u/NewWillinium

> Auden did find fault with Tolkien’s poetry, a fact upon which critic Edmund Wilson seized in his scathing 1956 Lord of the Rings review. “Mr. Auden is apparently quite insensitive — through lack of interest in the other department,” wrote Wilson, “to the fact that Tolkien’s prose is just as bad. Prose and verse are on the same level of professorial amateurishness.” Five years later, the Nobel prize jury would make the same judgement when they excluded Tolkien’s books from consideration. Tolkien’s prose, wrote jury member Anders Österling, “has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality.”

> Here, Lewis explains the prolix quality of Tolkien’s prose — that which critics called “tedious” — as a narrative necessity: “I do not think he could have done it any other way.”

> Tolkien’s biggest fan also urged readers to spend more time with the books and promised that the rewards would be great. In defense of the second work of the trilogy, he concluded, “the book is too original and too opulent for any final judgment on a first reading. But we know at once that it has done things to us. We are not quite the same men. And though we must ration ourselves in our rereadings, I have little doubt that the book will soon take its place among the indispensables.” And so has all of Tolkien’s work, becoming the literary standard by which high fantasy is measured, with or without a Nobel prize.

It is always fascinating to me to see how many stories and genuinely *foundational* texts of the modern era of literature, and film, were not seen or acknowledged as such in their own time.

Whether it be Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Star Wars by George Lucas, and **The Lord of the Rings** by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien itself, so many of these foundational texts were just. . . not seen as the influence they would later become on culture today. Across World wide international shared culture today.

Just. . . always fascinating to see you know?

So I got caught up with reading some Naruto fanfiction recently, it's been years since I've done so and I wanted to see if there were any cool new fics that I've missed, and I keep coming across something even in the modern day of fic writing.

Itachi Uchiha is still treated as the most tragic coolest dude.

Who might I remind you; murdered his kind, adults AND children, to protect the peace of a Military Dictatorship when they rather justifyingly wanted to pull a coup because the Hokage was doing nothing but his best-friend Danzo working behind the scenes to isolate and ruin the Uchiha because he wanted their special eyes.

Itachi then proceeds to mind-fuck and torture the little brother he JUST swore to his parents to take care of, perma-traumatizing him, only to do it AGAIN YEARS LATER.

Then he has a fight to the death with said brother, still pretending that he wants to mutilate and steal his eyes, and behind the scenes manages to put a time-released geas into Naruto (Shisui's eye in the crow he shoved down Naruto's throat) so that if they ever locked eyes Sasuke would be forced to go back to and protect the village that MURDERED THEIR ENTIRE CLAN because "I gotta protect the military dictatorship of Magic-Ninjas".

And despite all of this abject betrayal and slavish loyalty to an idea that really didn't deserve it in the first place. . . Itachi Uchiha is still treated as the coolest guy to ever exist in both fanfiction and the general fandom as far I could see in my past week of catching up on the fanfics.

Like. . . Itachi suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks so bad.

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That's just my incredulous take though.

But what about the rest of y'all? What character do YOU think deserves to be treated worse by the fandom they're a part of specifically?

So I was talking about Star Wars the other day with some friends, the Maul Shadow Lords show really has us excited about the stuff again, and we ended up talking about Jar Jar Binks and more specifically both the in-world reaction to Jar Jar and how he ended up in the first book of the New EU; Aftermath by Chuck Wendig.

And how none of us liked what he did with Jar Jar in that book.

So for those unaware, in Aftermath Jar Jar Binks has become a Street-Clown on Naboo, exiled from his own people again, hated by everyone for his role in the rise of the Empire excepting for disfigured orphan who he all but adopts that no one else wanted to adopt.

And we all agreed that it genuinely felt like a really mean-spirited ending for such a prominent figure in the setting, for a character who is and always was a well-meaning guy who always wanted and tried to do what was best for everyone.

This was a man who rose up from being a clumsy exile of his people, to representing his people and planet on a intergalactic scale, a war hero in both the war to retake Naboo and led several successful battles in the Clone Wars.

This is a man who became the romantic lover of a Force-Wielding QUEEN.

Jar Jar is also a well-meaning fool, manipulated by Sheev Palpatine to help cement his power as Chancellor before the Empire ultimately arose from the ashes of the Republic.

Diplomat, Senator, Representative.

Doesn't it make much more sense for Jar Jar to be a character to use their wealth from working on Coruscant to help refugees, to be kept as Naboo's senator by Palpatine as "thanks" for assisting his rise until the Senate's dismissal in Episode 4? Or try and help the New-Found Republic after the fall of the Empire only to be swindled time and time again?

Chuck Wendig's Aftermath, specifically the treatment of Jar Jar Binks within it, feels like someone who hated him from the Phantom Menace, and then never bothered to see what the Clone Wars show actually did with the character.

And it genuinely sucks how mean spirited that ending is.

When you could have done something so much better and fitting for what the character had become in-world over time.

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TLDR: Jar Jar Binks deserved better then the mean-spirited ending that Chuck Wendig gave him in the Aftermath book.

But that's just me, what about the rest of y'all, what are some characters you thought deserved a better ending than what they got?