The spirit of the 'rule' makes sense, but taken literally it isn't all that logical.

The fuck is Sauron going to do with the Death Star anyway? He's a freakin' giant eye, and somehow I'm dubious as to the validity of an Orc's qualifications to operate high end tech. :facepalm

>.>
<.<

Edit: Also, Frantic Author, if Frodo is a Jedi technically you're in the past .

 

I could be mistaken but isn't that LessWrong's rule? While him saying this it's enough of a reason to seriously doubt or dislike it, the thing that bothers me the most isn't in the logistics of the saying, it's in the pretentious way of explaining a simple concept.

 

Actually, Sauron has a body. It's just never showed in LotR.

 

The reason why "normal" doesn't quite fit as a descriptor is that is that Wizards have mostly separated their society and culture from the Muggles. "Normal" is a word you might use for people if you are different, yet still consider yourself a part of the society. Superman could use that word, and it would fit.

"Mundane" is slightly better, but I just don't like the way it looks or sounds. It's too objective for my tastes. When I hear the word, its technical definition dominates in my head. The problem is that the technical definition, while apt for describing Muggles, doesn't hint at the greater picture.

This is why "Muggle" works so nicely. In the HP universe, it has an objective meaning: a non-magical person. But it also does a better job than "normal" or "mundane" for hinting at the societal differences. Muggles have completely different lifestyles. They've got their own culture. And when we want to denote a foreign culture, we use proper adjectives or nouns. "Mundane" just doesn't work well as a proper noun, IMO.

 

The Frodo Jedi thing is a page on TV tropes or lesswrong.com. I forget which.

 

Please tell me you're joking. Whatever frailties TVTropes may have as a reference site, don't you dare confuse it with Yudkowski's circle-jerk.

The saying is LessWrong's, and it's a badly-constructed analogy to begin with. He was trying to be clever in suggesting that fanfiction which doesn't re-balance the story (or re-imbalance it, in most cases) by escalating the villain antagonist is shooting themselves in the foot. By using an over-the-top comparison though, he effectively declares all changes in the hero's circumstances to be ridiculous and stupid to attempt- 'if you're giving Frodo the powers to act as a fighter, make sure to load up the villain with something so game-breaking as to make the whole idea mind-numbingly stupid.' Well the idea you offered was stupid already, Eli, so your point is lost.

(Bad analogies are a pet peeve of mine.)

What might have made sense is 'if you're giving Frodo real fighting skills, then Gollum should be near-feral and cannibalistic, because otherwise it nerfs the tension while they sneak into Mordor.'

or

'If you give the guys at the end of Saving Private Ryan their own tank, the Germans should have spotters and/or 4 more Panzers. The point of that battle was for them to fight a seemingly unwinnable battle and hold the line just long enough.'

 

Let's ignore who was responsible for the phrase and consider it in another light - namely, its message, which is that if you power up the good guys, you should do the same to the enemies to have a good conflict, with tension and struggle. And in theory, this isn't a bad thing: frankly, if most Indy!Harry fics had competent enemies for their overpowered versions of Harry, they'd be modestly more enjoyable. But let's be honest: considering that most of the worst in that genre are teenage power fantasies, the authors probably wouldn't even conceive of the idea of their main character suffering a loss, let alone writing such a scene.

But I still don't buy the phrase, for an entirely different reason: if there's a real, calculated probability that the good guys can win that the readers can distinguish, it saps far more tension out of the story, because the majority of authors want their stories to have a happy ending. Even if the main threat is amped up to match the main good guy, it still doesn't hold the same degree of threat, because most authors aren't going to have their main characters lose in the long run.

Frankly, I prefer an approach that's a little more in line with the Dresden Files or the Lord of the Rings or the average Jackie Chan movie or even Harry Potter himself - simply by setting up the main character as an underdog, who is outclassed, outsmarted, and often outgunned by his enemies, you build a certain connection with the main character via projection: namely, you imagine yourself facing such threats and you can get into the mindset of the characters. And thus when that main character wins, you get a certain degree of catharsis. But even still, I'd argue that if the author is still going to jump through hoops to make sure the main character somehow wins (Harry Potter), you still lose a lot of tension.

Fortunately, there's a very easy way to fix this and still maintain dramatic tension, but it's a way most authors don't have the balls to take: the main character doesn't always win.

Take the Dresden Files. The bittersweet endings to stories like Grave Peril, Death Masks, White Night, Small Favour, Turn Coat, (especially Turn Coat, IMO), and Changes not only show that not all victories are won without sacrifice. The fact that Butcher had the balls to drop pretty heavy endings for some of these stories not only builds a more realistic atmosphere, but also a pretty profound emotional connection with Harry. The fact that he can't always win or save everybody makes him human, and thus believable.

 

Just to throw in my two pence, mundane itself really means dull, ordinary, or of this world, not heavenly, so it's perfectly feasible for wizards to regard muggles as ordinary, or dull, as well as see themselves as higher beings...

 

The Queen.

If you see a mention of Royalty in a fic, you just know that it will either be the apocalypse (similar to The Dark Empire Saga), or the Queen sorts everything out within a month because magicals are inept.

More than that, the Queen often then means we get several other peeves following along - muggle becoming a horrifically racist term, 'first-generation' being the only applicable words, Harry's friend's relatives (or Harry himself) becoming the leaders of a country, despite not having any political knowledge at all.

 

"We are not amused - " "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

 

Good news, everyone!

"Posting a chapter that just says you aren't posting a new chapter yet" is the new "Posting a chapter". :facepalm


Decided to make a transparent png of that pic, because that's how anal I am.
​

 

^^ That made me chuckle.

 

The magical government being incredibly incompetent and/or corrupt is canonical. It was taken over by two dozen people. Any competent player could have taken over to either rule Wizarding Britain or clean it up, depending on what they wanted.

Whether it's the Queen or a fixer-sue or Harry Stu or anyone else, just saying how fucked up Wizarding Britain is does not make a fic bad. It's how you deal with it that's important. Or you do an AU where it isn't that fucked up.

 

Yeah, he wasn't saying that Wizarding Britain being fucked up made the fic bad.

 

I believe his body was destroyed during the Drowning of Numenour, or at least his non-evil appearance, and when he lost the Ring during the Last Alliance he lost the ability to take on a form at all.

 

Yep; he manifested as the now infamous red eye - it was a manifestation of his spirit.

 

Nope. He recreated his body. Gollum saw it and it only had four fingers on the hand where the Ring was. The Red Eye thing is movie creation. In books it was a metaphor of Sauron's will, not actual appearance of him.

More so, if I remember correctly, we will see Sauron in person in Hobbit movies, where he is called the Necromancer.

 

Yeah. Gandalf goes and 'kills' Sauron in The Hobbit, but because of the ring, he just gets turned into a spirit, and creates the Eye.

Also, if he has The Eye of Sauron, and The Mouth of Sauron, I wonder what other appendages are turned into something like that?

 

Genuinely thought the threat Gandalf delayed in dealing with to journey with the Dwarves and Bilbo was a contempory of Sauron and not the guy himself.


/goes off to reread The Hobbit...

 

I'm not sure if Sauron fight with Gandalf and his wizarding friends ended with him losing body again, but Gollum saw him having it back years after.

Anyway, getting back to pet peeves. I dislike time-travels stories where Harry wants everything to be the same as in his old world and does everything in his power to make it so. Actually, that part I can somehow accept, since it makes sense for a man out of his time (though prefer when he ultimately decides to see how it goes on its own), but I hate when he managed to recreate everything only "better". Like Hermione and Ron are couple by third year, him and Ginny by fourth and so on.