All I can say about FATAL with something approaching neutrality is that it's definitely intended to be a playable RPG. (This is not something which can be said for HYBRID RPG; the only definitively RPG element in that incoherent racist Marvel-obsessed rant is the title.)
Mmm, Goblet of Fire is the last of the Exposition and Rising Action arcs; after that, everything's rushing toward the denouement. That means Goblet of Fire is our last chance to really anticipate and relish the unknown conclusion: everything from then on is about knocking dominoes over rather than setting them up.
Goblet of Fire (enhanced by the extended wait for the next book's publication) marked the height of the Speculative Age of Harry Potter. The last three books hinged on JKR's resolution of the tensions and mysteries she'd set up being at least as satisfying as the ones her readers spent years developing themselves.
I think some of the issue I had with 5 is that 4 built up to the point that it felt like there should be a bang, and instead, 5 came off (at least at the time) mostly like a whimper. It dragged. Death did not feel meaningful. But it's been... wow, more than 10 years since I read it.
user61230
"Here is an iron molecule. And here is a model of an iron molecule. And here is a model of a model of an iron molecule, modeled in iron."
So, yeah. Goblet of Fire is the bit where we can still relish the anticipation of the series' conclusion. Unless the actual conclusion exceeds (for the individual reader) the anticipation JKR built up for the conclusion in those first books, Goblet of Fire is liable to be the pinnacle of that reader's emotional enjoyment.
I think 5 is where she went back to her notes to revise based on what she'd actually written already, and she choked a bit on the things she'd have to change, and the bits that needed to be added.
It really reads as "Okay, the joyride was fun but now let's slow down this speeding car and get back into the right lane so we reach the intended destination and don't miss the proper turn."
We know she threw out entire characters and subplots (Hermione had a sister), and we also know how much empathy she felt for her characters. So that must have made it more of a chore to force the book into the shape the overarching plot needed, rather than the shape she wanted it to have for her characters.
I didn't even find 5 especially sad because it felt... meaninglessly so? At the time (and, again, I was 13 :P), I felt like it was drama for drama's sake, angst for angst's sake, and so much of it that it was hard to continue feeling it. It wasn't just that I didn't want it to be sad. I wanted it to be meaningfully sad.
And hence I was not engaged. It says a lot that I wasn't even really sad when one of my favorite characters died -- I was just annoyed and underwhelmed and saw straight through its motivations. I felt cheated of the emotional weight such a thing should have had.
The one emotional moment that stuck with me in the back half of the Harry Potter series was the exchange between Ginny and Harry when she finally smacked him upside the head about how much of a blind idiot he was to not figure out that she knew exactly what it was like to have Voldemort inside one's head.
It didn't give him any underlying emotions or anything of the sort, and while the Death Eaters did "sort of" cause his death by giving Harry the vision, Sirius just kind of fell into an unknown magical doorway?
What is even the point of putting a Magical Death door in the middle of the Ministry of Magic JK Rowling
What
I mean if you're going to kill off a main character
At least make it a heroic death so Harry can suck it up and be a hero
@Sandwich This is exaaactly what I was talking about. I was trying to be a bit vague about it (I tend to be, even with things that almost everyone has read or been spoiled for xD).
Where there were a bunch of members in a high school band, and one of the members and the girlfriend of the main character dies on the night that they're supposed to play a show, on her way to the show during the rain
But the bad thing about it is that they added a "clone look alike" character in the manga that took away a lot of the impact later on
@Sandwich Still, I wasn't really fond of the Simpson reinterpreting the story by presenting the main character as a schizophrenic girl and going for the lame idea Fantasy lover == idiot who don't know what is real.
Theres a part in Bartender where The main characters sensei and the person who taught him bartending gets out of the hospital for one day
Because he's in poor health
During that one day they reopen his old bar and he lights a flame with vodka representing all of his friends that have died for him, and makes a drink for everyone there at the bar that night
You can skip Phantom Menace for exactly the reasons you mention above to skip 5: "George Lucas has done everyone a favor by making the content of Episode I completely irrelevant to the rest of the series. [...] The opening crawl of Episode II establishes everything you need to know about the prequels."
> "The thing that really struck me was that, all the time I was around to hear it, the Dark Lord when he killed people, or tortured them, or got other people to do either, always did it because it amused him. Or they'd annoyed him. Or they'd got in the way of his plans for world domination." His voice dropped to a whisper. "In the whole of Recent Events I never, once, heard the Dark Lord tell any of his victims that he was doing it for their own good."
Logic aside (and it totally makes sense on almost every level with a minimum of handwaving), I think it's a perfect satisfying conclusion to Ron's narrative arc.
@Sandwich Thinking about it, I wouldn't; Dumbledore is purely a wise mentor figure as far as I'm concerned, and Rowling's attempts to change that made him a less interesting character.
@Pixie Pick one or more: personal affection for their characters and a desire to see them treated "the right way;" ego and a desire to keep their characters out of the hands of the rabble; attachment to their characters as an extension of themselves and a visceral revulsion at seeing them controlled by others.
(For example, Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire as therapy writing after her daughter died. She was deeply personally invested in the characters and their arcs because they were an outlet for her own struggle through grief. So when folks started writing fanfic... she went postal (scroll to bottom).)
@BESW I mean, yes, I understand the motivations. I guess my statement is better rephrased as "I wish they would do this in ways that made fulfilling narrative sense and not tack it on in an epilogue." That is what I have a problem with.
@Pixie Legend has it, episode 100 original script included Flash Sentry going around town asking everypony why no one seem to like him. I hope the staff got the clue there....
@Miniman mmm. I kinda feel like if his orientation was important, it should have been in the books. And if it wasn't, then let the fictional dead man have his privacy.
I can't say I'm not pleased with Dumbledore's orientation, and I can sort of see how the lack of focus on Dumbledore anyway (so far as I have read) would make it not something an author would necessarily think to mention, especially an author who is not gay. But I would have been much more pleased if it had actually been in the books at any point.
She'd put in enough for us to read it if we wanted to, but it was honestly irrelephant to everything that went on. If she was "outing" Dumbledore out of the desire to give gay kids a role model, then a) it'd be more powerful if she'd had the courage of her convictions and put it in the books proper, and b) maybe she shouldn't have made him a twinkle-eyed old man who offered candy to children and had private meetings with teenage boys to talk to them about the power of love.
@BESW Ehh... I don't really agree with B. It feels like an intentionally negative reading of Dumbledore's characteristics that straightjackets them into an uncomfortable stereotype by parading them out of context, not a stereotype that I ever felt from Dumbledore. But again, it has been a while since I've read.
@Pixie It very well could be. But if JKR was deliberately placing Dumbledore as a positive queer role model in an educational setting, then --knowing the prevalent prejudice that associates queer folk with child molesters and leads some to call for the removal of queer educations from the school system-- it seems like exceptionally poor taste to also give him a common stereotypical trait of child molesters (handing out candy to kids).
If she wasn't deliberately positioning Dumbledore as that positive queer role model in an educational setting, then it's just... an unfortunate coincidence that can be read into the character if you're looking.
Beyond the practical "Dumbledore will be there to save them so we have to get rid of him to make risks meaningful" element, Dumbledore had to be removed from the picture for the same reason that Obi-Wan did: the death of the replacement father figure forces the hero to finally grow up.
@BESW I just don't agree... it is really, clearly benign in the case of Dumbledore, associated with his grandfatherliness, and although "gay" to "child molester" is a prevalent prejudice, I haven't encountered anybody previously who actually looked at Dumbledore handing out candy to Harry and talking to him about love and went from that to "child molester," before or after his orientation was revealed.
It seems like a bit too much of a leap, especially since people who think gay people are child molesters think so anyway. They don't need the idea of candy to help them.
But when you add in that he's queer, it reinforces the reading from another direction and makes it more supportable for anyone who wants to go there. If --again, IF-- JKR intended his queerness from the start, I think it would have been wise for her to rein in the candy.
And if she didn't intend it from the start... well, we're back at "Seems like a poorly thought-out publicity gimmick."
I do agree that Dumbledore's whimsy and his being the only author-confirmed gay character is a troubling combination in terms of stereotype. But as far as the candy is concerned..? It is stretching it, whether he's gay or not, and I feel like it's much more on the part of the person doing the stretching. If someone's reading benign grandfatherliness as pedophilia and increases that opinion based on the character's orientation, they're the one I'm going to blame.
@Miniman Was a brother figure for Luffy. And his death was "only because we must find a reason for the two years jump".... This not even considering that the actual way he dies is pure nonsense at his best
I didn't find it problematic in and of itself, no more than the complete lack of gay characters was already problematic. It's a neutral thing to me -- I'm not going to congratulate her on it, it's not brave. It's not necessarily uninteresting, though, and it's worth noting that she didn't just release it spontaneously; a fan directly asked her a question, which she answered. But still, it wasn't ideal.
I'm with you on this one @Pixie, I don't think it was particularly wise to expose Dumbledore, as I was probably more happy not knowing what intention she had for a character to be frank
If she didn't write four out of seven good books I'd have say she was on track to be the next george lucas if she continued
@DuckTapeAl With the party you have, you are going to take care to create a balanced combat encounter, and it will be damned tricky to balance. Characters without any Fighting skill and their Parry of 2 make them almost impossible to miss, and if their Toughness is equally low then that makes them super-squishy into the bargain. Presumably though they have some kind of ranged attack (Bolt or whatever, which don't forget has the option of going for a single 3d6 Bolt), so it's imperative that they stay back out of melee range.
@Miniman was a punch in the stomach. And rogia users are know to have an immaterial body, so hitting them is almost only possible by using haki to hit their essence instead.
@SPArchaeologist That's not really how it works. Logia users can turn into their element, yes, but they don't become incoporeal or anything like that. Water solidified a sand Logia, rubber was a physical impediment to electricity, and rock can extinguish fire.
@DuckTapeAl unless there's a , really good reason not to for character purposes, I encourage most characters to take a d4 in Fighting - that increase Parry from 2 to 4 makes a massive difference to survivability as well. I can understand why you might not want to do that in this game though, but it depends on what kind of thing you are intending to throw at them
@Pixie I guess the whole thing is symptomatic of my bigger beef with JKR: she writes mystery stories set in deep, complex worlds, lays clues and foreshadowing so that we can figure out whodunit and anticipate events, invites us to examine and explore to our hearts' content... and then also leaves in obvious and easily-avoidable unintentional errors, red herrings, and outright impossibilities.
Stuff like one of Harry's neighbours having his mother's maiden name? In an ordinary adventure story that'd be fine.
But from day one JKR explicitly set up her stories as mysteries we can analyse, where clues are peppered everywhere. That tells us she's taken care with her world-building...
@DuckTapeAl also, the superfighter is the very definition of a one-trick pony with those stats. You really can exploit a low Spirit or Smarts with Tricks, Intimidation and Taunt to give them something to think about
@Miniman Water is a pretty strange thing since it already does bad thing to the devil fruit users, but to be honest blood did the same. Anyway, I mean that the body can reshape like it want to, split, and regenerate. It also behave like the element it is "made" of. Throw some lava in a fire, unless you manage to cover it completely I think the fire will stay here laughing at you.
@Miniman With the little exception that that punch was the one which evolved in the Grizly Magnum. At least you can justify it with some strange latent form of armor haki. But that is not the point. The point is that to me the Marineford arc felt less like a desperate struggle to avoid something inevitable and more like "I have to remove Ace to make Luffy undergo grow, let's try to do it the most awesome way possible"
> You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I've outsmarted you, they'll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.
@SPArchaeologist I'm not a fan of the Marineford arc, yeah. But I think that the removal of Ace wasn't as arbitrary as you think. For one thing, Blackbeard was intended to be a (the?) major antagonist for a long time, so Ace going after him was bound to end badly.
@Miniman Yep, the whole Ace character was doomed before he even started. Doomed because it would make no sense to have him join Luffy and even less to have it stay with Whitebeard. Doomed because he was needed to replicate the "Will save Robin" arc and give Luffy a reason to improve further (and to have the "New world is 20% deadlier theme). Doomed because he had to baton pass his power to Sabo.
It was the way he finally ended that seemed meaningless. At leas put on a fight, something.
Make him disappear like Kamina. Not like a meat shield.
@Miniman Would he have died in a desperate attempt to save Whitebeard, I would have preferred that. I would have even been fine with some actual fight while he tried to protect Luffy (an hopeless fight probably since he already was exhausted)
A satisfying death that preserves characterization and significance is pretty important to me. When sacrifices are made, it has to feel like the character is actually making that sacrifice, whether they're successful or not. The reader/watcher shouldn't be left feeling like you stuffed the character into a closet because the story was done with them.
But you know, I am quite strange. Aerith death managed to feel that way to me, and it is the main plot point that trigger the event that will save the world in the end.. so I can't say I should be used for comparison.
It's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all (sometimes your story is just done with a character). It's just my general experience with deaths I enjoyed and deaths I didn't.
He had to do a good job, because the main character's motivation for the whole rest of the film hinged on Sean Bean's ability to convey that reading some poems was worth dying for.
I can contrast Sailor Pluto's death in the original Sailor Moon anime to her deaths in other versions of the story (manga, musicals, and I believe Crystal followed the manga pretty precisely on this, but I'm not there yet). The anime seriously undermined her character by changing the context and removing most of the things that made it so meaningful. It was honestly kind of vague that she even died.
@Pixie It's a strange little film. Really good setting and effects for its budget, but weird because it trades in tired clichés that the writer/director didn't know were cliché. So he plays them to the hilt, sincerely, without a wink or a nudge.
The writing isn't stellar, but the acting is solid and the whole thing is just so gosh-durned earnest with its tired-out symbols and its beaten-to-death metaphors.
can't speak since I've never actually read HP. Back when it started, I was pretty put off by the cover that seemed to depict the classical "looser egghead nerd" and give it a wand and the somehow scholastic setting contributed to make me skip that (I blame Haplo, Dritz, Elminster and the others). Never got into that serie since.
If Dumbledore hadn't been the Replacement Father Figure already, Harry and Sirius would've had a lot more room to become very close very fast, and then after Sirius died Harry's rebound to Dumbledore would've been interesting.
I just feel like the meta-struggle between the two of them for the same place in the hero's emotional canon made it difficult to actually spend time with Sirius and get to know him and his relationship with Harry the way we should have.
Speaking of sunk ships and (semi) satisfying deaths, I did cry a little when spoiler in Madoka Magica. Because that just wasn't fair. I knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't fair. :I
Glancing over my watchlist, the most "realistic" (not really) thing I spot easily is Kuragehime. Which is really good... at first... and then it crashes and burns. I mourn it deeply.
No OGL/GSL for 5e yet. Plan was an announcement @ 2014 fall and release in 2015.
At this stage before all core rules are out, there does not exist a public license that grants you the right to create contents based on D&D 5e, whether commercial or not.
Here is an official post about it:
We ...
@BESW I haven't noticed any announcements on the subject. I suspect it would set the Twittersphere and my G+ circles alight with either cheering or moaning (depending on which way it fell).
Caught Escape From New York on cable on Saturday (the old 1981 John Carpenter film). The film's a little dated but definitely a sci-fi classic. I thought the film's plot would make an awesome D&D adventure with a little tweaking here and there.
No OGL/GSL for 5e yet. Plan was an announcement @ 2014 fall and release in 2015.
At this stage before all core rules are out, there does not exist a public license that grants you the right to create contents based on D&D 5e, whether commercial or not.
Here is an official post about it:
We ...
