u/platypodus

I just learned that she was buried in New York's Ferncliff Cemetery on the immediately before the first Stonewall riots. Since she was a gay icon and a lot of queer activists were at her funeral, how did that gathering influence what happened after?

I'm asking because philologically, it is likely that all languages sprung from a common origin, akin to the common ancestor of all humans. That means that originally, estranged people must have been the same people and just lost contact to another, before re-encountering another after their languages and looks changed.

Obviously, although the romance languages all share a common ancestry, they evolved in different directions, splitting into multiple languages. During this time, the French and the Italians and the Spanish never lost contact to another.

When the Romans originally encountered the Teutons, they were estranged people, with at least the Romans seeing the Germans as inferior or savage. Were they in contact before that time?

Since this sub doesn't allow self-promotion, I won't include a link to the blog post, but because I'd like to discuss the points I make in the post, I will include the full text here.

As a disclaimer, in the context of the blog, a Schnabeltier, which is German for the platypus, is any idea that is either more complex than it appears, or approaches a topic from an unintuitive direction.

Here's the text:

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A World of their Own

In my mind, there is no debate about the greatest writer of all time. It’s Tolkien, and it’s not particularly close. But today I want to talk about his world of Middle-earth in particular.

Whenever this argument crops up, people jump to the defense of their favourite authors. It’s a matter of taste, they’ll say. It’s a matter of scope. In the case of Tolkien, sometimes people even say it’s a matter of faith.

They will say that you should consider the time of writing and the context of the society a work was conceived in. They will point to the realism of the characterization and the moral depths of character shown in heroes and villains. Argue about prose and poetry. Sometimes they’ll go on about how fun reading a comedy is, and how boring epics are.

I’ll grant all of that. I’ll concede any nuance in any direction.

The claim I’m coming to you with today, our Schnabeltier, is that Middle-earth is the greatest coherent creative work of all time, even if we ignore the content completely. I will outline why Middle-earth will endure as one of the most ambitious and sustained creative efforts in human history. Consequently. I want to dissect the meta-data of what went into the Tolkiens body of work, after which you will have earned a new respect for the man (and his son) and agreed with my main point.

Let’s start singing praises.

You may know that Tolkien worked on the greater Middle-earth for most of his life. Without going into too much detail, as a young man he fell in love with philology – the study of languages.

It was this love that led him to create his own languages, which is massive endeavor in itself. Nowadays, there is a whole field of study for constructed languages for the use in fictional stories, but in the early 20th century, most constructed languages weren’t developed for artistic expression, but to improve communication. Languages like Esperanto were meant to connect humans, but the languages Tolkien created, starting around 1910, weren’t meant to be easily understood or learned. They were meant to be complex and beautiful.

The creation of these languages marks a fair starting point to what would later become the most influential work of fantasy ever created by individuals. Because while other epics and myths are obviously more influential than a fairly recent creation, they were also created and formed over centuries and added to by others, in ways modern copyright severely impedes.

Tolkien died lucidly in his early 80s, having lived from 1892 to 1973. Barring outliers, living to 80 is still a life fully lived. Fifty years after his death, the average life expectancy for males at birth is still 79 years for the UK. When he died it was around 71 years.

That gives us a rough estimate of 60 continuous years of effort he put into Middle-earth as a whole. In this time, he published two books that would shape his legacy: The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings between 1954 and 1955.

These two books were phenomenally successful, from a commercial standpoint. Now, far be it from me to conflate success and quality. I mention this for another reason; leisure.

Commercial success means free time and a certain peace of mind. That means it adds to the relative amount of time he could have spent on his hobbies; chief among them writing for and improving on Middle-earth. This wealth came late in his life, while a lot of Middle-earth had already been imagined, but it nonetheless would have added to his free time.

Combined, that yields a life as long as can be expected reasonably and an adulthood as free of monetary woes as anyone can wish for. This means we’ve hit the ceiling of potential effort a single life can impart onto a project.

The obvious next question we should look at, then, is who poured that much effort into his creation.

Looking at the conditions of his birth, it almost seemed like young Ronald would lead an easy life. Born into a banker’s family in South Africa would have made for a life of ease, somewhere between the middle- and upper-classes of the early 20th century. Instead, his father died when he was three and his mother died when he was 12, leaving him and his sister to be raised by a catholic priest and family friend.

After a short, but influential trip to Switzerland in 1911, Tolkien started his studies at the prestigious Exeter College in Oxford on an excellency scholarship. Where he eventually wound up becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

(At this point I have to refrain from talking about Oxford’s prestigious position in British society, back then, and even still today. I trust that you are aware of the brand.)

An estranged orphan pursuing his intellectual passions to a professorship at Oxford may be the highest level of accomplishments imaginable to a single person. But of course, they didn’t end there. It has been estimated that he had learned over 30 languages by the time of his death, not counting the languages he created.

All of this was accompanied by a single romantic love, his wife Edith, whom he fell for in 1909 and stayed married to until her and shortly after his death. While this romance doesn’t speak to the quality of his work directly, it speaks to the quality of the life he led.

Middle-earth is more than a singular Magnum Opus, but within it, the Lord of the Rings stands apart from the rest. Yet, without his position at Oxford, it might not have been published at all. One kernel of truth to its influence is that it was early in the rapidly expanding field of fantasy literature.

At the time, that type of writing was seen as a bit more fanciful than useful. A side-project of an esteemed professor, more than a story that would sell out. Indeed, it was published in three parts, because the paper shortage after the second world war meant it was simply unfeasible to publish such a large volume and expect to turn a profit from it. Without his academic and social standing, it is hard to imagine a publisher taking such unusual work seriously.

Tolkien himself was an impressively exemplary human being. Orphaned, intellectually impressive, yet devout. Madly in love and loved back. Devoted to the end and inspiring devotion in others. Not least of which, in his son, Christopher.

Almost a P.S. to his father’s life, his son Christopher continued his father’s work. While shying away from creative additions, he spent his own very long life organizing the massive piles of notes, stories, unfinished works, maps and other varied documents.

Having grown up in the world of his father’s creation, he was molded by it in ways that no one can really understand. And while his influence on the early Middle-earth is hard to estimate (The Hobbit was mainly compiled from bedtime stories Tolkien made up for his children), it is his work after his father had died, that will be his legacy. Christopher Tolkien died about 50 years after his father, having dedicated the latter half of his 95-years on Earth to the task of arranging his father’s creative estate. Obviously monetary worries weren’t a consideration here either.

So, for this, he diverted the rest of his own academic career, in which he had become a respected scholar of his own, even lecturing on the English Language at Oxford. Instead, he would edit his father’s oeuvre full-time.

While all the greats you could name, from literature (Shakespeare) and myth (Homer) over music (Bach) and arts (DaVinci) achieved greatness through their creativity, none of them did it all. Not one of them worked on a singular canon over an exceptional life. They either created many works, compiled them from other sources, or created them for others.

Combining entering his field as an outsider (reaping few structural benefits), living a long life, exceptional intelligence, financial security, leisure, life-long love and a stable family, health, obsessive passion – what normal human could ever compete? What creative work could ever eclipse Middle-earth?

Distilling him, we have a human with extraordinary capabilities, devoting himself to a single project for the longest possible span of time. Only to then have that project be carried over to another (almost) equally gifted individual to take the reins and devote their time to it, too. Where most creatives would jump from one project to the next and create fabulous pieces in all kinds of directions, Tolkien stayed steady-eyed, one world in view.

Bringing it all together, setting aside themes, quality and content; Middle-earth sits apart from all other works of fiction, because it isn’t cobbled together from many minds over centuries. Nor was it crafted over a few years of a life, what amounts to basically a weekend’s effort. It is the single greatest coherent creative work, because two (!) intellectual greats dedicated their lives to it as a single focal endeavor, a century’s worth of an almost singular stream of consciousness – creating a world of their own.

PS: This time, I’ll leave the task of creating a calculation out of my claims to the reader.

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thank you for your time!

Now that the game has been released to general applause and most people even think it stuck too closely to the original, Alkimia should use some time to develop some additional content.

It could even include a new balancing, just like NotR did, and add new content throughout the game, without necessarily adding a whole new region. Just more quests, more flavorful reactions (like the Paladins in G2 if you become a mage).

Content that keeps the swamp camp busy after chapter 2, more guild specific quests, fill out the crafting systems (no carrots anywhere, barely any potion recipes). More character arcs, maybe a bit more interactions with the friends >!(You barely interact with Milten or Gorn before the group invites you to be a friend and build a bomb)!<.

Alkimia could use this to build on top of the base remake now, that they finally have the communities good-will, which was lacking during development before.

edit: Actually, Dawn of the Raven or DotR would have a better ring to it.

Sauron was already back in Mordor, Gondor was maybe a bit stronger, but still under Ecthelion. Would that have made the quest easier?

Gandalf wouldn't have known of Saruman's treachery, since the Nine hadn't crossed the Isen, prompting Saruman into action. This would probably have been the biggest danger.

He sldo wouldn't have had the fellowship, but maybe Gandalf and some elves and dwarves could have accompanied him. The lack of the Nine would have made the journey a bit safer anyways.

Gollum might still have been imprisoned in Barad-Dur, for better or for worse. is not captured yet.

This just occurred to me yesterday, and while I don't think the author intended this particular irony, it's still neat.

How and why did she become SUCH a phenomenon? Surely there had been pretty and charismatic women before her.

Did it have to be her, or was it that the time was right, between the rise of multimedia, radio and TV? Was it a post war thing? Her connections to powerful men? A singular case of abuse by powerful men?

Or was it actually about her as an individual? Did she have some irreplaceable properties, talents, unique gifts?

Optimizing the fun out of games is a concept in multiplayer games, that can make them almost impossible to play for fun, but even when you're playing single-player games, you're often faced with the drive to optimize (and remove the fun).

We all know these games; city-builders or colony sims that have some ethical dimension to them, which you should completely ignore if you want to run your build smoothly.

From herding people in games like Rimworld to forcing the children into the mines in Frostpunk and even sacrificing squad members in Darkest Dungeon. Even Rollercoaster Tycoon is famous for having free soda and to-pay bathrooms. You cut corners on empathy, because in a simulation it just makes rational sense.

Your factory runs best on human grease. They're just numbers, after all.

But in some of these examples, the developers have tried to punish you for forsaking compassion. In Frostpunk you have narrative reasons not to crush human spirits by military police force and in Prison Architect you're rewarded with a peaceful prison population if you fulfil more than your prisoner's most basic needs.

All of these are kinda weak, though. In the face of harder levels, you're still forced (by rationalization) to go back to the most efficient, most soulless setups.

What games have great mechanics to combat this? How do they work?

Example; when Echnaton tried to force Egypt to adopt monotheism instead of polytheism it failed.

This would have been a monumental shift affecting all aspects of Egyptian life. From the day to day down to the caste system of the priests.

Do you have similar far reaching changes for a whole society in your area of expertise? How did they work out?