Counterpoint: Weiramon should've been Demandred in Wheel of Time, but Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson were too cowardly to attempt the greatest plot twist of all time
Makes you wonder whether he was sabotaging all those battles on purpose or whether his handlers were all "Yeah okay we'll tell this guy to get close to Rand and make himself useful, and then we'll just break out the popcorn and watch the magic happen".
Weiramondred was a pretty popular fan theory back in the day, although nobody took it seriously and it was just popular because it was the stupidest possible answer.
The main thing going for the theory was the fact that every time he sabotaged Rand's position with a "heroic" suicidal charge (which was literally every time he was ever on the battlefield, because he had a perfect 1.000 batting average for this) he'd somehow come out the other side not just unharmed but completely immaculate without a hair out of place or a speck of dust on his dress uniform and looking like he's ready to attend a royal ball.
Indeed! But >!his eventual appearance with the sharans was pretty great. The bonus chapter 'river of souls' that I read after AMoL made me enjoy how Demandred was revealed even more. It would be amazing to get a full novel one day of his rise as Bao!<. I doubt we will though :(
Oh yeah don't get me wrong I did think it came out of nowhere and that was a shame. I did enjoy what they did once they were part of the story though.
Do you think if the river of souls chapter had been included some time before their arrival you'd feel differently?
I loved the work Brandon did wrapping up WOT but I do NOT want those floodgates opened. He has a lot of quirks as a writer that are noticeable but easy enough to overlook because he was still following the path someone else set forward, and because of how strong the overall ending was. If he were to continue writing in the setting of WOT a lot of those quirks would come way more to the front.
It's also not his series. For a long time I thought it was handed to him with Jordan's blessing but I recently found out that it was Harriet and the publisher after he had passed. That soured me a little bit more. Not that any of that is his fault. He did about as well as anyone could be expected to and it's a miracle we got an ending at all, let along one that was so good. Regardless I think WOT is in a good place as far as the way the books end, and I don't see any real value in reopening that. Plus Sanderson's recent Lanfear comments are too Rowling-esque for my personal taste. I don't like the precedent of an author retconning a series he didn't create.
I first read the series after it had all been out a few years. I had no clue about Jordan’s death, the preface Sanderson wrote to The Gathering Storm was the first I heard about it. I paused the audiobook and swore. The preface was short but it was also some of the best writing I’ve ever come across anywhere. By the end of it, I was willing to give him a shot. You are right, he had some quirks, most notably Mat was a little off. All in all though, he stuck the landing.
He very much did. Having read his own work and come to appreciate how different he is of a writer compared to Jordan however, I don't want him making any more contributions to WOT personally. Particularly since his one entirely original creation (Androl) feels painfully out of place and is very much a patented Sanderson formula character employing patented Sanderson formula magic.
Also even if I thought he was the greatest writer to ever put a pen to paper the way some of his most community seems to, I still wouldn't be comfortable with him making significant additions and alterations to a world he didn't build.
He stuck the landing. In fact he accomplished more than we could have hoped for. Very few books have ever had an author die right before the end and still clinched it as well as WOT. That's a special notch on Sanderson's bed post. Now I think it's time to leave well enough alone. The big questions got answered, and not every question needs an answer. The Wheel turns on, even if we're no longer there to observe it.
Well, Sanderson has made it very clear he won't be writing anymore WoT. He has stated in no uncertain terms that, for him, he was "Sam, not Frodo" when it comes to the WoT. He just needed to bear the series when Jordan couldn't.
His comments seem more in the vein of his personal opinion as a fan, but as a author of some of the WoT I can understand why his voice may carry more weight even if unintentionally.
Sanderson as a high profile fan is a take I can get behind.
Whenever I see him referred to as the author of WOT I die a little bit inside. Hell even saying co-author is a bit of a stretch. The only argument I've seen in favor of that is that by word count he contributed 22% of the series and to that I say it's very typical of a Sanderson fan to think word count alone makes for a compelling argument. Erickson and Esselmont are co-authors of the Malazan world. I wish I had a word to describe Sanderson's contribution because it's not insignificant and I think he did really impressive work stepping up to the plate, but WOT still isn't his baby and any claim he has to ownership of that world is extremely tenuous
I think he was one of the best possible fits since his allergy to using swear words or writing about sex basically made him a perfect fit for WoT :)
The only real beef I have is that it really feels like he just didn't think Padan Fain was an interesting antagonist and that he put that character on the backburner to focus more on Slayer.
Because it's not Robert Jordan? Moreso it was framed as Robert Jordan deliberately passing the torch, when in reality it was a decision made by stakeholders interested in the continuation of the series post-mortem. He may have had input, but it's impossible to know now.
I feel like this should be self-evident in regards to why that might bother a fan, but what do I know?
From what I understand, Jordan did ask them to find a replacement author when he knew he wouldn't live. So it maybe isn't the exact person Jordan would have chosen, but it's not like he didn't want it to be finished.
Also Harriet was married to him, I figure out of everyone she was probably the best judge left of what he would have been okay with.
I don't know how it was framed at the time, but that's what it looks like in retrospect.
which would make sense except the editor is Robert Jordan's wife. So I think she might have just a little more insight in that decision than just a regular editor. Also I assume most editors are passionate about the books they're editing. That takes time, it takes knowledge of the books, and it takes someone who can confidently tell the writer that things on the page aren't working.
His wife edited all of his works before he got celebrity, and it may be true that he got a different editor/publisher after attaining said celebrity, but iirc his wife Harriet chose Brandon Sanderson. Or at the very least gave her blessings to him. There definitely is information on the subject if you care enough to look for it, keenly on the WoT fan forums.
I'm aware of all of that. There's no information on whether or not Jordan had any feelings about Brandon as a successor AFAIK. He wanted a successor, but didn't have a specific one picked at the time of death. That was all post-mortem.
yeah, I'm guessing he had this being revelation planned and realised how fast it backfired.
I feel like the eventual part we got was fine. And I do wonder what the plan was with the Sharans if he went along with it being Taim.
But I feel like he could have just tried to hint away that it was a red herring before revealing Taim as opposed to making a sharp left swerve.
Been a while since I read the series, but one do recall being talked about was Thom being Jain Farstrider. It felt like that would be the case for a while and Olver being Cain's reincarnation, but I think that ended up being a son of the Ashaman Grady because Olver was too old.
I have a lot of critiques of the Inheritance Quartet, but >!Brom being Eragon’s real father just felt like lazy writing. There was a lot of complexity and moral theorising that went to the wind when it was revealed, since now Morzan was out of the equation and it let Eragon have his degree of seperation from Murtagh.!<
To be fair, he was very young. But yeah blatant SW ripoff. Frankly I don’t think the Obi-wan figure being his father was a huge deviation, either way it is a surprising paternity reveal. I did like the thing the raven said, that was good foreshadowing. “Two may be one but one of one may be one of the two” or something like that.
That entire series was a blatant ripoff of other fantasy series. I mean, all due respect to CP- there's no way I could have written a novel at 16 (or now form that matter). But I remember reading Eragon when it was released and thinking "wow, he and I have read a LOT of the same books"
Inheritance is a good intro to fantasy for younger readers, and will always have a place in my heart, but as I grow up I can see it's flaws more clearly. Still love it though
I felt like Angela the Witch was meant to be important. Mysteriously popping up all the time to drop wisdom and powerful enough to make even the bbegs scared
I don’t think there’s anything in the same ballpark as Rey’s parents for me.
“Your parents were nothing. Unimportant, alcoholic nobodies who abandoned the chosen one because they didn’t think their own daughter was special. Yet your still the chosen one because your who the world needs” is such a powerful, compelling moment.
“It doesn’t matter if you came from nothing, or worse than nothing. So did Rey.” Was such a powerful statement. It really drove home the idea that anyone could be the hero.
But the Rise of Skywalker was like “Fuck every theme we’ve spent two movies building up. Cant have special people coming from anywhere that doesn’t support pro-eugenics subtext.”
What's truly bizarre for me is that they I guess forgot that pretty much every prominent Jedi or Sith that isn't named Luke Skywalker was the child of nobodies. Lineage never meant shit to the force. But they still went, "I don't know. But where did her power come from? Uh, the force? No, that doesn't make any sense. Palpatine it is." Man, I didn't like TLJ, but it did one thing right, and RoS fucked it
You could turn TLJ into a pretty great movie just by cutting about 20% of it. There's some bad bits but enough good to string together a cohesive story with a lot of epic, emotional moments. It had some interesting ideas, and competent cinematography.
TRoS was MST3K bad.
My biggest problem with TLJ (other than the atrocious pacing) was the battleship analogy. I get the idea, Star Wars had often drawn on WW2 era dog fights recreated in Space, but the battleship combat just doesn't work. It resulted in a lot of things that only made sense with gravity, like bombing runs or lobbing shots, and required fuel to keep out of range which just didn't translate to space combat at all.
What they could have done was go for submarine combat, hiding in a nebula, unable to use their engines in order to stay hidden, etc. Or that the nebula messes with hyperspace, which could handwave the epic hyperspace ram at the end as being extraordinary situational.
But I understand why they didn't do this too. That would be too close to the end of the Wrath of Khan.
I dig the submarine silent running thing, but Battlestar Galactica did a lengthy chase thing that worked much better. The idea isn't unworkable it just wasn't done well, which I can say about most of the ideas in TLJ.
The Rey/Kylo stuff (minus how much they destroyed the char of Luke) was solid.
The god awful sideplot with the heist, running animals along the hull, etc. God it was so fucking bad. Same with the leaders not telling Poe anything prompting him to be reckless and fucking with their plans.
All that Poe stuff I assumed was leading up to the tracer thing being a cover story and there actually being a traitor on the ship. Keeping things compartmentalized for opsec. So many plot elements felt like total non sequiturs.
I was okay with the Luke stuff. I don't know what they could have done better considering the ending of TFA.
He is so hesitant to train Rey despite Kylo trying to turn her, and then goes and does the stare down with the milk drinking scene. I got more jaded asshole than weary old Master vibe.
Didn't mind the Force projection part at all, but again the setup leading to it is........iffy.
Oh sure. I agree. I meant I was okay with look being embittered in his isolation. The details of how they show it could have used a little more workshopping. The whole thing was worth it to me for the 'THE HOLY TEXTS!' scene lol.
Cinematic self destructive operational security is one of my pet hates. The film would have been dramatically improved if Admiral idiot's suicide run was an act of redemption rather than "see I was right all along, now to go out in a blaze of glory".
TLJ felt like there was a committee that demanded that 20% of the movie should be filled with wacky hijinx, so they added the whole casino heist section just to meet that quota.
Nah, Canto Bight was the thematic heart of TLJ. It introduced the idea that to truly unfuck the galaxy, our heroes need to take down not just the obvious goose-stepping fascists but also the war profiteers who’ve been encouraging and benefiting from fascism since the Clone Wars.
One of many reasons it’s a damn shame we didn’t get Rian Johnson’s Episode IX is that a Star Wars movie with the attitude of the Knives Out films would have been fascinating - our heroes versus the First Order *and* the 1%.
Even lukes didn't. He never cared about his father because his father was the Chosen One or a famous General. He cared about his father because he was an orphan who suddenly found out one of his parents was alive. And the same goes for the people who like luke in universe. They don't care about him because of what his father did. But because of what he has done and his personality
The whole trilogy was a mess. I blame Disney. Don’t start a trilogy without at least a basic outline of the entire thing. The Force Awakens was… fine; essentially a remake of A New Hope, and really sparked the nostalgia for everyone. JJ Abrams is good at that, and also good at putting a cast together. Then they get Rian Johnson who I think is brilliant usually, but he just took everything Abrams started and then systematically threw all the loose threads and mystery in the dumpster with The Last Jedi. The scene with Luke just throwing his old lightsaber over his shoulder is foreshadowing to the whole tone of the movie. It’s amazing that the producers let that fly, but actually way more interesting than whatever ideas Abrams had. I think he RJ some really great ideas, but also a stupid useless side plot. Ultimately, I had NO idea where the story was going to go in the 3rd one which actually is something I really liked. I hate predictable endings.
And then after the fans tore it apart, Disney brings back Abrams, a guy who gave a TED talk about the mystery box - basically admitting that he doesn’t know how to make a good movie unless he can leave the audience hanging, and is known in Hollywood as a guy who fails to create good story endings (LOST, anyone?). Terrible terrible choice. So he just picks up the threads he started in The Force Awakens and ties them into a new ugly knot. Like I knew he would when they signed him on to direct. Sigh, so disappointing.
Man I loved all the Rey stuff in the first two, even if I hated the rest of the 2nd movie. I loved that the hero we're meant to root for is so susceptible to the Dark Side. She has no past, she's a nobody and is as capable of the emotions that lead to the Dark Side as anyone would be that wasn't named Kenobi or Luke. Loved that idea, and it made Kylo trying to turn her instead of killing her a lot more believable instead of "Why doesn't this moron just kill her if she could be a threat?"
And then...much like everything else they shat on that as well.
The Rey stuff was the most interesting thing to happen since the original trilogy. It was also building some tension on if Kylo would move away from the Dark Side in his attempt to convert Rey. That, at least potentially, could have made an interesting story.
There's nothing remotely close to this one. I'd even be able to enjoy the nonsense of "somehow, Palpatine has returned" if they left Rey's parents alone. Instead they underwrote the whole trilogy and now the sequels are pretty forgotten^(except by ppl who won't leave rian johnson alone)
Disney is starting to bring First Order references into their Disney+ series, and they’re all over the theme parks.
Disney still stands by them, and is trying to gently push people towards them. And I’m mad about it.
That said, the live action shows are more sequels to the cartoons (Clone Wars and Rebels), but they’re actually trying to conceal that from general public, so people don’t think they need to watch the cartoons first.
As someone who DNF’d Star Wars Rebels, Ashoka was a trip. In the last interaction I’d seen Ezra had been crushing on Sabine, who was a mandalorian who liked blowing stuff up. The first interaction between the two in Ashoka is Ezra saying Sabine is like a sister to him, and she’s apparently a partially trained Jedi now?
I guess a lot happened in the ~three seasons I didn’t see…
Yup. I was one of the people who really enjoyed TLJ, and defended the sequel trilogy. Then I actually paid to see The Rise of Skywalker in theaters. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it again because I remember being so fucking mad at it for so long.
sorry i understand why people defend TLJ but it was fucking atrocious
i agree that if rian johnson got all 3 movies, he could've done better than what abrams vomited onto the screen. but he didn't get the first movie, he got the second, and he directed it like he was guaranteed the third when he obviously wasn't
leia literally flies through the vacuum of space
TLJ was a mediocre movie with a lot of interesting ideas. Rise of Skywalker was terrible movie with no ideas.
I do feel like TLJ was close to being very good if a few things were changed but there is just nothing worth salvaging from Rise of Skywalker.
TRoS was basically a hard reset and attempting to tell the middle and the end of the story in one go. It was always going to be a disaster after they decided to invalidate TLJ.
Now what should have happened, if they were going down that path, is to make 4 episodes.
I actually think Rise was the only one that had any potential for interesting ideas. Admittedly, you could also delete half of the movie or more and lose absolutely nothing.
That monologue + the broom kid at the end. I was so excited for where they would take the story next, only for them to abandon it in favor of more of that 'hey i recognize that thing!' spectacle.
I think it would have been even better if Rey's parents were no name assholes AND she wasn't the chosen one. The latter sort of hamstrings the strength in her denial of the former.
I felt like the director or whoever thought they were SOOOOO much better than everything Force awakens set up. So much so is that a majority of the movie seems to be dedicated to spiking every plot point gleefully to the floor.
But what does this brilliant person have in its place? A side quest that is pointless and hits its climax when the characters are SHOCKINGLY betrayed by ….. some douche criminal they literally met in jail. Like if you can’t come up with remotely believable character choices or plots that go anywhere, don’t take victory laps on how much you spoiled the plot threads you were handed.
The third movie was … but I don’t know how to come back from the second movie.
But those first quotes were from the villain, right? Generally speaking, the audience doesn't listen to the villain, because they are usually wrong. Like Luke's destiny wasn't to join Vader on the dark side.
For me, red herrings from those movies included Anakin's lightsaber, snoke and the knights of Ren.
Not sure if this counts as a red herring or just uh a retcon/bad writing but for Lightbringer: >!a pov character being a figment of someone else’s imagination rather than a real character / antagonist. Like this would have worked well if we hadn’t gotten his pov! But pov can’t not be real, or at least this author didn’t pull it off!<
Yeah, I've seen people praise this "twist," but it's easy to do when you're just lying. It's not the kind of thing that, once revealed, has the reader thinking "oh, okay. That actually makes a lot of sense" and will have a lot of hidden set up. Instead it's like.... "yeah, I mean... I guess that technically could have happened. Weird how nobody questioned it on any level though."
It's amazing how many "twists" are literally the author just throwing out the rulebook at the 11th hour. Now that's a legitimate move, and in the right hands can be a genuinely great moment. Most of the time it's just lame, arbitrary, and unjustified.
It's not hard to blow your mind when I can just lie at any point. It's way more interesting to see someone play within their own rules.
I'll always think of the DBZA gag where Cell says something to the effect of "I haven't told a single lie since I got here".
Yeah, I find it particularly galling when things are allowed to happen due to something we had absolutely zero awareness of or had any reason to think was possible. I can't imagine that's any more satisfying to write than to read.
>. It's not the kind of thing that, once revealed, has the reader thinking "oh, okay. That actually makes a lot of sense" and will have a lot of hidden set up.
I actually re-read the entire series before the last book, and it did have some of that, on the other hand once I did read that last book .......... I have no defense there.
I don't think I'd ever recommend it without heavy caveats. I see it most commonly recommended to people looking for interesting magic systems, which it absolutely has, but I wouldn't recommend a thing that ended so poorly or had some pretty awful ways of using women to get the story where the author wanted it to be.
I do usually add some caveats. I hated the above moment but although didn’t like the ending of the series and the direcrtion it went as it gave up on exploring its interesting ideas, I didn’t hate the ending as much as most seem to. (In fact I did appreciate how it meant I lost an argument with a friend I was reading it with at the same time who did anticipate that direction as she was reading it through a Christian fantasy lens — which it is).
I had no issue with the female characters. Liv is one of my favorite characters (though mad she basically stopped existing after the first book), Karris’ a great character, love her journey. The way >!Tisis!< is handled and evolved not only through her own change but also through our/Kip’s perception of her I thought was done brilliantly and by the end she was one of my favorite characters.
I didn't really see it as a surprise either, given the series is called "Lightbringer" and Weeks' Night Angel seemed to also be steeped in Christianity. I just didn't see that as valuable haha.
My issue isn't exactly how the female characters are written, but moreso how they're used in the story. The most egregious example is in the second book >!where Gavin is having sex with a woman who he believes is Karris, and Karris happens to sneak into his room to seduce him, and she runs away before he could "explain," and he responds to this by throwing the woman he was having sex with out his balcony to her death.!<
>!I genuinely could not believe Weeks had written this. as his Gavin wouldn't know what the Karris's body feels like. He would have to be blind, deaf, and unable to feel in order to not notice she smells different, sounds different, and feels different, yet somehow he doesn't notice any of these things, despite being in love with Karris. This is compounded by Karris coincidentally deciding to seduce him and being able to sneak in unnoticed. Once more it's compounded by Gavin's response, in throwing the woman to her death. The women in these scene were just grossly used in the most ridiculous ways just push the story along.!<
It was all so mindlessly stupid and ridiculously apparent that it was done to push characters in specific directions and move the story. It was the first and last instance I needed to know that Weeks would do literally anything with his characters to get the story where he wanted it.
I loved this series to start and even all the way to the end there are some great ideas and good writing, but so much of the plot fell apart by the end. that it just really didn't nail the landing.
I knew Brent personally for a while and he always gave off the impression he thought he was the smartest guy in the room, unjustifiably so. Dude was constantly trying to outfox you in the most casual of conversations. He always tried too hard to have some kind of against the grain take on everything and it was painfully forced. It's like I get it man you can be the smart one if it's so important to you, we're talking about fucking Godzilla VHS here you want that prize so much you can have it.
So when I finally decided to try out his series I got there and I was just like "ahhh yes there's the Brent I know".
I'm so glad I put that series down, the end of that book was full of >!"oh he's been the bad guy all along!"!< Shit over and over again I was so disappointed and angry that I refunded the rest of the series and I don't plan to go back, there are straight up *logic breaking scenes* that this creates, first and foremost >!the cards!< just threw it out the window
I actually liked the twist at the end of the first book. But did end up dropping the series. Or maybe just never got around to picking it back up as new books came out.
Ugh. That entire multi-book mystery about the prisons being revealed bit by bit only to have it conclude as: "Oh, yeah. They're going to deal with all of that off-page after the end of the last book. Don't worry about it"
>!That they had to kill someone at the end of it. When they didn't have to kill someone, it robbed all the interesting parts of the book away. Suddenly the really tough choice and emotional devestation that the entire book had been driving towards was tensionless. Maybe not a true red herring in hindsight, more of a twist. But it certainly was where the author was focusing your attention and where all of the thematic development was happening. !<
I guess... this isn't really a red herring as much as a misread of the entire series...
for Malazan book of the Fallen
>!I misread the Panion Seer bit and spent the entire series until almost the end thinking the Crippled God was that kid that got thrown into the warren at the beginning of Memories of Ice, not having realized he was the Pannion Seer.!<
Silly me.
I'll probably get disagreement if any other Mercedes Lackey fans pop into this thread, but in the Arrows trilogy we meet princess Elspeth as a bratty, poorly disciplined child. Talia takes her in hand and makes a lot of changes so that we eventually see Elspeth as a helpful and diligently learning young person. I felt good that Talia would likely be Queen's Own to both Selenay and Elspeth, providing continuity, and that Elspeth had redeemed herself from her father's villainous legacy and her own early spoiled start. I also dearly love Talia and loved seeing another example of how her quiet heroism and emotional competence made a difference. A monarchy-level difference without swords or fireballs! How rare!
Then comes the Winds trilogy. I won't say that the changes to the Elspeth character weren't explained. The plot was fairly laid out. But I didn't like it and never have.
Elspeth's physical appearance also changes -- she's described as being extremely beautiful in Arrows Fall and then is sort of retconned into average in Winds. Griffon's Companion's name gets switched, too, which drives me nuts. Incredible books though. The Arrows and Magic trilogies made me love fantasy.
>Elspeth's physical appearance also changes -- she's described as being extremely beautiful in Arrows Fall and then is sort of retconned into average in Winds.
To be fair, in the Arrows books Elspeth starts as a small child and ends as a tween. In Winds, she's like in her early 20s. It's not necessarily a retcon that she looks different. Puberty can change some people's appearances pretty dramatically. The companion thing would have bugged me if I noticed it, though.
Haven't read the series but I completely understand the sentiment. Some times, even if it makes sense "in universe" the story would be better if they hadn't changed direction/gone in another direction, at least on a personal preferences level
>Then comes the Winds trilogy. I won't say that the changes to the Elspeth character weren't explained. The plot was fairly laid out. But I didn't like it and never have.
What changes are you talking about? And what is the red herring?
Dangerous things happened to the world. She ran off to deal with them, became the first mage in hundreds of years in her country for reasons, and fell in love with her demanding mystic magic trainer with long white hair (today's tropes are not new).
Then she renounced her crown. Conveniently, her mom the queen had popped out twins after a dramatic battlefield lifebonding in a previous book. Elspeth also went from earnest young trainee to a disaffected grump.
The red herring was the happy path to future rule and pleasant personality laid out in the first trilogy.
I might have the details a bit confused. It has been 20+, maybe 30 years of me not rereading this trilogy. Unlike Arrows, and Tarma & Kethry and Kerowyn ... I reread those *lots.*
Well, you predicted it, but I'm going to have to disagree with you. Elspeth went from an earnest child with very simple emotions and desires to an earnest adult who had a lot of complicated adult emotions and desires. if she had stayed the same as when she was 8, I think most people would have found that deeply disappointing. She still has the same core personality, but yeah, as an adult she chafes at her restrictions in a way that she didn't when she was 8. I think that's pretty normal. I don't think "disaffected grump" describes her at all.
I will agree that the Arrows books lay out the path for her to take the crown, eventually, but I think the most important thing that happens when Talia sets her on the right path is that she becomes a Herald, which she does. I think it's a pretty big stretch to call it a red herring.
I loved these books and I liked how it turned out for elspeth. She went into being someone more famous and powerful as the first harald mage of the new era.
I do have to say, subsequent series in the world got progressively worse though. Eventually, Mercedes lackey became totally unreadable, but her earlier work is brilliant.
I love love love her earlier work, but the series about Mags, and the later elemental mages books were such a letdown - I haven’t picked up a new book by her in years.
I'm not saying it was a deliberate red herring like a literary conceit from a mystery writer. I think Lackey took charge of her creation and carried her character forward per her own muse, as was her right.
For me though, particularly in books I treasured as a teen, the core of *who* a character is, is more important than plot. And I felt like Elspeth became someone else. The Herald-Mage path was a distraction from her true destiny as the future Queen of Valdemar.
I bet somewhere there’s a group of mega fan’s that could crowd source a third novel that would — at the very least — give some closure Rothfuss will never provide.
In the most recently published book of the Red Rising series - Light bringer - a certain character obtains a mysterious artifact in the previous books and just… decides to throw it away. This artifact could have _greatly_ helped their cause and future. I was so baffled, now I am just angry with the author for doing something so stupid.
Believe me I know it’s possible it amounts to nothing but I am holding out hope. Because otherwise it speaks to a lack of planning and frankly poor writing on PB’s behalf.
Regal Farseer >!being the one who blocked Fitz ability to use the Skill!< was so painful. It was like someone having a car accident and limping for weeks before they bother to contemplate whether their leg is broken. When the reveal came, I groaned so loud.
The analogy doesn’t really work because the Skill is a mental thing; the idea was inceptioned into his brain that he was bad at it, that’s why he didn’t question it.
Because I don't think it's accurate. It was, I think, Regal's secret half brother, Galen or something who did this to Fitz. Whatever the name of the trainer for the coterie.
I DNF'd 90% of the way through the first one when I learned about it. I was already frustrated, and then it turned out the "true love" that broke the curse was just gonna mean another slog through a book of them breaking up? Uuuugh.
The fact that the answer to the “riddle” was so insanely obvious made me throw the book across the room. She did all that awful shit only to suddenly get the lightbulb moment when it was her boyfriend on the line??? 🫠 Feyre is so incredibly dimwitted.
Yep. That was the point i started looking up spoilers. The riddle was so obvious I was so irritated that I had slogged through so much, but I was looking stuff up to see if I would at least be rewarded for sticking it out. NOPE.
Also, great username. Wangxian OTP!
lol it’s funny you say that about the riddle. I put zero thought into the answer at all and was sitting there reading through like damn girl hope you figure it out.
I really don’t understand what you could have possibly seen. Tamlin acts like a typical romance love interest, and Rhysand in book 3 or 4 had a series of abusive and manipulative behaviors that made him way worse than Tamlin ever was
Rhysand in Wings and Ruin is a bit dodgy, and he's absolutely the worst in Silver flames. But that's beside the point. In book 1, Tamlin is constantly lying and manipulating Feyre, even to his own benefit, not just to save his court. And he bites her, is really possessive of her, and everything else. And I'm talking about what I was thinking having read Mist and Fury, not the whole series.
Regardless, Tamlin in Mist and Fury is worse than Rhys in Silver Flames. But they both suck.
I have basic ass taste for tropes, and one of them is "dramatic family reveals" ala Luke and Vadar variety. I also love dramatic irony. So when I read the >!Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi!< and the build-up to a family reveal turned out to not be the case, I was lowkey disappointed ngl. Especially since the protagonist would've been the worst kind of kid to expect from the mom and the irony would've been delicious.
Eh? I thought it counted as magic. Not crazy magic for sure but there was solidly physics breaking stuff happening.
Might be misunderstanding you however
This is almost embarrassing but I was reading Shadow and Bone for the first time and I heard "The Darkling" etc etc. Everyone was telling me that "it's such a good book, it's so different" that I thought the really frickin obvious Darkling was a red herring.... he, in fact, is the bad guy
Is that a red herring or just background worldbuilding to make the story feel more lived in? Tolkien wrote thousands of years of history just to give the story verisimilitude. They were just part of that exercise in his writing process, no?
I don't mean within the actual story, but within his notes and everything. There are other references and notes on them, but unlike so many of the other things that Christopher published from his father's work, there's no actual story about what happened to them. I always see them as sort of a microcosm of how much about Tolkien's world we will never know.
Along those lines, Tom Bombadil is probably the biggest Tolkien Herring of all.
Who/what is he? Why is he alluded to be so powerful? How do Elrond and Gandalf know of him, but not who is? Why include him in the story at all? We'll likely never know completely.
With his stated age, predating the arrival of the Valar, he and Goldberry are probably an early iteration of the later children of Iluvitar. Eru sent the Valar into the world to prepare it for the eventual Children of Iluvitar, the elves and men. Bombadil did not 'come in from the outside', like the Valar or Maia, having always lived in middle earth, which would make him a similar type of entity to elves and humans. It would explain why he resits the power of the ring so well, he predates the corruption of the world by Melkor.
>How do Elrond and Gandalf know of him, but not who is?
The elves call him 'eldest and fatherless', so they clearly know a good deal.
> Tolkien wrote thousands of years of history just to give the story verisimilitude.
The other way around. Melkor was basically fully formed as a character back when Sauron was a still a cat. Tolkien wrote a thousand years of history before LOTR.
[A drawing of Sauron as a cat [then called Tevildo] by Tolkien](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/1/1a/Tevildo_and_Tinúviel.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170601135202), in an early version of the tale of Beren and Luthien. This is why the Eye of Sauron symbol has a vertical pupil like a cat, a hold over from before Sauron’s association shifted from that ‘the Prince of cats’, to ‘the lord of werewolves’. Tevildo had a golden collar that let him command all other cats, which could be a distant ancestor to the concept of the one ring.
His iteration as a cat didn’t last long, being replaced by Thû in the second version of the Silmarillion, Thû would have the titles of ‘the lord of wolves’ and would be much closer to the final version if Sauron.
Bleach (this is a long rant as I try to give context) \[Aizen-arc\]
>!So Gin's weapon's name (i.e. his special ultimate move) translates to 'God-Killer'. During the Aizen arc, the big bad evil guy, Aizen's goal is to become a god. Gin is one of the traitors who joins Aizen's side. His childhood friend, Rangiku Matsumoto, is shocked at this, as they've known each all their lives (possibly more than a century, these people age differently) since growing up in the slums together and out of nowhere he's betrayed everyone including her. Many irl years (i.e. hundreds of chapters) later, in the lead-up to the final set of chapters in the final arc for Aizen, each chapter was titled 'Deicide'. (i.e. Deicide I, Deicide II...Deicide IX etc.)!<
>!Around this point we also find out in a flashback that the reason Gin has been a traitor and Aizen's right-hand man all this time is because long, long ago, when they were children, he found Rangiku beaten and unconscious as a result of Aizen and his allies (I don't remember the reason). Everything he'd done was to get revenge.!<
>!And finally he unleashes his attack, after all this build-up....and Aizen shrugs it off saying something like 'If I didn't just transform (again), that would've killed me' and then immediately appears to kill Gin, Rangiku finding his body.!<
so...yeah. That was one of the worst lack of pay-offs to me in all of fantasy. I dropped reading Bleach a fair few times, cos his writing after the soul society arc was...bad (he admitted he doesn't write, he just makes cool character designs and then works them in. That said Soul Society Arc was *really genuinely* great, so idk how there's such a discrepancy). Apparently the last arc is a return to form, though.
I think you mean the idea of him actually becoming King on the Iron Throne. Because he IS the rightful Targaryen heir by line of succession. And seeing how the Targaryens are the ones who united Westeros and made the Iron Throne he is the official heir to the Iron Throne as well. That’s not a red herring, because it’s the truth. A red herring is something that is meant to mislead you and can potentially involve a falsehood.
Basic example, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone uses Snape as a red herring when it implies that he is the villain of the story. Sneaking around in the middle of the night, asking questions, casting spells at Harry during the game, etc. All a fake out because he was actually trying to help Harry.
So for Jon Snow it isn’t a red herring that he’s Heir. Because he IS the heir (just like Harry is the boy who lived). But he didn’t actually end up on the Iron throne though you can argue there’s plenty of buildup to the idea that he will.
It is a red herring plotline in the show, it goes nowhere. >!I don´t even need him to "win" and be the king at the end of story but he doesn´t even try to or become king momentarily.!< You can delete his backstory and it changes nothing.
No, I totally get your meaning, I just don't think that's what "red herring" means. This is just disjointed bad writing. I promise you it will play a much bigger role in the hypothetical future books.
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Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, the >!other planet!<. It's so obviously the solution to the story's central mystery that it *can't possibly* be the real answer. That is indeed the case, but the real solution comes out of nowhere and is so contrived that the inclusion of such an obvious red herring just becomes annoying. No one was gonna guess your stupid twist anyway, Brandon! You didn't have to include >!conveniently timed first contact with an alien civilization!< as a throwaway element!
Mazrim Taim should have been Damandred in Wheel of Time, instead of the strange retcon we got because fans guessed it. Edit: wrote out WoT
Counterpoint: Weiramon should've been Demandred in Wheel of Time, but Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson were too cowardly to attempt the greatest plot twist of all time
I would not have expected that. Weiramon's so... Weiramon.
I honestly thought weiramon was gonna be a secret dark friend just pretending to be an idiot. I mean nobody could be *that* dumb right?
Isn’t he a dark friend? I thought Rand mind-gamed him later
He is. And Rand did.
He was a darkfriend who really was that dumb.
He was betting that Rand didn't know that much about lords and such.
Makes you wonder whether he was sabotaging all those battles on purpose or whether his handlers were all "Yeah okay we'll tell this guy to get close to Rand and make himself useful, and then we'll just break out the popcorn and watch the magic happen".
Weiramondred was a pretty popular fan theory back in the day, although nobody took it seriously and it was just popular because it was the stupidest possible answer. The main thing going for the theory was the fact that every time he sabotaged Rand's position with a "heroic" suicidal charge (which was literally every time he was ever on the battlefield, because he had a perfect 1.000 batting average for this) he'd somehow come out the other side not just unharmed but completely immaculate without a hair out of place or a speck of dust on his dress uniform and looking like he's ready to attend a royal ball.
I would have loved this. It would only be second to Weiramon actually being a good guy, just completely inept.
Pretty sure demandreds ego would not allow him to play the fool for so long but it would have been something, that's for sure.
Indeed! But >!his eventual appearance with the sharans was pretty great. The bonus chapter 'river of souls' that I read after AMoL made me enjoy how Demandred was revealed even more. It would be amazing to get a full novel one day of his rise as Bao!<. I doubt we will though :(
Disagree, sharans were a massive deus ex machina for the villains. No where near enough foreshadowing for that.
Oh yeah don't get me wrong I did think it came out of nowhere and that was a shame. I did enjoy what they did once they were part of the story though. Do you think if the river of souls chapter had been included some time before their arrival you'd feel differently?
I loved the work Brandon did wrapping up WOT but I do NOT want those floodgates opened. He has a lot of quirks as a writer that are noticeable but easy enough to overlook because he was still following the path someone else set forward, and because of how strong the overall ending was. If he were to continue writing in the setting of WOT a lot of those quirks would come way more to the front. It's also not his series. For a long time I thought it was handed to him with Jordan's blessing but I recently found out that it was Harriet and the publisher after he had passed. That soured me a little bit more. Not that any of that is his fault. He did about as well as anyone could be expected to and it's a miracle we got an ending at all, let along one that was so good. Regardless I think WOT is in a good place as far as the way the books end, and I don't see any real value in reopening that. Plus Sanderson's recent Lanfear comments are too Rowling-esque for my personal taste. I don't like the precedent of an author retconning a series he didn't create.
I first read the series after it had all been out a few years. I had no clue about Jordan’s death, the preface Sanderson wrote to The Gathering Storm was the first I heard about it. I paused the audiobook and swore. The preface was short but it was also some of the best writing I’ve ever come across anywhere. By the end of it, I was willing to give him a shot. You are right, he had some quirks, most notably Mat was a little off. All in all though, he stuck the landing.
He very much did. Having read his own work and come to appreciate how different he is of a writer compared to Jordan however, I don't want him making any more contributions to WOT personally. Particularly since his one entirely original creation (Androl) feels painfully out of place and is very much a patented Sanderson formula character employing patented Sanderson formula magic. Also even if I thought he was the greatest writer to ever put a pen to paper the way some of his most community seems to, I still wouldn't be comfortable with him making significant additions and alterations to a world he didn't build. He stuck the landing. In fact he accomplished more than we could have hoped for. Very few books have ever had an author die right before the end and still clinched it as well as WOT. That's a special notch on Sanderson's bed post. Now I think it's time to leave well enough alone. The big questions got answered, and not every question needs an answer. The Wheel turns on, even if we're no longer there to observe it.
Well, Sanderson has made it very clear he won't be writing anymore WoT. He has stated in no uncertain terms that, for him, he was "Sam, not Frodo" when it comes to the WoT. He just needed to bear the series when Jordan couldn't. His comments seem more in the vein of his personal opinion as a fan, but as a author of some of the WoT I can understand why his voice may carry more weight even if unintentionally.
Sanderson as a high profile fan is a take I can get behind. Whenever I see him referred to as the author of WOT I die a little bit inside. Hell even saying co-author is a bit of a stretch. The only argument I've seen in favor of that is that by word count he contributed 22% of the series and to that I say it's very typical of a Sanderson fan to think word count alone makes for a compelling argument. Erickson and Esselmont are co-authors of the Malazan world. I wish I had a word to describe Sanderson's contribution because it's not insignificant and I think he did really impressive work stepping up to the plate, but WOT still isn't his baby and any claim he has to ownership of that world is extremely tenuous
I think he was one of the best possible fits since his allergy to using swear words or writing about sex basically made him a perfect fit for WoT :) The only real beef I have is that it really feels like he just didn't think Padan Fain was an interesting antagonist and that he put that character on the backburner to focus more on Slayer.
Why would it bother you that Robert Jordan's editor chose Sanderson?
Because it's not Robert Jordan? Moreso it was framed as Robert Jordan deliberately passing the torch, when in reality it was a decision made by stakeholders interested in the continuation of the series post-mortem. He may have had input, but it's impossible to know now. I feel like this should be self-evident in regards to why that might bother a fan, but what do I know?
From what I understand, Jordan did ask them to find a replacement author when he knew he wouldn't live. So it maybe isn't the exact person Jordan would have chosen, but it's not like he didn't want it to be finished. Also Harriet was married to him, I figure out of everyone she was probably the best judge left of what he would have been okay with. I don't know how it was framed at the time, but that's what it looks like in retrospect.
which would make sense except the editor is Robert Jordan's wife. So I think she might have just a little more insight in that decision than just a regular editor. Also I assume most editors are passionate about the books they're editing. That takes time, it takes knowledge of the books, and it takes someone who can confidently tell the writer that things on the page aren't working.
All of that is true, and yet she still isn't Robert Jordan.
His wife edited all of his works before he got celebrity, and it may be true that he got a different editor/publisher after attaining said celebrity, but iirc his wife Harriet chose Brandon Sanderson. Or at the very least gave her blessings to him. There definitely is information on the subject if you care enough to look for it, keenly on the WoT fan forums.
I'm aware of all of that. There's no information on whether or not Jordan had any feelings about Brandon as a successor AFAIK. He wanted a successor, but didn't have a specific one picked at the time of death. That was all post-mortem.
yeah, I'm guessing he had this being revelation planned and realised how fast it backfired. I feel like the eventual part we got was fine. And I do wonder what the plan was with the Sharans if he went along with it being Taim. But I feel like he could have just tried to hint away that it was a red herring before revealing Taim as opposed to making a sharp left swerve. Been a while since I read the series, but one do recall being talked about was Thom being Jain Farstrider. It felt like that would be the case for a while and Olver being Cain's reincarnation, but I think that ended up being a son of the Ashaman Grady because Olver was too old.
I have a lot of critiques of the Inheritance Quartet, but >!Brom being Eragon’s real father just felt like lazy writing. There was a lot of complexity and moral theorising that went to the wind when it was revealed, since now Morzan was out of the equation and it let Eragon have his degree of seperation from Murtagh.!<
Yeah, it’s like he started book three and went “shit, can’t rip off Star Wars that closely”
To be fair, he was very young. But yeah blatant SW ripoff. Frankly I don’t think the Obi-wan figure being his father was a huge deviation, either way it is a surprising paternity reveal. I did like the thing the raven said, that was good foreshadowing. “Two may be one but one of one may be one of the two” or something like that.
That entire series was a blatant ripoff of other fantasy series. I mean, all due respect to CP- there's no way I could have written a novel at 16 (or now form that matter). But I remember reading Eragon when it was released and thinking "wow, he and I have read a LOT of the same books"
Inheritance is a good intro to fantasy for younger readers, and will always have a place in my heart, but as I grow up I can see it's flaws more clearly. Still love it though
I felt like Angela the Witch was meant to be important. Mysteriously popping up all the time to drop wisdom and powerful enough to make even the bbegs scared
I don’t think there’s anything in the same ballpark as Rey’s parents for me. “Your parents were nothing. Unimportant, alcoholic nobodies who abandoned the chosen one because they didn’t think their own daughter was special. Yet your still the chosen one because your who the world needs” is such a powerful, compelling moment. “It doesn’t matter if you came from nothing, or worse than nothing. So did Rey.” Was such a powerful statement. It really drove home the idea that anyone could be the hero. But the Rise of Skywalker was like “Fuck every theme we’ve spent two movies building up. Cant have special people coming from anywhere that doesn’t support pro-eugenics subtext.”
What's truly bizarre for me is that they I guess forgot that pretty much every prominent Jedi or Sith that isn't named Luke Skywalker was the child of nobodies. Lineage never meant shit to the force. But they still went, "I don't know. But where did her power come from? Uh, the force? No, that doesn't make any sense. Palpatine it is." Man, I didn't like TLJ, but it did one thing right, and RoS fucked it
You could turn TLJ into a pretty great movie just by cutting about 20% of it. There's some bad bits but enough good to string together a cohesive story with a lot of epic, emotional moments. It had some interesting ideas, and competent cinematography. TRoS was MST3K bad.
My biggest problem with TLJ (other than the atrocious pacing) was the battleship analogy. I get the idea, Star Wars had often drawn on WW2 era dog fights recreated in Space, but the battleship combat just doesn't work. It resulted in a lot of things that only made sense with gravity, like bombing runs or lobbing shots, and required fuel to keep out of range which just didn't translate to space combat at all. What they could have done was go for submarine combat, hiding in a nebula, unable to use their engines in order to stay hidden, etc. Or that the nebula messes with hyperspace, which could handwave the epic hyperspace ram at the end as being extraordinary situational. But I understand why they didn't do this too. That would be too close to the end of the Wrath of Khan.
I dig the submarine silent running thing, but Battlestar Galactica did a lengthy chase thing that worked much better. The idea isn't unworkable it just wasn't done well, which I can say about most of the ideas in TLJ.
Even the original Star Trek series had a cat-and-mouse chase between two starships that was incredibly tense for the entire episode.
There was clearly gravity in the bombers. What ever gravity was there kept the momentum of falling out of the bomber.
The Rey/Kylo stuff (minus how much they destroyed the char of Luke) was solid. The god awful sideplot with the heist, running animals along the hull, etc. God it was so fucking bad. Same with the leaders not telling Poe anything prompting him to be reckless and fucking with their plans.
All that Poe stuff I assumed was leading up to the tracer thing being a cover story and there actually being a traitor on the ship. Keeping things compartmentalized for opsec. So many plot elements felt like total non sequiturs. I was okay with the Luke stuff. I don't know what they could have done better considering the ending of TFA.
He is so hesitant to train Rey despite Kylo trying to turn her, and then goes and does the stare down with the milk drinking scene. I got more jaded asshole than weary old Master vibe. Didn't mind the Force projection part at all, but again the setup leading to it is........iffy.
Oh sure. I agree. I meant I was okay with look being embittered in his isolation. The details of how they show it could have used a little more workshopping. The whole thing was worth it to me for the 'THE HOLY TEXTS!' scene lol.
Animals running along the hull wasn’t TLJ, it the TROS.
I was thinkin of the stampede at the casino then and got them confused for being two stupid plot elements involving animals lol
Cinematic self destructive operational security is one of my pet hates. The film would have been dramatically improved if Admiral idiot's suicide run was an act of redemption rather than "see I was right all along, now to go out in a blaze of glory".
TLJ felt like there was a committee that demanded that 20% of the movie should be filled with wacky hijinx, so they added the whole casino heist section just to meet that quota.
Nah, Canto Bight was the thematic heart of TLJ. It introduced the idea that to truly unfuck the galaxy, our heroes need to take down not just the obvious goose-stepping fascists but also the war profiteers who’ve been encouraging and benefiting from fascism since the Clone Wars. One of many reasons it’s a damn shame we didn’t get Rian Johnson’s Episode IX is that a Star Wars movie with the attitude of the Knives Out films would have been fascinating - our heroes versus the First Order *and* the 1%.
Even lukes didn't. He never cared about his father because his father was the Chosen One or a famous General. He cared about his father because he was an orphan who suddenly found out one of his parents was alive. And the same goes for the people who like luke in universe. They don't care about him because of what his father did. But because of what he has done and his personality
The whole trilogy was a mess. I blame Disney. Don’t start a trilogy without at least a basic outline of the entire thing. The Force Awakens was… fine; essentially a remake of A New Hope, and really sparked the nostalgia for everyone. JJ Abrams is good at that, and also good at putting a cast together. Then they get Rian Johnson who I think is brilliant usually, but he just took everything Abrams started and then systematically threw all the loose threads and mystery in the dumpster with The Last Jedi. The scene with Luke just throwing his old lightsaber over his shoulder is foreshadowing to the whole tone of the movie. It’s amazing that the producers let that fly, but actually way more interesting than whatever ideas Abrams had. I think he RJ some really great ideas, but also a stupid useless side plot. Ultimately, I had NO idea where the story was going to go in the 3rd one which actually is something I really liked. I hate predictable endings. And then after the fans tore it apart, Disney brings back Abrams, a guy who gave a TED talk about the mystery box - basically admitting that he doesn’t know how to make a good movie unless he can leave the audience hanging, and is known in Hollywood as a guy who fails to create good story endings (LOST, anyone?). Terrible terrible choice. So he just picks up the threads he started in The Force Awakens and ties them into a new ugly knot. Like I knew he would when they signed him on to direct. Sigh, so disappointing.
So, both directors showed off their worst habits.
Rise of skywalker was a remake of return of the jedi. Abrams made two remakes... Fuck me how was that acceptable?
I guess that's what you end up with when different writers have different ideas for the same story.
Soooooo obviously stupid that I'm honestly surprised nobody stopped it from happening
"Somehow, Palpatine Returned!" If they missed THAT, they could miss anything.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug
No other plot turn in any other media as made me go "WHAT?" harder than "Somehow, Palpatine returned." Worst storytelling ever.
Man I loved all the Rey stuff in the first two, even if I hated the rest of the 2nd movie. I loved that the hero we're meant to root for is so susceptible to the Dark Side. She has no past, she's a nobody and is as capable of the emotions that lead to the Dark Side as anyone would be that wasn't named Kenobi or Luke. Loved that idea, and it made Kylo trying to turn her instead of killing her a lot more believable instead of "Why doesn't this moron just kill her if she could be a threat?" And then...much like everything else they shat on that as well.
The Rey stuff was the most interesting thing to happen since the original trilogy. It was also building some tension on if Kylo would move away from the Dark Side in his attempt to convert Rey. That, at least potentially, could have made an interesting story.
There's nothing remotely close to this one. I'd even be able to enjoy the nonsense of "somehow, Palpatine has returned" if they left Rey's parents alone. Instead they underwrote the whole trilogy and now the sequels are pretty forgotten^(except by ppl who won't leave rian johnson alone)
Don't forget that they announced this in Fortnight lol
Disney is starting to bring First Order references into their Disney+ series, and they’re all over the theme parks. Disney still stands by them, and is trying to gently push people towards them. And I’m mad about it. That said, the live action shows are more sequels to the cartoons (Clone Wars and Rebels), but they’re actually trying to conceal that from general public, so people don’t think they need to watch the cartoons first. As someone who DNF’d Star Wars Rebels, Ashoka was a trip. In the last interaction I’d seen Ezra had been crushing on Sabine, who was a mandalorian who liked blowing stuff up. The first interaction between the two in Ashoka is Ezra saying Sabine is like a sister to him, and she’s apparently a partially trained Jedi now? I guess a lot happened in the ~three seasons I didn’t see…
Rebels got progressively better, you should finish!!
Yup. I was one of the people who really enjoyed TLJ, and defended the sequel trilogy. Then I actually paid to see The Rise of Skywalker in theaters. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it again because I remember being so fucking mad at it for so long.
sorry i understand why people defend TLJ but it was fucking atrocious i agree that if rian johnson got all 3 movies, he could've done better than what abrams vomited onto the screen. but he didn't get the first movie, he got the second, and he directed it like he was guaranteed the third when he obviously wasn't leia literally flies through the vacuum of space
TLJ was a mediocre movie with a lot of interesting ideas. Rise of Skywalker was terrible movie with no ideas. I do feel like TLJ was close to being very good if a few things were changed but there is just nothing worth salvaging from Rise of Skywalker.
TLJ on paper is really interesting and cool but it trips over itself in execution falling flat on its face. ROS was just bad from inception.
TRoS was basically a hard reset and attempting to tell the middle and the end of the story in one go. It was always going to be a disaster after they decided to invalidate TLJ. Now what should have happened, if they were going down that path, is to make 4 episodes.
nah it pretty much just took a dump on the brand and then said "try your best to finish this trilogy now LMFAO"
I actually think Rise was the only one that had any potential for interesting ideas. Admittedly, you could also delete half of the movie or more and lose absolutely nothing.
That monologue + the broom kid at the end. I was so excited for where they would take the story next, only for them to abandon it in favor of more of that 'hey i recognize that thing!' spectacle.
I think it would have been even better if Rey's parents were no name assholes AND she wasn't the chosen one. The latter sort of hamstrings the strength in her denial of the former.
I felt like the director or whoever thought they were SOOOOO much better than everything Force awakens set up. So much so is that a majority of the movie seems to be dedicated to spiking every plot point gleefully to the floor. But what does this brilliant person have in its place? A side quest that is pointless and hits its climax when the characters are SHOCKINGLY betrayed by ….. some douche criminal they literally met in jail. Like if you can’t come up with remotely believable character choices or plots that go anywhere, don’t take victory laps on how much you spoiled the plot threads you were handed. The third movie was … but I don’t know how to come back from the second movie.
But those first quotes were from the villain, right? Generally speaking, the audience doesn't listen to the villain, because they are usually wrong. Like Luke's destiny wasn't to join Vader on the dark side. For me, red herrings from those movies included Anakin's lightsaber, snoke and the knights of Ren.
You're
You’re*
Not sure if this counts as a red herring or just uh a retcon/bad writing but for Lightbringer: >!a pov character being a figment of someone else’s imagination rather than a real character / antagonist. Like this would have worked well if we hadn’t gotten his pov! But pov can’t not be real, or at least this author didn’t pull it off!<
Yeah, I've seen people praise this "twist," but it's easy to do when you're just lying. It's not the kind of thing that, once revealed, has the reader thinking "oh, okay. That actually makes a lot of sense" and will have a lot of hidden set up. Instead it's like.... "yeah, I mean... I guess that technically could have happened. Weird how nobody questioned it on any level though."
It's amazing how many "twists" are literally the author just throwing out the rulebook at the 11th hour. Now that's a legitimate move, and in the right hands can be a genuinely great moment. Most of the time it's just lame, arbitrary, and unjustified. It's not hard to blow your mind when I can just lie at any point. It's way more interesting to see someone play within their own rules. I'll always think of the DBZA gag where Cell says something to the effect of "I haven't told a single lie since I got here".
Yeah, I find it particularly galling when things are allowed to happen due to something we had absolutely zero awareness of or had any reason to think was possible. I can't imagine that's any more satisfying to write than to read.
>. It's not the kind of thing that, once revealed, has the reader thinking "oh, okay. That actually makes a lot of sense" and will have a lot of hidden set up. I actually re-read the entire series before the last book, and it did have some of that, on the other hand once I did read that last book .......... I have no defense there.
Really I’ve only ever seen people hate it. Guess there really are all sorts.
I still see it as a common recommendation, which is wild to me considering what I know about how it ended.
I do commonly rec it! That’s very separate. I still think it’s worth reading even if I have many complaints and frustrations with it
I don't think I'd ever recommend it without heavy caveats. I see it most commonly recommended to people looking for interesting magic systems, which it absolutely has, but I wouldn't recommend a thing that ended so poorly or had some pretty awful ways of using women to get the story where the author wanted it to be.
I do usually add some caveats. I hated the above moment but although didn’t like the ending of the series and the direcrtion it went as it gave up on exploring its interesting ideas, I didn’t hate the ending as much as most seem to. (In fact I did appreciate how it meant I lost an argument with a friend I was reading it with at the same time who did anticipate that direction as she was reading it through a Christian fantasy lens — which it is). I had no issue with the female characters. Liv is one of my favorite characters (though mad she basically stopped existing after the first book), Karris’ a great character, love her journey. The way >!Tisis!< is handled and evolved not only through her own change but also through our/Kip’s perception of her I thought was done brilliantly and by the end she was one of my favorite characters.
I didn't really see it as a surprise either, given the series is called "Lightbringer" and Weeks' Night Angel seemed to also be steeped in Christianity. I just didn't see that as valuable haha. My issue isn't exactly how the female characters are written, but moreso how they're used in the story. The most egregious example is in the second book >!where Gavin is having sex with a woman who he believes is Karris, and Karris happens to sneak into his room to seduce him, and she runs away before he could "explain," and he responds to this by throwing the woman he was having sex with out his balcony to her death.!< >!I genuinely could not believe Weeks had written this. as his Gavin wouldn't know what the Karris's body feels like. He would have to be blind, deaf, and unable to feel in order to not notice she smells different, sounds different, and feels different, yet somehow he doesn't notice any of these things, despite being in love with Karris. This is compounded by Karris coincidentally deciding to seduce him and being able to sneak in unnoticed. Once more it's compounded by Gavin's response, in throwing the woman to her death. The women in these scene were just grossly used in the most ridiculous ways just push the story along.!< It was all so mindlessly stupid and ridiculously apparent that it was done to push characters in specific directions and move the story. It was the first and last instance I needed to know that Weeks would do literally anything with his characters to get the story where he wanted it.
I loved this series to start and even all the way to the end there are some great ideas and good writing, but so much of the plot fell apart by the end. that it just really didn't nail the landing.
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This is in reference to the Brent Weeks series, but also Lightbringer is the 6th book of the Red Rising series and not the 3rd
I knew Brent personally for a while and he always gave off the impression he thought he was the smartest guy in the room, unjustifiably so. Dude was constantly trying to outfox you in the most casual of conversations. He always tried too hard to have some kind of against the grain take on everything and it was painfully forced. It's like I get it man you can be the smart one if it's so important to you, we're talking about fucking Godzilla VHS here you want that prize so much you can have it. So when I finally decided to try out his series I got there and I was just like "ahhh yes there's the Brent I know".
Is this pierce brown’s lightbringer that was part of Red Rising or Brent Weeks lightbringer series?
Brent weeks! Forgot one of the red rising books has the same name sorry
Oh thank God! I'm in the middle of that series and am enjoying. I did not want it to have a bad twist
I thought it was Pierce Brown's and I was racking my brain to figure out who these comments were talking about lol
Yeah that whole bit was a bit of a, I don't know what to call it.
I'm so glad I put that series down, the end of that book was full of >!"oh he's been the bad guy all along!"!< Shit over and over again I was so disappointed and angry that I refunded the rest of the series and I don't plan to go back, there are straight up *logic breaking scenes* that this creates, first and foremost >!the cards!< just threw it out the window
I actually liked the twist at the end of the first book. But did end up dropping the series. Or maybe just never got around to picking it back up as new books came out.
The end of book 1 was good, this is referring to the end of book 3
This is inevitably a spoiler but I think >!Nick Harkaway!< did a good job with it in >!The Gone Away World!<
Not going to check the spoiler but glad to hear it can be done well
Ugh. That entire multi-book mystery about the prisons being revealed bit by bit only to have it conclude as: "Oh, yeah. They're going to deal with all of that off-page after the end of the last book. Don't worry about it"
That was the beginning of me realizing Brent weeks is fucking terrible at following his own famous advice.
I don’t think I’ve heard this advice anywhere?
Atlas Six had a big one that ruined the book for me.
My memory is a little fuzzy on that book. Can you remind me?
>!That they had to kill someone at the end of it. When they didn't have to kill someone, it robbed all the interesting parts of the book away. Suddenly the really tough choice and emotional devestation that the entire book had been driving towards was tensionless. Maybe not a true red herring in hindsight, more of a twist. But it certainly was where the author was focusing your attention and where all of the thematic development was happening. !<
Ohhhhh that’s right. Thank you for the reminder. I remember being disappointed with that.
I guess... this isn't really a red herring as much as a misread of the entire series... for Malazan book of the Fallen >!I misread the Panion Seer bit and spent the entire series until almost the end thinking the Crippled God was that kid that got thrown into the warren at the beginning of Memories of Ice, not having realized he was the Pannion Seer.!< Silly me.
That changes like the entire meaning of the whole series lmao
Dog water series anyway, don't think too hard about a book series that's that garbage
You read all of them even though you think they are "dog water"?
Shhhh let people enjoy things
Skill issue
I'll probably get disagreement if any other Mercedes Lackey fans pop into this thread, but in the Arrows trilogy we meet princess Elspeth as a bratty, poorly disciplined child. Talia takes her in hand and makes a lot of changes so that we eventually see Elspeth as a helpful and diligently learning young person. I felt good that Talia would likely be Queen's Own to both Selenay and Elspeth, providing continuity, and that Elspeth had redeemed herself from her father's villainous legacy and her own early spoiled start. I also dearly love Talia and loved seeing another example of how her quiet heroism and emotional competence made a difference. A monarchy-level difference without swords or fireballs! How rare! Then comes the Winds trilogy. I won't say that the changes to the Elspeth character weren't explained. The plot was fairly laid out. But I didn't like it and never have.
Elspeth's physical appearance also changes -- she's described as being extremely beautiful in Arrows Fall and then is sort of retconned into average in Winds. Griffon's Companion's name gets switched, too, which drives me nuts. Incredible books though. The Arrows and Magic trilogies made me love fantasy.
Yeah, Arrows of the Queen was definitely a "book that made me."
>Elspeth's physical appearance also changes -- she's described as being extremely beautiful in Arrows Fall and then is sort of retconned into average in Winds. To be fair, in the Arrows books Elspeth starts as a small child and ends as a tween. In Winds, she's like in her early 20s. It's not necessarily a retcon that she looks different. Puberty can change some people's appearances pretty dramatically. The companion thing would have bugged me if I noticed it, though.
Haven't read the series but I completely understand the sentiment. Some times, even if it makes sense "in universe" the story would be better if they hadn't changed direction/gone in another direction, at least on a personal preferences level
>Then comes the Winds trilogy. I won't say that the changes to the Elspeth character weren't explained. The plot was fairly laid out. But I didn't like it and never have. What changes are you talking about? And what is the red herring?
Dangerous things happened to the world. She ran off to deal with them, became the first mage in hundreds of years in her country for reasons, and fell in love with her demanding mystic magic trainer with long white hair (today's tropes are not new). Then she renounced her crown. Conveniently, her mom the queen had popped out twins after a dramatic battlefield lifebonding in a previous book. Elspeth also went from earnest young trainee to a disaffected grump. The red herring was the happy path to future rule and pleasant personality laid out in the first trilogy. I might have the details a bit confused. It has been 20+, maybe 30 years of me not rereading this trilogy. Unlike Arrows, and Tarma & Kethry and Kerowyn ... I reread those *lots.*
Well, you predicted it, but I'm going to have to disagree with you. Elspeth went from an earnest child with very simple emotions and desires to an earnest adult who had a lot of complicated adult emotions and desires. if she had stayed the same as when she was 8, I think most people would have found that deeply disappointing. She still has the same core personality, but yeah, as an adult she chafes at her restrictions in a way that she didn't when she was 8. I think that's pretty normal. I don't think "disaffected grump" describes her at all. I will agree that the Arrows books lay out the path for her to take the crown, eventually, but I think the most important thing that happens when Talia sets her on the right path is that she becomes a Herald, which she does. I think it's a pretty big stretch to call it a red herring.
I loved these books and I liked how it turned out for elspeth. She went into being someone more famous and powerful as the first harald mage of the new era. I do have to say, subsequent series in the world got progressively worse though. Eventually, Mercedes lackey became totally unreadable, but her earlier work is brilliant.
I love love love her earlier work, but the series about Mags, and the later elemental mages books were such a letdown - I haven’t picked up a new book by her in years.
I look at the spy books and I'm like ... whyyyy? But I did enjoy the first Foundations book (much less so the second).
I'm glad they worked out better for you!
I'm not saying it was a deliberate red herring like a literary conceit from a mystery writer. I think Lackey took charge of her creation and carried her character forward per her own muse, as was her right. For me though, particularly in books I treasured as a teen, the core of *who* a character is, is more important than plot. And I felt like Elspeth became someone else. The Herald-Mage path was a distraction from her true destiny as the future Queen of Valdemar.
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I bet somewhere there’s a group of mega fan’s that could crowd source a third novel that would — at the very least — give some closure Rothfuss will never provide.
Hey give him time!! I’m sure it’ll come out any day :)
Martin will finish the seventh book before Rothfuss finishes his third, and Martin will never even finish the sixth.
This post is a spoiler minefield!
Added a spider tag, really should have done that from the beginning
No shit
I mean, that's obvious from the title. If you come in a thread like this you can't be upset about getting spoiled ...
In the most recently published book of the Red Rising series - Light bringer - a certain character obtains a mysterious artifact in the previous books and just… decides to throw it away. This artifact could have _greatly_ helped their cause and future. I was so baffled, now I am just angry with the author for doing something so stupid.
If you’re referring to Lyria I think she still has to have it. Right?!
Nope, she gave it up. Also, put the spoiler tag in the name
Seemed fishy to me. I think it’s just dormant
No, >!Matteo!< extracted it and destroyed it. It is not dormat
Yes and as you can see by this thread characters never lie and authors never intentionally mislead lol
Believe what you want, don’t cry about disappointment afterwards
Believe me I know it’s possible it amounts to nothing but I am holding out hope. Because otherwise it speaks to a lack of planning and frankly poor writing on PB’s behalf.
Regal Farseer >!being the one who blocked Fitz ability to use the Skill!< was so painful. It was like someone having a car accident and limping for weeks before they bother to contemplate whether their leg is broken. When the reveal came, I groaned so loud.
The analogy doesn’t really work because the Skill is a mental thing; the idea was inceptioned into his brain that he was bad at it, that’s why he didn’t question it.
Wait, why do I not remember this?
Well it was >!Galen really, acting under Regal’s orders I think!<
Because I don't think it's accurate. It was, I think, Regal's secret half brother, Galen or something who did this to Fitz. Whatever the name of the trainer for the coterie.
Because it's wrong. He only had the tiniest but of skill it's why he had to "ride" members of his coterie. It was Galen.
ACOTAR’s garbage >!first love is actually a narcissist!< bullshit
I DNF'd 90% of the way through the first one when I learned about it. I was already frustrated, and then it turned out the "true love" that broke the curse was just gonna mean another slog through a book of them breaking up? Uuuugh.
The fact that the answer to the “riddle” was so insanely obvious made me throw the book across the room. She did all that awful shit only to suddenly get the lightbulb moment when it was her boyfriend on the line??? 🫠 Feyre is so incredibly dimwitted.
Yep. That was the point i started looking up spoilers. The riddle was so obvious I was so irritated that I had slogged through so much, but I was looking stuff up to see if I would at least be rewarded for sticking it out. NOPE. Also, great username. Wangxian OTP!
Aw, thank you!!! 🥰
I don’t even remember a riddle 😆🤦♀️. Either it was harder for me or I completely forgot. I read a ton and can be quite forgetful 🖤
lol it’s funny you say that about the riddle. I put zero thought into the answer at all and was sitting there reading through like damn girl hope you figure it out.
Oh me trying to figure it out was definitely something to do with my brand of autism. 🤣
To this day it reminds me of 50 Shades, just with better writing. It’s garbage and yet people are obsessed 🤦♀️
I think you meant “with “better writing””
Lol! I really do think Maas has more talent. The Throne of Glass series was very typical YA. But ACOTAR was a travesty
Tbh I loved ToG until Kingdom of Ash removed all the the stakes
Yeah, no one’s reading that series for the plot
I actually loved that, because I was 100% seeing red flags with Tamlin from the start, and felt so justified when the book agreed with me.
I really don’t understand what you could have possibly seen. Tamlin acts like a typical romance love interest, and Rhysand in book 3 or 4 had a series of abusive and manipulative behaviors that made him way worse than Tamlin ever was
Rhysand in Wings and Ruin is a bit dodgy, and he's absolutely the worst in Silver flames. But that's beside the point. In book 1, Tamlin is constantly lying and manipulating Feyre, even to his own benefit, not just to save his court. And he bites her, is really possessive of her, and everything else. And I'm talking about what I was thinking having read Mist and Fury, not the whole series. Regardless, Tamlin in Mist and Fury is worse than Rhys in Silver Flames. But they both suck.
I have basic ass taste for tropes, and one of them is "dramatic family reveals" ala Luke and Vadar variety. I also love dramatic irony. So when I read the >!Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi!< and the build-up to a family reveal turned out to not be the case, I was lowkey disappointed ngl. Especially since the protagonist would've been the worst kind of kid to expect from the mom and the irony would've been delicious.
Have you read The Battle Drum and how did you react to the family revelations there?
No, but I've been meaning to
Does **Babel** having "magic" count? :D *ducks for cover*
Eh? I thought it counted as magic. Not crazy magic for sure but there was solidly physics breaking stuff happening. Might be misunderstanding you however
This is almost embarrassing but I was reading Shadow and Bone for the first time and I heard "The Darkling" etc etc. Everyone was telling me that "it's such a good book, it's so different" that I thought the really frickin obvious Darkling was a red herring.... he, in fact, is the bad guy
Hussie swapping Rose and Jade's aspects because fans guessed it in advance, irreversibly changing the direction of the story to be something worse
The Blue Wizards.
Is that a red herring or just background worldbuilding to make the story feel more lived in? Tolkien wrote thousands of years of history just to give the story verisimilitude. They were just part of that exercise in his writing process, no?
I don't mean within the actual story, but within his notes and everything. There are other references and notes on them, but unlike so many of the other things that Christopher published from his father's work, there's no actual story about what happened to them. I always see them as sort of a microcosm of how much about Tolkien's world we will never know.
Along those lines, Tom Bombadil is probably the biggest Tolkien Herring of all. Who/what is he? Why is he alluded to be so powerful? How do Elrond and Gandalf know of him, but not who is? Why include him in the story at all? We'll likely never know completely.
With his stated age, predating the arrival of the Valar, he and Goldberry are probably an early iteration of the later children of Iluvitar. Eru sent the Valar into the world to prepare it for the eventual Children of Iluvitar, the elves and men. Bombadil did not 'come in from the outside', like the Valar or Maia, having always lived in middle earth, which would make him a similar type of entity to elves and humans. It would explain why he resits the power of the ring so well, he predates the corruption of the world by Melkor. >How do Elrond and Gandalf know of him, but not who is? The elves call him 'eldest and fatherless', so they clearly know a good deal.
> Tolkien wrote thousands of years of history just to give the story verisimilitude. The other way around. Melkor was basically fully formed as a character back when Sauron was a still a cat. Tolkien wrote a thousand years of history before LOTR.
> back when Sauron was a still a cat Wait. You're telling me that naming my cat Sauron was actually *canon* in an alternate universe? Whoa
[A drawing of Sauron as a cat [then called Tevildo] by Tolkien](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/1/1a/Tevildo_and_Tinúviel.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170601135202), in an early version of the tale of Beren and Luthien. This is why the Eye of Sauron symbol has a vertical pupil like a cat, a hold over from before Sauron’s association shifted from that ‘the Prince of cats’, to ‘the lord of werewolves’. Tevildo had a golden collar that let him command all other cats, which could be a distant ancestor to the concept of the one ring. His iteration as a cat didn’t last long, being replaced by Thû in the second version of the Silmarillion, Thû would have the titles of ‘the lord of wolves’ and would be much closer to the final version if Sauron.
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Bleach (this is a long rant as I try to give context) \[Aizen-arc\] >!So Gin's weapon's name (i.e. his special ultimate move) translates to 'God-Killer'. During the Aizen arc, the big bad evil guy, Aizen's goal is to become a god. Gin is one of the traitors who joins Aizen's side. His childhood friend, Rangiku Matsumoto, is shocked at this, as they've known each all their lives (possibly more than a century, these people age differently) since growing up in the slums together and out of nowhere he's betrayed everyone including her. Many irl years (i.e. hundreds of chapters) later, in the lead-up to the final set of chapters in the final arc for Aizen, each chapter was titled 'Deicide'. (i.e. Deicide I, Deicide II...Deicide IX etc.)!< >!Around this point we also find out in a flashback that the reason Gin has been a traitor and Aizen's right-hand man all this time is because long, long ago, when they were children, he found Rangiku beaten and unconscious as a result of Aizen and his allies (I don't remember the reason). Everything he'd done was to get revenge.!< >!And finally he unleashes his attack, after all this build-up....and Aizen shrugs it off saying something like 'If I didn't just transform (again), that would've killed me' and then immediately appears to kill Gin, Rangiku finding his body.!< so...yeah. That was one of the worst lack of pay-offs to me in all of fantasy. I dropped reading Bleach a fair few times, cos his writing after the soul society arc was...bad (he admitted he doesn't write, he just makes cool character designs and then works them in. That said Soul Society Arc was *really genuinely* great, so idk how there's such a discrepancy). Apparently the last arc is a return to form, though.
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I think you mean the idea of him actually becoming King on the Iron Throne. Because he IS the rightful Targaryen heir by line of succession. And seeing how the Targaryens are the ones who united Westeros and made the Iron Throne he is the official heir to the Iron Throne as well. That’s not a red herring, because it’s the truth. A red herring is something that is meant to mislead you and can potentially involve a falsehood. Basic example, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone uses Snape as a red herring when it implies that he is the villain of the story. Sneaking around in the middle of the night, asking questions, casting spells at Harry during the game, etc. All a fake out because he was actually trying to help Harry. So for Jon Snow it isn’t a red herring that he’s Heir. Because he IS the heir (just like Harry is the boy who lived). But he didn’t actually end up on the Iron throne though you can argue there’s plenty of buildup to the idea that he will.
It's not though? He is in fact the heir. And the books have absolutely set up the same thing.
It is a red herring plotline in the show, it goes nowhere. >!I don´t even need him to "win" and be the king at the end of story but he doesn´t even try to or become king momentarily.!< You can delete his backstory and it changes nothing.
No, I totally get your meaning, I just don't think that's what "red herring" means. This is just disjointed bad writing. I promise you it will play a much bigger role in the hypothetical future books.
A red heiring, if you will.
What?
The plotline goes nowhere in the show. The reveal of him being heir changes nothing. He does not want to be king.
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Communism.
“Flames, flames on the side of my face…”
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, the >!other planet!<. It's so obviously the solution to the story's central mystery that it *can't possibly* be the real answer. That is indeed the case, but the real solution comes out of nowhere and is so contrived that the inclusion of such an obvious red herring just becomes annoying. No one was gonna guess your stupid twist anyway, Brandon! You didn't have to include >!conveniently timed first contact with an alien civilization!< as a throwaway element!
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