Thread 24669621

If someone wanted to do for America what Tolkien did for England with the Lord of the Rings, what would it look like?

>>24669621 (OP)
They already did it

What

>>24669621 (OP)
Wild West fantasy, where a tyrant cattle rancher rules his town with an iron fist and a group of plucky farmers and cowboys join together to form a proper government and hold elections.
They elect the rancher's brother-in-law, whose campaign is funded by the rancher.

>>24669628
peak manga. My favorite part was Jesus' stand, which would basically let you redirect misfortune anywhere the user pleases. Funny Valentine directs it away from the USA, causing mass suffering most likely, but I think Jesus would redirect it onto himself. It wasn't mentioned explicitly, but that's my reading of it, and it's quite a beautiful idea. Aside from the superficial aspects of the setting, Johnny is your quintessential 'American', selfishly determined but still heroic and very briefly, divine in the defense against evil. It is very fitting then that Gyro's death, Johnny's personified morality, gave him this power and also marked him for death.

>>24669621 (OP)
I'm doing it but the ideas are too good to share here

An American LOTR wouldnt be a novel, it would be a fanfic where all the elements are stolen and dumbed down and the story would be about what if the Numenor actually did make it west to Valinor and they raped and killed everyone.

>>24669621 (OP)
>>24669687
/thread

>>24669621 (OP)
Tales of Alvin Maker

>>24669621 (OP)
Atala / René

>>24669621 (OP)
In the same way that Lotr is Christianity rewritten as fantasy, it would need to be Mormonism rewritten as fantasy. i.e. a meta-modern epic where some anglo-nord chad parachutes into a faraway land, is reinstantiated across generations as the personification of the elect, and contends with good and evil amidst apocalyptic themes, without a definite conclusion to embue the reader with a sense of his place in the eternal struggle.

>>24669621 (OP)
Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha is the closest historical parallel, as both Longfellow and Tolkien were inspired by the Kalevala and stitching together folk legends and figures.

>>24669705
>>24669997
*blocks your path*

>>24669699
holy cringe

>>24669990
yeah but longfellow didn't even use the correct name because he didn't like the look of it

>>24669699
It's become too memed but it was a good book and accurately described the core of Manifest Destiny accurately. It's not the American LOTR, but when an American LOTR does come along it will include elements of Blood Meridian, and an American culture reading list will include Blood Meridian with this theoretical American LOTR.

>>24669999
it's great, but doesn't feel epic like Tolkien.

>>24669621 (OP)
only lovecraft did that to America, with his fantasy mythos

>>24670712
Tolkien was reflecting on Icelandic epics and Beowulf. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a meditation on American individualism as depicted in its westerns, or rather a revisionism of it, while still using the backdrop of the Civil War (which notably is shown to have zero to do with good versus evil). There really can’t be an American equivalent because the core of Americanism isn’t about being descended from such and such a house and being from a particular land, the American identity is about inventing yourself as defined by you and completely breaking from your homeland to live somewhere else.

The American “epic” is How the West was Won.

>>24669964
it is the Book of Mormon

>>24670768
Kek does not Harold Bloom explicitly say Tolkien reminds him of the Book of Mormon?

>>24669999
But that’s Italian

>>24670856
That's like saying Lord of the Rings is Oceanic.

>>24669621 (OP)
I'm currently doing what Tolkien did for England but for the international working class, instead.

>>24670875
What exactly is the "international working class", bunny?

>>24670877
Basically dedicated to the proletariat, not dividing any nationality or anything just dedicated to us all.

>>24670880
I used to wait tables. But when I got sick of waiting and got into construction, those guys, the construction guys, were like a different specie. Their hands, their sounds, their lunches. How much they ate. The excavation site might as well have unearthed a buried race. Then when I got into farming, those guys — the farm hands — were again a different specie. Whole different dialect, the way they drank, the (limited) directions they thought in. Work shapes us, don't you think? And the diversity of work in the modern age has shaped us into countless little subspecies, despite being of the same. I doubt a Mongolian steel factory worker could reach an instant harmony with a Swiss patisserie casher, despite being, conceptually, of the same class.

America doesn't really have enough history yet, I think it'll take at least another hundred or two hundred years for it, and probably only after the unification of the continent and the completion of manifest destiny.

>>24670880
Fuck proles, fuck trannies and FUCK jannies. Proletariat produce NO cultural value, they’re Idiocracy

>>24669621 (OP)
Henry Darger and The Story of the Vivian Girls!
Just kidding
We're already in TLotR. We're The West that they sail off to.

Whitman is Tom Bombadil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4yhzY36YNw

>>24669621 (OP)
A proto-American founding mythos has to be either french-indian war period, or pilgrims, or the puritans in britain before they set sail for the new world nothing else makes sense.

>>24669999
Quads confirm, wins the thread.

>>24669999
Based. Lotr are better movies than books, anyways, and even then, Leone dunks on them

>>24669621 (OP)
Joseph Smith already did it about 100 years before Tolkien and it was called the Book of Mormon

Star Wars

>>24670873
>directed by an Italian
>written by Italians
>music by an Italian
>filmed in Spain

Nobody could do for America what Tolkien did for England, because Americans are fundamentally vacuous and shallow. You could never make them a myth, because there's nothing inside them to mythologize. Your AI OP generated image is far more apropos that I'm assuming you'd intended.

>>24670886
>Their hands, their sounds, their lunches. How much they ate.
I am now turned on

But Tolkien didn't "do" anything for England. The notion that every country "needs" a national epic is a joke (most nations don't have one), england already has a rich cultural mythological tradition and tolkien's work doesn't even qualify as an english epic anyway.

>>24671413
I can describe the devastation they wrought upon the porta-potties if that would bring you joy.

>>24671427
that part you can keep to yourself but you can describe their moans again pls?

>>24670189
Based for mentioning Wellman

>>24671382
And Fistful of Dolllars was a straight copy of Yojimbo

>>24669621 (OP)
fascism is the way

>>24672203
fascism offers no future. just a look back a barely remembered past that will not return

Unironically, you're talking about Batman.

The core patriotic mythology of the US for decades now has been Norman Rockwell and WWII. Batman takes place in a city that is somehow perpetually in the 1940s, but which is also riddled with crime and poverty, requiring a powerful individualist to control it. Superhero comics in general are the logical endpoint of American individualism, and Batman in particular addresses all the stock big American questions: Safety vs. Freedom, Economic Inequality, Individualism vs. Family, etc.

This will all change very soon because, as others have said, the US just isn't very old yet. Also the WWII mythology is kind of falling apart in the current political climate.

>>24670762
>the American identity is about inventing yourself as defined by you and completely breaking from your homeland to live somewhere else.
That's a nice way of describing sedition and treason.

>>24672203
Fascism already took the US fyi

>>24669622
Are you retarded? Pirates are uniquely latinamerican.

Sure corsairs and privateers who owned the boats were french and english, but the crew were escaped slaves, colonial criollos and european criminals. The exact make up of Spanish colonies.

Not to mention that piracy in the caribbean almost exclusive involved latam territories. Never forget that real cowboys also came out of the spanish empire and the image of cowboys in the US comes directly from the Mexican version. You have no culture.

You're a retard and a negro.

>>24673279
That is all America. Pirates sailed their ships into Florida, Baton rouge on up to South Carolina too.
Stop being retarded

>>24671413
topping isn't gay. The greeks and romans agreed on this.

>>24672516
>"why yes I love the state ordering me around how could you tell?"

>>24673293
Id wager both Pirates and Cowboys are both very American. Outlaw individualism.

Can't believe no one's mentioned this yet.

>>24672516
>why yes, our state and monarchy were given power by the Glorious Revolution which we then enacted as having a legal basis, but no when you actually invoke that same legal basis it’s treason because it’s against us instead of the monarch we ourselves overthrew to start a new monarchy. Now if you please, let us cuck you by outlawing you trading from anyone but us and taxing the dog shit out of said trade. And you should be thankful because you need our army to protect you—btw, turn over all of your guns and disband your own military or well kill you

>>24673515
Oh, you wish. The monarchs claimed they ruled by divine right. Utter arrogance.

>>24670886
this. food service, construction, package delivery, completely different worlds with different people, conversations, cultures. even the people who had moved from one to the other changed their speech patterns and outward values. same with interning with engineers, marketers and librarians. there is no "international working class" just like there is no "international bourgeoise" and characterizing them as such means you haven't sampled life as more than one part of either of them.

>>24673539
The dynasty put on the throne by the glorious revolution was not absolute and cited the king as breaking the law to justify the revolution.

>>24673545
I never read Marx but I heard such arguments before from commies that a Chinese worker has more in common with a American worker than with a Chinese bourgeois. Did Marx write that? What did he think about a nation's traditional culture? A well travelled person will clearly notice a cultural difference even within countries and these will differ the further you travel to another country

>>24673432
Law is fiction

>>24673602
NTA but pedantically speaking Marx didn't write that, but he might as well have. Marx did argue that workers across nations share more fundamental interests than workers share with their own country's capitalists (whole "workers of the world, unite" thing). but he wasn't blind to cultural differences. lots of Marx is about how capitalism develops differently across societies. He saw culture as part of the "superstructure" that both reflects and influences economic relations. To be fair the tension you're picking up on is real though, Marx thought capitalism would eventually create more similar conditions for workers globally, potentially overriding cultural differences, but I get your point about obvious cultural differences between countries/societies. (still worth reading Marx though, if lefties can read Schmitt then righties can read Marx)

>>24669622
Tim Powers is the American Tolkien

>>24670762
>tell me you’ve never read Egil’s Saga without telling me you’ve never read Egil’s Saga

>>24673489
That face screams for anonymous quarry worker

>>24670189
>>24670758
>>24670768
>>24672509
Somehow all of these are the correct answer

>>24669621 (OP)
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, the second zone with the farms and the forests in it. Pynchon's Vineland? I never read it.

>>24673609
>law is fiction
Ok im curious to know who besides Metzinger thinks the ego is a spooky too

>>24673279
>spic trying to steal pirate culture
the pirates originated in the anglo-french buccaneers who despised the spaniards and looted their towns and cities
The majority of pirate and buccaneer crews weren't escaped slaves or criollos, they were european seamen and mercenaries
Piracy in the carribean wasn't "almost exclusive" latam territories. Where the fuck do you think port royal is? Jamaica, a spanish colony that was taken over by the english and became a buccaneer stronghold. Blackbeard lived in the carolinas for fucks sake
Spics have no culture
Also the cowboys come from border reivers, not spics

>>24669621 (OP)
>WHITE POWERRRRRRRR

The answer unironically is STAR WARS.

It has elements of the wild west, whilst also having an American love for spaceships/vehicles. It includes a vague spiritual morality that works with protestant mindsets. Is pseduo-spiritual enough with the force that it also doesn't turn away your average leftist.

Has British and American cast members, reflecting America's white history. But also includes all different ethnic backgrounds which reflects the 'melting pot' ideals of America too.

The galaxy far, far, away is an endless frontier, again much like the wild west.

Star Wars was made as partly as a Vietnam War allegory. So that is reflected in the core storytelling.

Brits are typically the evil ones, rustic Americans the heroes. Includes Yoda as the asian influence but in a digestable way for audiences.

Has endless wars. Very American that.
Every planet is just one vibe -- forest, ocean, industrial, desert, etc. - Much like how America's states are known to have one distinct landscape each and are 'a country unto themselves'.

The idea of a monarchy which would be Emperor Palpatine's style of rule is seen as evil. The democratic rebels are seen as the heroes.

It goes on and on.

It would probably be a new translation of the Bible

>>24671410
Hey! we made a horseman with a pumpkin for a head!

>>24669621 (OP)
The problem is that America has very little in the way of a mythic past. There are plenty of fairly grounded accounts (barring Captain John Smith perhaps) of the nation's origins, which include many disparate influenced: pilgrims, libertines, explorers, slaves. You'd have to either find a thread of meaning to draw out and mythologize, or settle for a semi grimdark treatment. This subject fascinated me and I intend to write my own mythic history of America, complete with a Native American/Norseman empire, separatist colonists, and wendigos

>>24669964
Battlestar Galatica?

>>24669621 (OP)
>>24675932

Hasn't that already been established through a handful of short-story/pulp fiction IPs (Conan The Barbarian, Cthulu Mythos, A Princess of Mars, Star Wars, etc) or am I misunderstanding the assignment?