The Defenders of Gondolin were Insular Upper-Class Snobs.

[Felch]

If you want overwhelming brutality and ignorance, read George Martin.

[Elok]

If we're required to look only at the ugly parts of history (which, in all honesty, vary little from age to age and place to place), fantasy and historical fiction are going to become a whole lot more boring.

[Al B. Sure!]

If we're required to look only at the ugly parts of history (which, in all honesty, vary little from age to age and place to place), fantasy and historical fiction are going to become a whole lot more boring.

Troubling not boring

[Tupac Shakur]

If Tolkien had been honest he's have made the hobits serfs forced to work for their masters, who probably would have been men.

He did, dumbass. Go read "The Scouring of the Shire".

[Imran Siddiqui]

I rest my case. There was nothing beautiful about the medieval world.

Well this post is just ignorance on a grand scale.

[BeBMan]

Well, it's probably what people will say about our times in 500 yrs or so.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Truth and they'd be ignorant too

[BeBMan]

[Arrian]

Gondolin is to the 1st age as the Elves in general are to the 3rd age. They live apart, and they generally don't help. That's an exaggeration (Lorien gets hit pretty hard in the War of the Ring), but not much of one.

There's a reason the audience cheered in the theatres when the Elves showed up at Helms Deep in the movie version of The Two Towers.

To be fair to Turgon, he was told to do what he did by a diety. You could blame it on the water god (name escapes me right now), not Turgon.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

LOTR was boring enough to put me off reading whatever other crappy stuff Tolkien wrote.

Me thinks you doth protest too much.

[Dr Strangelove]

If you want overwhelming brutality and ignorance, read George Martin.

The Beatles' producer- arranger? Oh yeah, those Blue Meanies were frightful weren't they?

[Dr Strangelove]

If we're required to look only at the ugly parts of history (which, in all honesty, vary little from age to age and place to place), fantasy and historical fiction are going to become a whole lot more boring.

They produced a few nice artifacts, but the entire society was crap. The very essence of the age was about ignorance and violence.

[Dr Strangelove]

He did, dumbass. Go read "The Scouring of the Shire".

Yes, but that was at the hands of the Orcs. Though Tolkien denied that his work was intended to be an analogy of anything, he did admit that parts of "The Scouring of the Shire" were inspired by events of his past. There was a lovely little bit of undeveloped land with a pristine little pond where he played as a child, then when he returned as a man the area had been taken over by an industrial concern and turned into a dump. The pond was ruined. In "The Scouring of the Shire" he describes just such a scene when Frodo and his companions re-enter the Shire. The way he described the works of the minions of the evil ones in the "Scouring" though is idnetical to the way he describes them throughout the Trilogy. To me that says that the analogy of industry ruining the pristine countryside applys throughout the Trilogy, even though Tolkien doesn't say so. So really the Trilogy is all about the evils of the modern world and the struggle of a heroic band to vanquish them. My point is that the pre-modern world wasn't as idyllic as Tolkien would have us beleive. People in the pre-modern world didn't have it quite so easy and weren't as free as Tolkien portray them. The people who had lives of ease and freedom largely maintained them on the backs of those beneath them. People burned out and died by age 50. Kids dropped dead like flies in the fall. Women were invisible.

[Elok]

How does one determine "the essence of the age," especially when talking about a thousand-year time period from the history of an entire continent?

Also, we're both citizens of a country which has been in three different wars in the past ten years, not counting sundry assassinations-by-drone which may or may not have killed hundreds or thousands of peasants as "collateral damage." A large portion of our population doesn't believe in evolution or climate change, with a half-dozen different politicians currently jockeying to outdo each other in apparent ignorance so as to win the favor of such people. Is that enough to be the essence of our age?

[Felch]

The very essence of the age was about ignorance and violence.

You're absolutely right. The Middle Ages would have been way better if everybody smoked marijuana.