/arda/ - Tolkien's Legendarium

>>1761

>Shadow of Mordor

>Good

I'll admit celebrimbor was well voice acted and more interesting than every other character in the game, but that's just it. Every other character in the game sucks. Not to mention that the game takes a dumb on the lore

>>1777

>Not to mention that the game takes a dumb on the lore

Explain.

>>1777

>Every other character in the game sucks.

Very helpful.

>>1778

>he doesn't know

Here's your spoonfeeding newfag

>>1695

The West is not Elf "Heaven".

>>1697

It literally is though.

>>1697

Thats exactly what Valinor is, it’s the closest you can get to heaven on Earth.

>>1718

>anime

>shitposter

like poetry

>>1474

Wait what. WTF is this ugly thing?

>>1494

The shitty online game tried to make it canon from what I recall to boost their popularity.

>>1504

Um, sweetie, that's a real womyn.

>>1504

that's a baby troll

>>1474

> have slightly more hair at some spots on your body

> intersex

These special snowflake faggots want to make every little quirk into a new gender. I guess every guy with manboobs is now intersex as well.

>>1504

>The shitty online game tried to make it canon from what I recall to boost their popularity.

What? Don't you dare ruin that game for me, I thought LotRo was pure.

>>1045

Modern Fantasy (AKA nu-fantasy) really is just a shitty theme-park version of Tolkien's work.

I don't know why /tg/fags like it so much. Probably for the futa-orc porn

I’ve written small bits of poetry and the occasional short storyaverage quality at best but I’ve got something I’ve started and kind of abandoned that I want to pick up again. But before I do I want to read more of the epics and sagas and myths . It’s like this anon says >>1470 study is how you will make a good anything. Whether it be an author or painter or fighter or engineer or electrician.

>>1561

I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.

>>1604

Just out of curiosity, what ethnicity are you?

>>1606

Easterlings did more to help the Elves then you did Feanor, you couldn't help but get yourself killed trying to fight off several balrogs.

>>1605

I'm northern European. Don't get me wrong, I'm not berating Tolkien for not featuring an ethnically diverse set of good guy human factions. The narrative in LoTR doesn't even preclude the possibility of non-evil human realms outside the northwest Middle-earth. The East and the South only look monolithic and united under Sauron because the point of view can only see them as such.

In any case, I'm more bothered (if only slightly) by the subtle implication that humans can't reach basic decency without at least indirect divine intervention. The good humans are pretty much restricted to the ones lucky enough to have existed in the Eldar cultural sphere for extended periods of time. I guess humans working on undoing their fall by themselves doesn't click with Christian world view, even if Tolkien didn't think non-Christians were beyond human decency.

>>1609

There's many points in both LotR and the Silmarillion where Tolkien hypes up the non Edain humans.

For example they mention that at Pellenor fields the only ones under Sauron that didn't flee like a bunch of cowards were humans. There was also Sam's (in the movie's Faramir's) quote about the dead easterling.

Generally it was all about if you followed the Eru way or not. Or in other words, if you were a Christian or some fucking heathen.

>>1440

>died by getting so mad he literally caught on fire

Yep.

“The number must be few, since your hope is in

speed and secrecy. Had I a host of Elves in armour

of the Elder Days, it would avail little, save to

arouse the power of Mordor.”

>>1466

Except that isn't the case at all. Eru only ever truly interfered once, by sinking Numenor.

All the other little things like Bilbo finding the ring, that was all the result of the third melody of the Music, the inclusion of free will and the two races.

To say the elves have no free will is wrong either. Both elves and men have free will. It's just elves by nature are bound to Arda and so their actions are turned towards it, while men's are turned more inward towards their own gain and glory at worst, and towards the greater concepts like freedom, discovery, and so forth at best.

>>1466

>In the published Silmarillion

>Even the slanderous version we get to see in Akallabêth

I realise you might probably be long gone, but would you mind expanding upon why you hate the published Silmarillion so much?

>>1492

He meant to say that the religion that Sauron was peddling was slanderous, not that the Silmarillion was bad. I think.

>>1461

>why did a jew portray the King of Gondor as an injun

Well gee I do wonder…

I don't understand the question.

Are you asking after the authenticity of the map or the message in the letter? I no longer have my copy of the Letters to JRR Tolkien, so I can't cross-check it for you, but maybe someone else on the site can.

>>1503

That'd be great, but ultimately the ents like all things "magical" are destined to fade away. It can't be helped.

If you’re looking for a justification that the ents could have survived to the modern day, JRRT always left things open-ended for a reason. If there’s a story to tell, then any of the old “fantastical” creatures could turn up as part of it.

>>1528

Aren't all the Ents just dormant?

>>1507

You gotta read The Silmarillion next my man.

>>1509

>my man

What is this reddit?

>>1510

No, this is his man apparently.

>>1510

Don't they call everyone "good sir"?

>>1507

>I heared some of his posthumously published works got changed, anything I should avoid?

No. The posthumous stuff is edited by his son. You can say a lot of things about Christopher Tolkien, but he has profound respect for his father's work. Anything where he's the editor, you can't go wrong.

Silmarillion, Beren and Lúthien. Children of Húrin are all top. Definitely recommend them.

Also recommend the 10th volume of History of Middle-Earth, called Morgoth's Ring. It is perhaps the most important academic work about the theological aspects of Tolkien's world.

>>1391

I don't see how the faggots who post that could have missed the fact that the Nazgul fly around on winged beasts and that the forces of Sauron have many archers, which the eagles fear. That's not even getting into the idea of birds ratting them out to Sauruman.

>>1399

What is most important in myth is the consistency of the message and morals, not necessarily the plot or rules of the world. Even then, you can justify why the eagles didn't take the ring.

But ultimately the only justification you need is that to tell his tale, the eagles couldn't be used. To put forth the story of Frodo and the Ring, and the themes and morals it carries, the eagles couldn't be used.

I'm sure if you look there's plenty of loopholes in other mythological tales. LOTR is more a story like say, Bëowulf than it is a modern fiction.

>>1408

LoTR is still a modern work despite its influences and doesn't get a pass on such shortcomings as the works of the ancients do, as all works are always written in the context of their times. "Just because" hasn't been valid in serious storytelling for centuries. And it hardly can be claimed the eagle conundrum was a stylistic choice. Well, it can be claimed, but I wouldn't say this particular aspect is part of the emulation of the multilayered construction of myths, when Frodo or Sam is supposed to be an in-story author of their own rescue. The eagle part can't really be an addition from a later in-setting author because that would mean Frodo and Sam died at Mount Doom and wouldn't have been able to relay their part of the story.

>>1391

Because of Fellbeasts, the withering gaze of the Eye of Sauron, the ring's corrupting properties, other flying creatures Sauron may have had.

>>1416

> "Just because" hasn't been valid in serious storytelling for centuries

Why is that? Because we became obsessed with the material rather than the moral. I think a consequence of that is attempts to create consistency in a work that, by all rights, should rather focus on deliver a sound message.

Also, you're confusing. I'm not saying that it should be taken as internal mythology, but external. Tolkien wasn't as much worried with consistency necessarily (although he was extremely consistent, even his languages had consistent progression from old quenta to "modern" third age Sindarin), but rather with the delivery of a message and the telling of a tale.

It isn't even my words here. Tolkien stated that he didn't use the eagles because otherwise, there'd be no story.

Does he no de wey?

>>1384

That isn't entirely a bad interpretation either I guess. I mean I'm not that mad about that. Of all things in the game it wasn't the worst.

Also there's an important distinction between Valinor and the world beyond Eä. Because we KNOW for a fact Valinor exists within the Legendarium, and it is simply the realm of the gods, hallowed but finite. It's an understandable and you can quantify/qualify it.

You do not know what happens after Men die. The unknown is part of it. It's hope without any guaranty. A call to faith without any promises. Which is something very integral to every ideal Tolkien puts into his works.

The Shadow of Mordor games have pulled some outrageous shit, but then again, that's just the average day in the Jacksonverse (which these games are a part of).

>>1386

Honestly the first wasn't that bad as it's been said.

Jackson's Tolkien has quickly become a blight. Had I know, I'd never have defended the original three as I did.

I see religion as an expression of a race. In that sense I enjoy Tolkien writing things that sort of mix Christian, ancient Roman/Greek, and pagan ethos together. I don't see them as fundamentally conflicting because of their common source. Perhaps Tolkien was able to glean for us something deeper and truer to the core in this unified vision of spirituality he devised. Though Tolkien was Catholic, the passion he devoted to his pantheon, to me, could not be the result of merely an academic reproduction. It felt like he had a deep appreciation and respect for these ancient beliefs, perhaps feeling them to be as much real world myth and legend as stories about dragons and fairies. I often wonder if he did not privately to himself hold his own religion as a grand form of legend, perhaps thinking that it deserved its current reverence based on its virtue and beauty alone.

>>1372

On the other hand Tolkien apparently took Catholic dogma seriously, but on the other hand the mythic cosmology in Silmarillion is supposed to be in-setting Elvish interpretation of the same God as in Christianity, implying only the God is truth and everything below Him is mere interpretation. There's also the implication that completely pagan religions had real of divinity through the Valar and the work of Istari. Everything in Tolkien's work only exist in the "sub-creation", but it still devalues the semitic myth that is the basis of the world view in Bible.

>>1372

>I see religion as an expression of a race.

I see you as autistic

>>1374

He's not entirely wrong. Religion is another building block of culture, and culture is determined by race as much as it is the environment.

>>1374

He's correct, though.

>>1355

>>1351

Okay thanks guys

>>1351

most badass thing a man ever did in middle earth

>>1363

And the second most badass thing is stalling an entire army of Orcs at a ford to the point everyone else is dead and your war-axe as corroded completely from the Orc blood.

>>1366

Third is Beren stealing the Silmaril maybe, but that was more Luthien's achievement maybe.

>>1369

It was basically a joint thing. It took a man and an elf maiden to do what all the power of the princes of the Noldor couldn't.

Same as it taking two hobbits to do what the great kingdoms in exile of the Númenórians couldn't and wreck Sauron's shit.

The book is much more sophisticated about it that's for sure.

Overall every change the movies make seems to be for the worse with a handful of exceptions such as Gimli being more of a codified comedic relief character. I didn't mind that. Gimli was barely there in the books in the first place.

>The theme is hope in spite of not seeing any way forward

This is dead on. Go through the books and keep track of how many times the hobbits think to themselves 'this is utterly hopeless and I see no way it can work, but we have to keep pushing forward anyway.'

>>1271

To be honest, it's hard to translate Tolkien into film, it would be easier to adapt the Oddessey or the Bible than to adapt LOTR, so I can forgive a lot of changes

>>1198

Basically in the books Théoden and Denethor were blackpilled

>>1364

So what you're saying is that Wormtongue is the Ashes and Echoes shitposter?

>>478

Goddamn, my year-old drunk thread is still up and even marked with a (you).

Anyone here go on a good adventure since?

Of course I do.

But I have a career, a wife, bills to pay and no companions or purpose.

I can't even get myself to go camping for a weekend. ;_;

>>1267

If you have a wife maybe you should have kids and go on adventures with them eventually.

>>1267

Wife doesn't want to go with you? :(

>>729

I've always wanted to go to the Schwarzwald, southern Germany is fucking beautiful

>>1205

Why do you have to print them out if you buy them?

>>1216

you get 3 copies of every card

if you want to build more decks there are some cards you need in multiple decks

>>1217

Lame. I guess I'll just print the game out directly. Do they sell cardstock to print out on, or do you just glue them to playing cards?

>>1239

i put them into protective sleeves and print duplex on 250mg/m^2 paper