is easy as shit.

And certainly ASoIaF is not morally deep and complex. It doesn't really offer any insightful commentary on human nature, and I'd argue that while it may raise significant questions regarding morality, it never really answers them.

What is wrong with what he posted?

It's not. It means "dragonfire"

Simple is good, unironically. I think that's the beauty of it

dude there are different kinds of stories
straightforward simple germanic stories are invaluable to society and children in particular

>straightforward simple germanic stories are invaluable to society and children in particular
You neonazis really rustle my jimmies. Back to /pol/ with you.

This, even if you don't believe this on an esoteric dimension (which is worth considering btw), it's still good to stay in touch with the various archetypal myths and stories of your people

On an esoteric plane though it's absolutely vital. Kids should be raised reading things like the Brothers Grimm and similar collections of folklore.