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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Tuesday February 02 2021, @05:23PM (1 child)

    by theluggage (1797) on Tuesday February 02 2021, @05:23PM (#1107999)

    That said when it was in the queue there was the option of Discworld, I guess it was the joke option in the bunch. At least that is a comical and whimsical place and appear to be more fun in that regard then the others.

    It may be whimsical, but because almost everything in it is a parody of something real, in many ways it's one of the most realistic (for a somewhat twisted value of "real") "high fantasy" worlds. Especially in the later books, it was becoming quite a civilised place to live. You can get a haircut, you can get a curry, someone collects the piss bucket every night, there there is a proto-internet, law and order (especially if you cut out the middleman and pay your Thieves Guild insurance, and the Watch are also increasingly effective against unlicensed crime), decent healthcare (either from your local witch, your local Igor or if all else failed at least one hospital where the doctors were discouraged from killing people) and even a burgeoning rail service. Mostly, though, there is a viable economical infrastructure and people grow food and provide services... There are sheep farms, cornfields, vineyards, mines producing treacle and low-BCB fat...

    C.f. Middle Earth* where the Shire looks just about self-sufficient, the Elves presumably eat moonbeams and the world of Man consists purely of siege-magnet fortified cities with no visible infrastructure. I mean, look at the battle of Pelinor Fields - big alluvial plain, between two major cities... any student of Pratchett would be yelling out "Where are the -ing cabbages?! The good people of Minys Tyrith would be starving even without the army of darkness at their gates. Do the Riders of Rohan survive on an all-horse diet and, if so, what do the sodding horses eat?"

    *look, cards on the table, I fell asleep after reading 10 pages of The Hobbit, so we're talking strictly Peter Jackson here and I may be doing Tolkien an injustice... Shoot me.
     

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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:38AM

    by Arik (4543) on Saturday February 06 2021, @07:38AM (#1109567) Journal
    "*look, cards on the table, I fell asleep after reading 10 pages of The Hobbit, so we're talking strictly Peter Jackson here and I may be doing Tolkien an injustice... Shoot me."

    *Pulls the trigger on an old 20th century slug thrower, *pop* *pop* *pop* subsonic rounds but they're hollow points*

    Yeah, the trilogy is dense text. Not quite as dense as the Silmarillion but close. The Hobbit? That's a child's book, literally written to read to a child at bedtime.

    Jackson's adaptions are a very pale shadow of the original.

    "where the Shire looks just about self-sufficient, the Elves presumably eat moonbeams and the world of Man consists purely of siege-magnet fortified cities with no visible infrastructure."

    Jackson's adaptions are a very pale shadow of the original.

    "I mean, look at the battle of Pelinor Fields - big alluvial plain, between two major cities... any student of Pratchett would be yelling out "Where are the -ing cabbages?!"

    The fields were dotted with barns and grain silos, sections were in grain, sections were pasture, sections were orchards. The cabbages? They were grown on poorer grounds, typically higher grounds. No one grows cabbage on land that will do better.

    "Do the Riders of Rohan survive on an all-horse diet and, if so, what do the sodding horses eat?"

    The horses eat grass. The Rohirrim reside on a vast open grassland based on prehistoric Ukraina. They live mostly in small villages, and raise cattle for milk and meat but also grow grain and a lot of cabbages.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?