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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the author?' - ALL OF THEM!
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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 RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Can somebody please explain to me (SPOILER ALERT) ghost army that appears suddenly in the story and after easy convincing, saves the day???
While alive, back in the Second Age, they vowed to fight against Sauron. But when Isildur called upon them to do it, they chickened out and refused.
So Isildur cursed them, never to rest until they had fulfilled their oaths*:
They were much, much less of a deus ex machina in the books than in the film. In the former, they just deal with the Corsairs, and Aragorn holds their oath fulfilled, and they dissolve into mist — they don’t help at all with Minas Tirith.
The films were brilliant visually (think of the Balrog, and the Pillars of the Argonath); but the scripts were cretinous.
Hope this helps 
*More exactly, if you’re still interested:
‘I hope that the forgotten people will not have forgotten how to fight,’ said Gimli; ‘for otherwise I do not see why we should trouble them.’
‘That we shall know if we ever come to Erech,’ said Aragorn. ‘But the oath that they broke was to fight against Sauron, and they must fight therefore if they are to fulfil it. For at Erech there stands yet a black stone that was brought, it was said, from Númenor by Isildur; and it was set upon a hill, and upon it the King of the Mountains swore allegiance to him in the beginning of the realm of Gondor. But when Sauron returned and grew in might again, Isildur summoned the Men of the Mountains to fulfil their oath, and they would not: for they had worshipped Sauron in the Dark Years.
‘Then Isildur said to their king: “Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end.” And they fled before the wrath of Isildur, and did not dare to go forth to war on Sauron’s part; and they hid themselves in secret places in the mountains and had no dealings with other men, but slowly dwindled in the barren hills. And the terror of the Sleepless Dead lies about the Hill of Erech and all places where that people lingered. But that way I must go, since there are none living to help me.’
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Date Mar. 11 2021 18:15:00
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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quote:
Then Isildur said to their king: “Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end.” And they fled before the wrath of Isildur, and did not dare to go forth to war on Sauron’s part; and they hid themselves in secret places in the mountains and had no dealings with other men, but slowly dwindled in the barren hills. And the terror of the Sleepless Dead lies about the Hill of Erech and all places where that people lingered. But that way I must go, since there are none living to help me.’
Thanks. I get the story.... what I don’t get is the timeline of its reveal. Was this info locked in Aragorn’s head the whole time? Did the author plant the seeds earlier on in the story/back story? Because the way I see it, without the invincible ghost army to pick up the slack, the good guys lose, for sure, and basically there is no point to the entire epic. When exactly does the reader learn about the curse?
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Date Mar. 12 2021 14:07:39
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Was this info locked in Aragorn’s head the whole time? Did the author plant the seeds earlier on in the story/back story? Because the way I see it, without the invincible ghost army to pick up the slack, the good guys lose, for sure
Only in the film version, as I said before. Yes the Corsairs are a menace, because they prevent the provinces from sending reinforcements to Minas Tirith, which is why Aragorn has to deal with them; but the outcome is by no means as foregone a conclusion as you suppose.
Aragorn knows the story; but he’s reminded of it by a message from Elrond, sent via his twin sons, who join the host of Rohan (along with several of Aragorn’s kinsmen) after Isengard has been dealt with by Gandalf and the Ents:
Then the Riders set out again, and Aragorn rode for a while with the Dúnedain; and when they had spoken of tidings in the North and in the South, Elrohir said to him:
‘I bring word to you from my father: The days are short. If thou art in haste, remember the Paths of the Dead.’
‘Always my days have seemed to me too short to achieve my desire,’ answered Aragorn. ‘But great indeed will be my haste ere I take that road.’
This is when the readers learn about the Paths (although they don’t get the full story until Aragorn’s explanation to Gimli that I gave previously).
But then Aragorn sees the Corsairs in the Palantir that Wormtongue misguidedly chucked at Gandalf’s head, and realises that he has to take the Paths even though they suck.
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BTW, in the 1st edition there was a passage here that was taken out in the 2nd, and all subsequent ones; which I thought was rather a pity:
‘You have looked in that accursed stone of wizardry!’ exclaimed Gimli with fear and astonishment in his face. ‘Did you say aught to—him? Even Gandalf feared that encounter.’
‘You forget to whom you speak,’ said Aragorn sternly, and his eyes glinted. ‘What do you fear that I should say: that I had a rascal of a rebel dwarf here that I would gladly exchange for a serviceable orc?’
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Date Mar. 12 2021 18:16:37
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Your oath has been fulfilled....oh WAIT hold up, before you go, can you meet us over at Mordor for just a second?
The simple answer is that there is no definitive answer as to why Aragorn didn't have the Dead Men of Dunharrow do more. Then there's a lot of speculation, some good, some not so good, from people who go rummaging through everything Tolkien ever wrote. So, putting my nerd cap on for a second:
One aspect is this: Sauron is almost certainly the Necromancer mentioned in The Hobbit. And in the poem Lay of Leithian, Tolkien writes this about him: "(...) that necromancer held his hosts of phantoms and of wandering ghosts." From there you could speculate that Sauron had his own "army of the dead" (there's very little to go on to know what kind of army Sauron still had waiting in Mordor. Neither in terms of number nor of "kind" of creatures) or that he had the ability to control, or at least sway those fighting for the Free Peoples.
You could also speculate about what power the dead actually have over those who exist in the "Unseen World". That excludes all the races like orcs, elves, humans, etc. But the Maiar (people like Sauron, Gandalf, Saruman, etc.) exist not only in the physical world but also in this "Unseen World". This is also the case of the Nazgûl, 8 of which were still "alive" after the battle of Pelennor Fields.
So there are various theories to say that Sauron did have some forces to counteract the Dead Men of Dunharrow.
One other theory (it's really a stretch...) questions whether the dead could physically harm the living at all. All bark and no bite, as it were. This comes from a passage in LoTR where Legolas and Gimli are describing the battle with the Corsairs and one of them says that he did not know whether their swords had any bite but it didn't matter because the fear they instilled in the Corsairs was enough to win the battle. It also comes from a short note Tolkien made in one of his earlier drafts, in which, next to the section about the fight on the Corsairs' ships, he wrote: "No fight, but the Shadows flow into the ships and all men leap overboard except the chained captives."
Another aspect (which is the one I personally find more convincing) is that using the dead is seen as a grave sin. In the History of Middle-earth, Tolkien writes: "It is therefore a foolish and perilous thing, besides being a wrong deed forbidden justly by the appointed Rulers of Arda, if the Living seek to commune with the Unbodied, (...) Some were enslaved by the Dark Lord and do his work still, though he himself is gone. They will not speak truth or wisdom. To call on them is folly. To attempt to master them and to make them servants of one's own will is wickedness. Such practices are of Morgoth; and the necromancers are of the host of Sauron his servant."
So Aragorn's reluctance to use them isn't just about the fear they inspire. There's also a practical (it's "foolish") and moral ("forbidden justly by the appointed Rulers of Arda") component to it. From there you can imagine what is going on in his mind. Thinking he has no other choice, he will dabble in this forbidden act but never go so far as to actually command them. So whenever they decide they've had enough, he will release them from their oath. I suppose there's a fine line between him just allowing them to fulfil their oath and then releasing them, and him becoming in some sense a necromancer. And on the practical side, since these were men that once worshipped Sauron, he is probably always weighing the benefits of having them on his side vs. the risk of them either abandoning him (as they had done to his predecessor) or worse, turning on him and siding with Sauron. He then decides (speculating of course) that it is best to take them out of the picture once they've dealt with the Corsairs, instead of risking taking them to Mordor and Sauron convincing them to join him.
@rombsix Sorry! Just saw it now!
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Date Mar. 14 2021 3:25:00
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Piwin
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Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to JasonM)
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quote:
I felt like the movies placed a lot of emphasis on the orcs
I was thinking about that when Ricardo asked about the relative size of Sauron's forces. IIRC, in the movie at Helm's Deep there are no humans at all, just orcs, and at Pelennor fields there are only a handful of Haradrim on top of their oliphaunts, but that's pretty much it. So no Dunlendings at Helm's Deep, and very few Haradrim and no Easterlings at Pelennor. At Pelennor it was a particularly striking difference, since in the book those men are the only ones that stay and fight while all of Sauron's other forces flee.
quote:
Something about seeing sauron in his human form
Looks like in the upcoming Amazon series you'll get to see him as the seductive Lord of Gifts who drives Numenor to its downfall. Can't say I'm all that optimistic about it though. On the one hand, the stories of the Second Age are really good. On the other hand, I can't imagine how they're going to put them to film. For LoTR they had a very detailed story to follow, including dialogues, etc. For anything in the Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales, they just won't have that level of detail to work with. Which means they're going to have to make a lot of sh1t up, much more than they did with LoTR or even the Hobbit. I'm kind of scared they're going to try to do a Game of Thrones type thing but within Tolkien's universe. 
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Date Mar. 17 2021 9:25:32
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Piwin
Posts: 3559
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Indeed, not much. All the more reason to expect this Amazon series to be much, much worse. With certain exceptions (notably Aragorn), for the most part I recognised the characters, as well as certain aspects of their relationship to one another. Even though they didn't keep the dialogues, I think it's in large part because they had that detailed source material that they were able to depict them in a way that was mostly consistent with the books. So, to my mind at least, it remains an adaptation of the book. In comparison, for much of the Second Age there's not much other than annals. Meaning many aspects of the personalities and interactions between characters, etc. will have to be pulled entirely out of thin air. The Hobbit movies are a good example of how bad it can get when the movie makers try to invent from thin air. The latter half of Game of Thrones is another.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 17 2021 17:19:40
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Paul Magnussen
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From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Piwin)
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Here’s a comment from a screenwriter. IMHO you could say much the same about normal fantasy books, not just comics:
“Most of the executives and producers involved in these projects are trying to make a buck, market a product. They are not fans, many of them have spent little or no time with the genre as kids, reading pulps, sci-fi or comics. They are businessmen who think they have found an angle they can market. There is a reason the best comic-book films (Terminator I & II, Indiana Jones, Robocop) are not based on comic books. When it is based on an actual comic book, executives and producers have an awareness of it as a “comic book” project and they talk about it differently, they think different rules of character and believability apply, or don’t apply at all. “It’s only a comic book, it doesn’t have to make sense.” Villains can just be crazy or evil. Action and character is unmotivated. But this is wrong and results in films like Judge Dread, Tank Girl, recent Batmans and others.”
John Turman, quoted in The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made
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Date Mar. 17 2021 19:41:43
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Piwin
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Thanks for the quote. A sad state of affairs indeed.
Out of curiosity, are you a fan of "fantasy" in general or is it Tolkien more specifically? Growing up in France there were very few books in that genre. In French literature a distinction is made between "le merveilleux" and "le fantastique" (the distinction being where the supernatural fits in the overall structure of the story. In "le merveilleux", it is a premise, and once you accept the premise, the story reads as a normal story. In "le fantastique", the supernatural isn't in the premise of the story, but serves as a disruptor in the story itself).
There was a lot of "fantastique" but very little "merveilleux" modern literature. "Merveilleux" seemed to flourish in other formats, like "comic books" (e.g. Loisel's La quête de l'oiseau du temps) or cartoons on television (e.g. Les mondes engloutis, though I suppose it's perhaps a bit closer to science-fiction). But there wasn't much in terms of modern literature (let's say that by "modern" I mean starting from the early 20th century), with some exceptions, like Barjavel's L'enchanteur. Mostly it was translations from English literature. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, Neil Gaiman's novels, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, etc. To this day I still associate the genre with the English language.
Of course, given my interest in languages, Tolkien is of particular interest to me. The work he put in to develop fictional languages, and in particular to make them consistent with what was known of the evolution of languages at the time, is incredible.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 18 2021 6:51:51
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 8 2010
From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Piwin)
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quote:
Out of curiosity, are you a fan of "fantasy" in general or is it Tolkien more specifically?
In principle, I’m a fan, but in practice there’s not much that I find readable — certainly not the multiple generations of Tolkien derivatives, from Terry Brooks on down, and not Philip Pullman.
George R.R. Martin has some good ideas, but his English makes me wince — “the American Tolkien” is just a joke. Unusually for me, I preferred the TV series, until the weak ending.
One of my favourite series reads like Fantasy, but is actually Science Fiction: that’s the Morgaine series by C.J. Cherryh:
Gate of Ivrel
Well of Shiuan
Fires of Azeroth
Exile’s Gate
If you’re interested, up to 1982 there’s an excellent Reader’s Guide to Fantasy by Baird Searles (who also did one for Science Fiction):
https://www.amazon.fr/Readers-Guide-Fantasy-Michael-Franklin/dp/038080333X/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=038080333X&qid=1616090084&s=books&sr=1-1
Acheter d'occasion: 7,16 € + 2,78 € Livraison 
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Date Mar. 18 2021 18:01:39
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Piwin
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Paul Magnussen)
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Merci l'ami! I'll have a look.
The science fiction landscape in French literature isn't much better than it is for fantasy. Bernard Werber is probably the most popular author in the genre nowadays. He's good for no-effort airport reading I suppose. It's not exactly stellar prose. One excellent author, Jean-Christope Rufin (author of L'abyssin, Rouge Brésil and Le Grand Coeur, all worth the read) tried his hand at the genre in a book entitled Globalia. While I enjoyed his other books, this one fell flat. But literary critics didn't agree with me on that one, so who knows, perhaps it is worth the read. Perhaps one of the best modern French science-fiction novels is Barjavel's Ravage. There too I don't think it compares to the better novels in the genre in English, but it's better than most of what there is in French.
There's of course Pierre Boule, but I never found his writing to be all that inspiring. Hollywood did though, and made bank by adapting his novel La planète des singes (and also in another genre: Le pont de la rivière Kwaï).
And of course among slightly less modern authors there's always Jules Verne. Going off topic, but I'm somewhat surprised that he hasn't been "canceled" yet in the English-speaking world. Alongside Dumas and Hugo, he's probably one of the most popular French authors abroad. But his writing includes far more of the kind of offending material that leads to authors being "canceled" today than the other two. I've read some scholars who argue that most of it was really a second-degree slight against the racist elites of his day. He was after all an abolitionist. Perhaps they're right. They've studied the author more than I have. But it was never clear to me that it was humour. I must have been 9 or 10 when I first read L'île mystérieuse. I remember being confused as to why the American protagonists spent several paragraphs discussing which, between their Black slave and an orangutan they had tamed, was the more useful, faithful, intelligent, etc. If there was any kind of social critique in there, it went well above my 10-year-old head.
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 19 2021 8:33:10
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estebanana
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Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to Piwin)
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The last time I checked into Verne was in 2014 when I listened to several readings of his books from Librivox. He does come off a naïf socially, unless you think about how he could be satirizing dumb-dumbs. He takes jabs at superstition and ultimately judges Nemo, his most famous character.
Since Pixar made an animated feature based on a Verne story, Verne has not been ‘cancelled’. Although in my list of fervent wishes I would like Pixar to be ended. I can’t stand the products that company makes, they have no arte.
On this concept that’s been called ‘cancel culture’; new label for an ancient phenomena, the populist pressure of raving mobs to do away with social behaviors or ideas without thinking about nuanced arguments for or against.
Today the label cancel culture has been cooked up by hyper conservatives and their derpy biased medias to chide who they think is their enemy, the so called Libtards.
It’s not new, and the conservatives have practiced forms of populist cancellation forever, remembering the Christian Right rally against rock music by claiming there were hidden satanic messages encoded in Beatles albums. The only thing backwards masked is the conservative Christian mind.
I’ll be happy when we move on from the confusion between calling racism what it is, racism, and conservatives getting their feelings hurt because their behavior is unacceptable to the majority of the population who understands reason and nuance in polemics.
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Date Mar. 20 2021 23:04:22
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Paul Magnussen
Posts: 1805
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From: London (living in the Bay Area)
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
It’s not new, and the conservatives have practiced forms of populist cancellation forever, remembering the Christian Right rally against rock music by claiming there were hidden satanic messages encoded in Beatles albums.
I do indeed remember. I remember its being alleged that A Day in the Life was a drug song, and that the words went “four thousand holes in my arm” — this despite the fact that the lyrics (“four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire”) were actually printed on the sleeve of the album!
But I also remember the death threats (because of his research on IQ) towards Arthur Jensen (so many that he had to have constant police protection), the total disruption of all his lectures, and his being labelled a Nazi and a racist, despite his having testified in Congress against segregation, and despite none of the critics that I noticed actually looking at his work and finding factual or logical fault with it.
Cancel culture isn’t restricted to the right — in fact there’s a considerable body of research to show that the mentalities of the hard left and the hard right are more similar to each other than to those of the moderates of their own persuasions.
Personally, were I a lefty student at Berkeley, I should love to have Ann Coulter over for a debate: it should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Or can’t they even muster enough wit for that?
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Date Mar. 21 2021 0:10:24
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Piwin
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RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the aut... (in reply to estebanana)
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My favorite of his is Kéraban-le-Têtu. Kéraban, a tobacco trader, has a meeting with a business associate in the Thrace side of Istanbul. After which he invites him to have dinner at his home back on the Anatolian side. Except in the meantime, a new tax has come into force that anyone crossing the Bosphorus has to pay. It's a tiny tax. Nothing at all. But Kéraban is stubborn and decides to go all the way around the Black Sea rather than paying the tax, dragging his poor business associate along with him.
Regarding this "cancel culture" business, I've started to see the term used in the French press, but I have no idea whether it's just a passing fad, something to fill pages when they have nothing else to talk about, or whether there's really something changing. No idea. The laws against libel/defamation tend to be more stringent in France than they appear to be in the US though, so if one goes about publicly making certain claims about someone, they're taking a risk if they can't back it up. The more recent cases of books being withdrawn from the shelves by publishers or bookstores seem to have less to do with racism than with incest/pedophilia. Some really ugly stories coming to light...
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"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
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Date Mar. 21 2021 0:34:46
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