What helps with Tolkien greatly I feel is that even his views that havent aged well dont feel like they have any malice to them, mostly its just a product of his time and upbringing. His core despite flaws, still seemed to have been a kind man without hatred.
Which is very different from many others mentioned.
He was a pretty progressive man considering he was a catholic englishman in the 1900s
Yes.
Reading Tolkien’s letters gives me the mental image of someone who had plenty of prejudices about religion, science and the like, but not about social groups, and without a mean bone in his body.
Certainly he never used his fame to deny any groups of people their inherent right to exist. He had other flaws, but not this one. The worst I can say about him as a person is that he stifled his wife’s potential for self-expression by molding her into his own ideal of a patriarchal housewife. Overall he seemed content to live and let live.
Loser
Product of his time
Brain broken loser
I’ll always remember how he responded to the nahtzees, didn’t suffer fascists.
It was great. Tolkien was a master of roasting people very eloquently.
Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.
“We need to ask before we can sell your book here, are you jewish?”
“No, but I wish I was so I could spite you. Go away"
New Code Geass anime has started.
Bold of them to open it by going “5 years after Lelouch’s whole deal, Neo-Britannia took over Japan again. Welcome to Area 11-2!”
As someone who grew up reading and watching Harry Potter (including re-reading the books countless times), it’s pretty tragic seeing how its creator has dived headfirst into transphobic bigotry and now aligns with far-right and heinous figures just because they agree on this one agenda of hate. It seems as though she couldn’t care less about anything else anymore, just her obsessive hatred for a vulnerable demographic.
But as someone who is part of that vulnerable demographic - and as someone who possesses basic empathy - I don’t regret my choice to stop consuming any of her media ever again. She could do anything with her millions (billions?) but she chooses to mire herself in this pointless malice.
Youtube keeps recommending me clips from some kind of game/visual novel I’ve not heard of before. I am torn between checking it out to see what is actually going on or not, as I don’t actually know if its safe?
On one hand it seems to have alot of LGBTQ+ and basically just be extremely toxic yuri. On the other it also seems to have…very wild dialogue dealing with heavy topics, so I don’t know if its an actually good one that memes or edgy/bad stuff essentially.
What’s it called?
Class of '09 apparently?
It seems like you go around ruining lives? I had to look it up, seems like a western VN too.
Yeah I have not looked up much, as I said, I don’t really know what to think of it based on the few things I’ve seen from the youtube recommend.
Also
Every time I see stuff about her, she does something worse. Last she’s gotten into actual holocaust denial.
And I would agree in general. However, to me it is very strange to hear people saying that Tolkien was just a product of his time (while also condemning people like H.P Lovecraft), but also that he was farsighted and/or liberal, but also as you habe pointed out in the past, he did have some troubling views too.
So which one is it, in the end?
And that’s fine. There’s never been a mortal man or woman that’s been 100% virtuous or good, but you can still appreciate their work. Let he who has never committed sin cast the first stone, etc.
Idk I feel like if people read more about the man than googling what did he name his cat, I think people would find that he had in many ways an extremely hard upbringing, life and a very tragic end. That, and he softened in his views quite a bit as he grew older. I certainly found quite a bit of sympathy for him, and I think most other people would too if they read his history.
But he is undeniably and unquestionably the father of cosmic horror and the fear of the unknown. Leagues ahead of his time. Many great authors like George R.R Martin, Stephen King and Cixin Liu name him as one of their great inspirations for their works.
As for Rowling, I don’t really care what she’s up to these days, but I’d lie if I said I didn’t enjoy the movies growing up. They have that magic and childlike wonder books like Narnia also manage to invoke.
Doctor Who is generally boring nowadays honestly. It’s not the cast, the cast can make a script dance, have been able to for 99% of the shows run. It’s not the social stuff, that’s always been a thing. Often times it’s been more heavy handed then people claim it is now. Which is fine, society needs morality plays.
The writers just… don’t have ‘it’ anymore. Something is missing that just makes it come together in a way that is so incredibly dull. It’s baffling. Maybe the show just needs another decades long break.
Doesn’t really help that the we’ve done this ‘cosmic threat’ dance twice now in this series alone. The Dalaks consistantly being used as punching bags got trite enough, now we’re on cosmic godlike beings. Like if they do that fine, but spread it out a bit.
Lovecraft was particularly racist even for his time. That’s the stand out. Even for the late 1800s to early 1900 he was very bad in terms of his views.
He’d be the equivalent of how people view Rowling today essentially. He did allegedly mellow out alot in his later years, but during his prime he was a deeply isolated person who feared everything around him and held some absolutely foul views. (His wife also specifically cites his antisemitic rants as reason for wanting a divorce).
Some of his ideas are truly great, and I enjoy cosmic horror. But reading his actual works, the racism is EVERYWHERE it is so common and prevalent. If its not outright spelled out to you on every 2nd page, its in the sub context and actual plot of the stories.
Tolkien meanwhile held very standard catholic views for the era, but even then was alot more progressive.
“What if Eric Cartman was an American anime high school girl?” the visual novel.
That’s probably doing it a slight disservice but it’s a pithy summary. “Dark” humour abounds here, with you playing as a distinctly bad person surrounded by a lot of other distinctly bad people.
Not my vibe.
One thing I’ve noticed with RTD’s writing this season is that he seemed to have been needing an extra hour each episode to make it work. Alot of the stories with the 15th Doctor have had really nice build ups, and then fumbled the ending in the last 2 minutes. The last episode in particular suffered alot from this.
Which is weird, because he used to be able to do this with even less budget and the same time-frame.
Okay, thanks for the clarification!
I will probably not look at it then, it sounds like its leaning alot more towards the territory I was concerned about rather than not.