How im also raising my little guy
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Extinct??!?
We're not dead yet, just old!
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Doesn't like my thing huh, you NAZI.
i guess i was wrong, lotr fanboys seem really chill and level headed.
Its really a thing though.
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Cosmos (the original)
Connections with James Burke
Secret Life of Machines
All of David MacAulay’s books
QI when he’s older Taskmaster too, though there is a bit too much joke mystery at times.
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Doesn't like my thing huh, you NAZI.
i guess i was wrong, lotr fanboys seem really chill and level headed.
You must be completely unaware of the kind of people who gravitate towards 40k.
I didn't call you a Nazi. I said the fandom was infested with them. Odd that you'd go to such an accusation so quickly.
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You’ll also want to become a hippie parent for accuracy
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alright
"reading books"
you weirdo
Just accept that soggy doesn't want to be your friend and move on.
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Classical music is a bit different because it's effectively frozen in time. They're not introducing new instruments. They're not using amplification for the most part. It's like doing the same Shakespeare plays over and over again.
If there were a Beethoven today, he probably wouldn't be composing classical music. He'd be doing popular music of some kind. In fact, the historical record suggests he would have been a keyboardist in a rock band.
For music, a better example might be Jimi Hendrix. He was an amazing musician and his approach completely shaped modern rock music. But, while his music was influential, are his songs the best rock songs of all time? I don't think so, because other people have built on what he did and have taken it further.
Tom Bombadil is such a minor portion of the Shire, is that even something relevant to the narrative as a whole?
No, and that's why a better author (or their editor) would have removed it.
Fantasy, specifically, has evolved over time through the introduction of power systems sure — does that make them inherently better than LotR?
Yes. Not just because of their "power systems", but because the authors have used some of the ideas that Tolkien introduced, and told better stories with them, or introduced better characters. Or, because they lack some of Tolkien's key weaknesses, like they're able to write interesting 3-dimensional female characters. IMO the heavy lifting that Tolkien did is to introduce a world filled with all these various kinds of creatures that we all take for granted now: elves, dwarves, ents, orcs, etc.
He was probably the greatest fantasy writer of his time. But, he's "of his time". He unconsciously brings all kinds of biases and baggage into his writing that a reader in the 1950s wouldn't even notice, but that become more apparent 75ish years later.
You simply cannot deny the level of effort that went into creating LotR on Tolkien's part
Nor can you deny the amount of effort that went into The Room but that doesn't mean it's a great movie. LotR is a great book, but it's not because Tolkien put a certain amount of effort into it.
But, is it overrated? There are 2 ways something can be overrated. Something can be bad and rated as being ok, and so it's overrated. Or something can be good but rated as being the best in the world and so it's overrated. I think LotR is in the second category as a fantasy story. As a foundation for fantasy literature, I don't think it's overrated because it introduced so many things that we just take for granted today. But merely as a book, looking at it through modern eyes, it is probably overrated. I think it's great, but it's no longer the best fantasy book ever written.
That's fair, I don't disagree with anything you've said — except for Tom Bombadil, I love the flavor he adds to the story.
able to write interesting 3-dimensional female characters
Yeah LotR is a sausage-fest — there is no defending that.
However, this is ultimately a matter of subjectivity, and I don't think I've referred to LotR as the greatest fantasy story. I don't think there can be a 'greatest' of any genre, no more than someone can be 'the greatest' at any sport, skill, or whatever else you can think of. 'Number 1 on the leaderboard' is an ephemeral position and impossible to guage accurately.
In other words, to me I would be more likely to call Harry Potter overrated than LotR, and it isn't like JKR didn't have LotR to pull from. A Song of Ice and Fire, again — very overrated. Despite Martin's attempts to seem like a modern day Tolkien (which he certainly is not).
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That's fair, I don't disagree with anything you've said — except for Tom Bombadil, I love the flavor he adds to the story.
able to write interesting 3-dimensional female characters
Yeah LotR is a sausage-fest — there is no defending that.
However, this is ultimately a matter of subjectivity, and I don't think I've referred to LotR as the greatest fantasy story. I don't think there can be a 'greatest' of any genre, no more than someone can be 'the greatest' at any sport, skill, or whatever else you can think of. 'Number 1 on the leaderboard' is an ephemeral position and impossible to guage accurately.
In other words, to me I would be more likely to call Harry Potter overrated than LotR, and it isn't like JKR didn't have LotR to pull from. A Song of Ice and Fire, again — very overrated. Despite Martin's attempts to seem like a modern day Tolkien (which he certainly is not).
However, this is ultimately a matter of subjectivity, and I don't think I've referred to LotR as the greatest fantasy story.
No, I don't think you have. I just think that some people do. I think the hype around LotR makes kids go into reading it expecting it will be the best thing they ever read, and some come out of that disappointed.
I agree that Harry Potter is also massively overrated. If you ignore Rowling and her current issues, Harry Potter is a decent fantasy book for kids. But, it became this international phenomenon. I don't know why.
As for A Song of Ice and Fire, I get that one more. He did things that most other fantasy authors didn't. For example, he was willing to kill off characters in a way that almost nobody else does. That really raised the stakes because you could no longer assume the main character was untouchable. He also did something really interesting in the early books in that they were fantasy books, and there was all this talk about magic and gods and dragons... but for a long time there was nothing in the books that proved that magic really did exist. The dragons were all dead. The stark children had "dire wolves" but they weren't magical wolves, they were just really big. People believed in magic and all these interesting gods, but there was no proof that anything supernatural was happening. I was actually disappointed when the later books revealed that magic was real, and that the gods seemed to exist (or at least there was supernatural stuff associated with worshipping / believing in gods). It would have been really interesting to have a full book series that was "fantasy" without the supernatural element.
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Its never to early to read The Hobbit to get someone a lifelong addiction to the LoTR. I was trying for in-utero but my wife was not interested.
I’m starting to read the Hobbit to my wife’s pregnant belly. My daughter is due in September so hopefully I’ll have read the full book by then. I’ll then read the Hobbit to her again when she’s old enough to retain it
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I’m starting to read the Hobbit to my wife’s pregnant belly. My daughter is due in September so hopefully I’ll have read the full book by then. I’ll then read the Hobbit to her again when she’s old enough to retain it
My daughter is also due in September. I know that its just the voice for the first few months. So I got to practice my reading outload. My wife says I rush when reading to her belly. In my defense Heading Home with Your Newborn is important but not the easiest to talk through
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Ah, trying to bring back old nerdus obnoxious, eh?
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Ah, trying to bring back old nerdus obnoxious, eh?
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Good old times.
I could've created the parody OSS license "Programmers of Ni License", nowadays some people would like to expand that word to the hard-R N-word, with an 80+% chance that those people's account are littered with actual nazi shit, not just "liking edgy jokes".
