the "classics" are sometimes crap
- Thread starter monoxide_child
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this^^^ was EXACTLY what i was trying to say when i created this thread
but Black Metal White Guy is apparently way more coherent/articulate/eloquent than me
Spiderchrist
The Unjesus
The Bible is a brilliant book, and I'm not even Christian. People take everything the Bible says way out of context. The Satanic Bible is alright. Anton ripped off Aleister Crowley and Friedrich Nietzsche a bit, though. The Book of the Law is very odd, I've never seen anything like it. I'd definitely check out the Necronomicon if you're into the Occult or Morbid Angel. The music from Altars of Madness was inspired by spells, invocations, and rituals from the Necronomicon. It's called fiction and "fake" often, but a lot of the invocations and rituals are real in the Simon version.
AllShallFall
Senior Member
- Jul 30, 2008
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once you truly accept the idea that the bible is totally fiction, you can understand a lot more of what's going on in the book
Noah's flood is a rip-off of Deucalion/Gilgamesh
Leviticus, Exodus, Ezekiel seem to back-up ancient astronaut theory
Numbers mention Semiramis' husband dying childless, and Ezekiel mentions an angry "god of the Israelites" bitching about people worshiping Tammuz and when you realize the Bible is fiction, you will understand that the whole "virgin birth" thing in the New Testament is a rip-off of Semiramis giving birth to Tammuz
the whole "great commission thing" is cult thing, it's a way to make the cult expand large enough that the cult wont get destroyed by the sane, rational, people that aren't part of the cult
Spiderchrist
The Unjesus
Haha, I know the Bible is fiction. How could it not be? Hell, it isn't less fiction than fucking Harry Potter. It's still a brilliant book, though. I've studied it on and off for about 3 1/2 years now. I'd rather learn about Christianity than trash talk it like most ignorant people. Actually, modern Christianity isn't even Christianity at all. "The last Christian died on the cross"- Friedrich Nietzsche. No one really practices Christianity like Jesus did in the Bible, it's been twisted and fucked up by the followers. I lean towards the Satanism values, so basically religious Humanism, though I don't have a specific affiliation with a religion. Organized religion is pointless, and the separation between religions only causes disagreements, and war. I'm a self spiritual person and my values and ways of life are based off of some of Satanism, Ancient Egyptian religions, Paganism, and Buddhism. I don't have an anger out for Christianity because why should I? I don't follow the religion, but getting pissed off by the ideologies such as sin and it's limitations shown in the Bible would show I'm not confident with my own views.
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this ^^^ is what i was trying to say when i created this thread
quite frequently this type of blindly liking something just simply "because it's classic" can also be applied to things outside of cars and music, i think this type of thinking could specifically be applied to LOTR, Lord of The Flies, and the people that are absolutely convinced that The Hunger Games is somehow a rip-off of something that the author of Hunger Games had never even heard of
if you actually read through LOTR, it's not quite as engaging as the DragonLance books, the Forgotten Realms books, The Wheel of Time Series, the books that got turned into the HBO show "Game of Thrones" etc etc etc
LOTR is only classic because everyone keeps telling everyone else that it's classic
yeah, i get that Tolkien spent his whole fucking life creating Middle-Earth, but was that really a good thing? is it really a good thing to spend your entire life creating a fictional universe? imagine if the publishing house had actually lost money when Tolkien published his first book, imagine what would have happened then, imagine how different, and possibly even better Tolkien life could have been if he'd given up writing and moved on to some other field of work
also, a person who spends their entire fucking life creating a fictional universe can't possibly be considered completely sane, now can he?
also, this is the kind of mentality that spread Christianity into such a huge % of the world
condoms made of animal intestines (to prevent pregnancy in areas where the people had no idea STIs existed) and "coat-hanger type abortions" and pregnant women eating toxic chem to make them have a miscarriage, men fucking women's asses to avoid pregnancy, horny-as-hell dick-sucking women who refused to do penis-in-vagina sex because they didn't want to get pregnant, gay/lesbian people being worshiped because gay/lesbian sex doesn't run the risk of unplanned pregnancy, all these things were all in existence before the birth of Moses, then the cult of monotheism comes, and all of a sudden, homosexuality is wrong, all of a sudden pregnancy-prevention is wrong, all of a sudden abortion/purposeful miscarriage is murder, and all of a sudden sex outside of penis-in-vagina sex is wrong, and all of a sudden the Israelites in Egypt in the time of Moses were having way way more children-per-couple than the Egyptians, then Jesus is born, the Great Commission is written, and all of a sudden Christianity is spread all over the globe because of the same kind of group-think that makes everyone think that LOTR was a well-written book
you've got lots of people that don't question anything the preacher says, where they're Christian just because they're parents are, and adults who start going to Christian Churches just because they live in a city where "everyone else is Christian"
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alot of people don't notice that the bible is fiction though
because they don't stop to question it
they don't stop to think about the possibility that the preacher is lying to them every Sunday, because they don't think at all, alot of adults are going to church now just because they were going to church as little kids, and those people only showed up to church as little kids because they're parents made them, church becomes a habit, a ritual, where they're not even paying attention anymore and they're just showing up because they showed up last week
for other people there was a definitive "moment" where "God Entered My Soul"
these people are psychotic, experiencing hallucinations, these people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, where a moment in their life happens that is so traumatic, that they can't continue living as atheist/humanist anymore
for these people, "God Entering My Life" is a breaking point, a psychotic break, where their mind is broken, and their using religion as "the wheelchair for the broken mind", once you realize that mono-theism is fiction, it becomes pretty clearly obvious that Christianity was actually specifically created to be a "wheelchair for the crippled mind"
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this kind of "because it's classic" mentality seems similar to the whole thing of why people keep saying that "The Dark Knight" was "awesome", even though the theater was crammed full of people that hadn't even seen "Batman Begins"
Heath Ledger dies, and all of a sudden, no one is able to admit that Heath Ledger totally sucked as an actor, Heath Ledger dies before the movie is released and suddenly the last movie he made makes way way more box office money than any previous Heath Ledger movie, and twice as much as it would have made if Heath had lived to see the opening weekend
Heath Ledger Dies, and all of a sudden, Christopher Nolan is a god, and all of a sudden, everyone totally forgets how he's actually a crappy director
Heath Ledger dies, and all of a sudden, no one is able to admit that Heath Ledger totally sucked as an actor, Heath Ledger dies before the movie is released and suddenly the last movie he made makes way way more box office money than any previous Heath Ledger movie, and twice as much as it would have made if Heath had lived to see the opening weekend
Heath Ledger Dies, and all of a sudden, Christopher Nolan is a god, and all of a sudden, everyone totally forgets how he's actually a crappy director
Spiderchrist
The Unjesus
I agree that the Bible is complete fiction and it is in some cases a crutch. But, I'm not going to rule a higher power out of the picture. Like I stated, I live off of self spirituality.
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Christians often "have their own scientists" that are claiming that they can "prove beyond the shadow of a doubt" the existence of "intelligent design"
and those theories make sense
but just because the-world-as-we-see-it is the result of "Intelligent Design" doesn't necessarily mean that "The Designer" is actually the Judeo-Christian Deity, or anything even remotely resembling him
BlackMetalWhiteGuy
Manly Man!
Actually, I did like The Dark Knight. I liked it enough that I would even classify it as one of the top three super hero movies that I've seen. I even thought Heath Ledger's role as Joker was very well done, but I agree that his death was a major catalyst for the success of the movie, as well as the retroactive success of his previous movies. I'll add that I hadn't even heard of him until he died and A Knight's Tale is the only other movie of his that I've seen, and I thought it was a pretty average movie.
I totally agree with you that death plays an unfair role in determining the success and "value" of someone's work and some of us probably remember having this same conversation when Michael Jackson died and (especially for UM) when Dimebag Darrel was killed and I think this same phenomenon is also responsible for the overzealous, blind patriotism that erupted in the US after 9/11. Specifically, I think there are two primary reasons for this:
1) most of us just don't appreciate what we have until it's gone and then we overcompensate
2) the exact same "because it's classic" mentality and motivations that I described in my other post
I first noticed this in high school, when a girl in my class died after falling asleep behind the wheel and driving herself into a tree. She was an aggressively unfriendly person and anyone would be hard-pressed to find anything nice to say about her... until she died. Suddenly she was everyone's friend and one of the most popular and beloved girls in the school. Some of my classmates even criticized me for remembering her as she was, rather than adopting their group-thought and befriending her retroactively. The school even created a memorial scholarship in her honor, to be awarded to one student each year who was (paraphrased) "as outgoing and kindhearted as she was." I was so shocked by everyone's 180° turn on their impression of her that I was as offended by their brazen abandonment of standards for social adequacy as I was disappointed in their lack of critical thought. I'm not saying that everyone should have rubbed it into her family's faces that their dead daughter / sister / cousin was a terrible person, but I do think that the overcompensation and fake praise for this girl is counterproductive in the grand scheme of things for its role in undermining the authentic loving memories of those who, in their own lives, were genuinely good people.
I know I'm not the only person who feels this way because we've probably all seen it parodied in one sitcom or another. Someone will be aggressively criticizing an off-screen character only to be interrupted "didn't you hear? He's DEAD now!" The critic will then pause thoughtfully for a moment before concluding "he was a good man."
I'm not sure if there's already a name for this phenomenon, but I called it Thering's Paradox, in memorial of the girl from my high school
If you're talking about Irreducible Complexity Hypothesis, then it doesn't make sense. It's been thoroughly discredited.
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also the people that died in the Columbine Incident
no one wants to talk about the fact that the actual people that died (as opposed to ones that merely got injured) were actually specifically targeted by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
we had to hear the mother of the valedictorian speak endlessly over how the valedictorian was actually trying to be valedictorian and trying to go to med school and cure cancer or some shit
but everyone just glossed over how this female valedictorian was being a bitch to Eric and Dylan, actually pissing off these kids to the point that she was executed
no one wants to talk about the fact that the actual people that died (as opposed to ones that merely got injured) were actually specifically targeted by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
we had to hear the mother of the valedictorian speak endlessly over how the valedictorian was actually trying to be valedictorian and trying to go to med school and cure cancer or some shit
but everyone just glossed over how this female valedictorian was being a bitch to Eric and Dylan, actually pissing off these kids to the point that she was executed
I respect you and your opinion because you're entitled to it, but you can't be serious when you say Eragon is better than LOTR. I agree that "classics" aren't necessarily the definitive, but the Eragon series is to LOTR what Twilight is to Dracula, a cheap knockoff that's (maybe) ok for a younger audience but not if you want a story with that much substance.
I enjoyed the first 3 Eragon books when I was younger, but by the time the 4th came out, I outgrew it and noticed how poor his writing "style" actually is; I couldn't even re-read the books or get through the first 30 pages of Book 4. He was a teenager when he wrote these books and it shows; how he writes character interactions is cringeworthy and unrealistic. There are too many examples of these incidents for me to go into in detail, but a couple come to mind:
I think this was book 3 where he's talking to the elves and rather than explain Elven ways while simultaneously moving the story along, he goes for the "LOOK, I'M TELLING YOU HOW ELVES BEHAVE" approach when (I believe) Eragon is talking to Arya or the Queen of the elves (i can't remember) "We elves do not do things in the way of humans; your ways are strange to us. The way the elves would do this is to..." yadda yadda.
Another example: in book 4 there's a part in the beginning where Roran is really weak and is about to collapse after a fight, and Eragon drops his sword, runs over and catches him. Rather than sum this really short interaction up in Paolini instead opts for a mammoth sentence that's overlong and clunky, along the lines of "Eragon was reluctant to drop his sword so he could catch Roran because it would leave him defenseless in case an enemy rushed up to attack him, but regardless of all of this fact, he knew his brother was very weak and about to fall over so he dropped his sword and caught him."
I noticed in Book 3 when Eragon made a mistake and someone said they were sorry, Eragon says "it happens", and when he's fighting, he hit someone with his staff "upside the head".
Again, too many instances of this to list off in full. The story itself is ok but his influences are way too obvious (Brom is pretty much Gandalf, to name just one example).
Do I hold LOTR in such high esteem? I know it's a great literary work and i've read it a few times, but I personally think the movies told the story better.
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yes i am serious
9 authors out of 10 you can pick up a book of fiction they've written and you can tell aprox how old the author was when he/she wrote the book you're reading, for me, at least, reading a book that was obviously written by a teenager is a whole-hell-of-a-lot-more fun than reading a book that was unmistakeably written by someone that's already past 30
that's how a movie would do it, why can't a book do it too??
Stephen King writes exactly like that, why can't other authors??
these are mistakes that EVERY fantasy author does, they should have been caught and altered by the publishing house's "editor", that's actually a publishing house's editor's fucking job discription
every fantasy/sci-fi author does this, he just made it a little more obvious than some of the others
Tolkien would have made a great movie director
but my problem with Tolkien, as described in another UM thread somewhere, is his unique writing style, if you randomly picked 2 different Tolkien books and then randomly picked out 1 page from each of those randomly picked tolkien-written-books, upon reading those 2 pages, you would instantly recognize that the 2 books were written by one author even if one book is Middle-Earth and the other isn't
my problem with Tolkien is not the stories he tells (LOTR made awesome movie trilogy) but rather that, his unique style of writing is annoying
EffigyForgotten
New Metal Member
Eragorn BETTER than LOTR? Easily the most retarded thing I've read this year... And Harry Potter is the gayest fucking crappy movie/book series I've ever heard of, obviously made for children under 12 in mind. LOTR is MUCH more complex and interesting than anything in this thread, especially the books. Tolkien fucking created everything and to say any of the crap that is pretty much a copy of his work is fucking outrageous.
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I respect that. I personally think that Tolkien is a great writer, but while he essentially laid the blueprint for modern fantasy, there are many fantasy books I prefer to LOTR. I agree that just because you may have set the groundwork for a certain genre doesn't mean everyone "has to love it".
Not sure how relevant this is to the discussion but classic rock/metal doesn't do anything at all for me. I don't find Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Led Zeppelin, Guns N Roses etc even remotely interesting. I respect what they did for their respective genres but I find modern metal much more interesting and worth my time. I can't simply enjoy a movie/book/band because someone tells me it's a classic. If I like what i hear/read/see, I like it.
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this^^^
is exactly what i was trying to say when i created this thread
not just specifically Tolkien, but everything in general
i prefer Chris Pine's Kirk over Shatner's Kirk
i prefer the Star Wars books that do not have Luke or Leia or Han Solo in them
i personnally hated The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, for me, Batman Begins was unquestionably the best of the trilogy, and even then, i still love the 2 Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman movies
i can't say i enjoyed Anne Hathaway's catwoman just because a bunch of horny guys thought Hathaway's catwoman was sexy
i'm still in love with Michelle Pfiffer's Catwoman
i can't say Heath Ledger's joker was awesome just because he died before the movie hit theaters
and for random crap in general, i can't just like something just because someone else likes it
BlackMetalWhiteGuy
Manly Man!
I'm completely with you on this, except that I like some Metallica. As I mentioned previously, I feel like most of the people who cite "because it's classic" as their reason for liking something are actually just forcing themselves to enjoy it because they feel like they have to for social purposes. To like something that also happens to be a classic is totally legit, but to like something because it's a classic is a self perpetuating feedback loop of idiotic conformity, which makes it rather ironic that so many high-schoolers with black nail polish have throbbing nerd-boners for AC/DC and Black Sabbath.
