Vaughn

Posted this in the "watching" thread but did any of you read the Alice in Borderlands manga which Netflix has a live action show? I was wondering how different the show v. the book was.

If you require creative output to be bound by specific external mandated cultural agreed upon 'rules', that's some near Maoist bullshit and a death for inspiration. I'd be also very interested to read her follow-up article exploring how American cultural references are misused in Japanese anime. Why, there are hardly any real cowboys in 'Cowboy Bebop' at all!

That article was ludicrous.

Even if the creators did stay on, I think casting a 12 year old actor who was able to blend whimsy and sadness as Aang would be super hard. To give Netflix a shard of the benefit of the doubt, we don't actually know if this was because they wanted the show to be more Western or something totally other, like budget or plot changes.

Good for them. Always struck me that this would be a hugely expensive show to do live action due to the sheer number of effects that bending would require and all the creatures. Even a show like the the Mandalorian has more quiet bits where practical effects aren't needed I think. The Detective Pikachu movie was $150m for 2 hours, this would I assume cost something similar per hour given how many magical creatures were strewn throughout the show.

On further reflection, Beorn had already set the table for random magical beings within Middle Earth, long before Tom showed up in print. I guess my nitpicking here is actually with the Silmarillion, for explaining stuff ranging from Ents to wizards but not everything under the Middle Earth sun.

I whole heartedly agree that fans these days are overly obsessed with explanation. Star Wars is pretty toxic in this area for example. With Tolkien, it stood out to me simply because he does such a thorough job explaining so much of Middle Earth, not just history (in terms of events) but also the origin, evolution and changes over time of various creatures, peoples and entities. In the context of most of the rest of the work, Tom and to a lesser extent (again both minor quibbles for me) the wights stand out as slightly out of the larger story. As noted above, it is a bit like Star Wars where there is a ton stuff in aNH which becomes nonsense once Lucas made the next five movies.

Side note: was Ulysses was the original Gary Stu?

Right but the Paths of the Dead folks were clearly explained as were the Nazgul. I always read the Dead Marshes as being haunted and generally terrible but not really with active spectral antagonists. The challenge of establishing a very top down world of magic/gods like in LotR is that (again my opinion), it makes more random magical events/creatures seem like minor plot holes. I.e. you've explained where the balrog came from, so why not the wights? I guess it's just [hand waving] Witch King of Angmar stuff. The Paths of the Dead are interesting in that they are the result of a human curse but then I read this very, very thorough explanation which read true to me- https://www.quora.com/How-could-Isildur-a-human-cast-a-magical-curse-on-the-Dunharrow Basically it was the oath breaking that was the problem, not some special power of Isildur. The escape from the Shire stuff that takes place immediately before the chapters in question are far more effective for me in establishing the real peril that awaits the hobbits.

I was being snarky but I guess my quibble with Tom is just that I feel like he's very under-explained and ultimately is just a deus ex machine to get the hobbits out of the barrow. I'm sure it wasn't, but it feels to me like originally Tolkien wrote the hobbits into the barrow, couldn't figure out how to get the out without bringing in Strider too quickly and then came up with Bombadil. The wight is also a bit odd in that a lot to the bad stuff the characters run into (orcs, trolls, balrog, Shelob, etc...) are explained within the 'ecosystem' of Middle Earth and the barrow wight seems like something from another world/story. Are there a lot of other undead/spectral creatures like this I'm not remembering in Middle Earth? Other than getting the dagger into Merry's hands for later on, it's all a bit out of place for me, both Tom and the barrow scenes.

I have this one - https://www.amazon.com/LORD-RINGS-Fellowship-Towers-Collectors/dp/B00M0NFYTC Over 4 lb. of entertainment and also a short bit about Tom Bombadil.

Same, I have the big red version from the 80s which, TBH, sucks to read. Side note: I have the Amber series as one volume (10 books in one fat tome), the PoB series in I think 8 books (small print, thin paper) instead of 20 and LoTR as one large volume. They were all gifts, which is nice, but I certainly prefer smaller physical books to these collections. It would be funny if someone mocked up the single volume GoT. It'll be about a foot thick.

Just view the whole thing from Sauron's perspective then - an epic tale how the hero plotted and schemed for centuries and all of his (?) plans were ruined by three halfings. He had those Numenorean immigrants on the ropes and the g__ d___ elves were finally moseying off the West. He was set to rule over the world of orcs and men with unchecked power but no, it all ends in total ruin.

So 'Dune' is definitely a bad book then by your standards. Paul, Guerney, Jessica, Chani, Stilgar - all alive!

I didn't count Idaho since he comes back. You know, like Gandalf. Let's not look too closely at GoT if we're considering mortality rate in primary characters as a key metric of quality either.

Cool take. No main character other than Leto and Kynes on the 'good' side dies in Dune - must be a bad book!

The setting of a world torn apart by war also informs the GoT side of things, although there are countless stories (fiction and non) about how deep bonds of friendship and loyalty can be formed during the extremes of war. Outside of Jon's ragtag band at the Wall, there's not a lot of that present in the books. None of Martin's characters is at home or with family (nuclearish family, not relatives) anymore outside of Dorne. Martin seems to use the war setting to explore the darker sides of human nature whereas Lynch uses his world to explore, in part, the depths of friendship and loyalty. (Disclaimer - both are fine.) I think of illyria and Varys as being much more associates with a common goal than deep friends but it's been a bit since I read those chapters.

The scale of the books is different but c'mon, Pyp and Grenn? Hot Pie? These are side characters, not the protagonists. Brienne isn't friends with Cat - she's the help. Friendship and loyalty are bedrock elements of the Lynch stories. GoT is far more about how basically no-one has friends or loyalty.

That's a fair point. I still think that the Jean/Locke friendship is a kernel of optimism at the heart of what can be a fairly grim story (Ezri, Gray King, etc...) where in GoT, friendships are at best a side element of a story that is basically a celebration of torture and the failure of good people to improve the world. The moments of joy and melancholy in Lynch's books feel earned in a way that is absent from Martin's books.

Lynch's story is at the core about true friendship and loyalty. There aren't any real friendships in GoT, just webs of obligation and at best, people doing what they think they should be doing.

Actuarial science

1) Damn you all to hell for posting on here without a publication date (self included) Raising my hopes... 2) business of writing question - if he's delivered three good books already, it is really possible that the publisher/editor would reject his final draft to the extent that the publish date would slip by over a year? A first novel in a series maybe but unless he suddenly revealed that the Eldren were actually Smurfs or something, I can't see it at this point. When the book is published, I'm going to buy it independent of any review and suspect most fans will. Now if the fourth books sucks, then sure, maybe I'd be wary of the fifth book but that's not where we are with the series.

I think it might just be that in the other books, there have been fewer main characters so the narrative was a bit tighter. It's certainly a good book, just easier to put down for me vs. the others. It is remarkable how he's written four excellent books in the last 10 years, not even all in the same fictional worlds.

I've been reading his books as available through the library as eBooks. I really enjoyed Under Heaven, Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago but somehow Lord of Emperors (second Crispin book) hasn't grabbed me. I'm finding myself skipping ahead to the end of chapters to see what's happening with the plot more than I have with his other books. Footage of GGK plotting his books: It's funny to think of him working in the famously chaste world of Tolkien. Probably some Noldor slash fiction out there from his days in that gig.

Maybe because it's coming out earlier? [I know, I know it's not. Just let me think positive thoughts for moment.]