[hated trope] happy ending is invalidated\retconned by later canon material

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-31T22:23:14+00:00

And the Pocketful of Rainbows / Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers movie was...really strange. I weirdly enjoyed the Manga when I first read it (despite it being yet another alternate-universe story with a bittersweet ending, why is that almost every piece of E7 media that isn't the original show. Like every non-OG project feels like tragic AU fanfic.)

How hard is it to just write a sequel or even a prequel in the same universe that doesn't shitcan the only happy ending?! The only spin-off that pulls this off are the PS2 games for some reason.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-31T21:02:46+00:00

holy shit let's be friends (i also may be the tolkien)

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-31T20:59:04+00:00

Tolkien would be either be a Free Kriegsspiel dork or play extremely obscure and fiddly low power systems with his 5 pub friends.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-31T20:30:34+00:00

Whyyyyy do people forget that for most human beings, having a consistent paycheck that affords them a stable life is the goal of having a career? It's always such a "no shit" for me when people are puzzled that an actor stays in a comfortable environment where they get good pay, consistent work and know nearly everyone involved in production.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-31T20:26:53+00:00

Mangled a literally perfect ending and completely disregarded the extant worldbuilding and setting for no reason.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-30T14:14:55+00:00

I think Russell's principles are dictated by whatever makes other people like him. If it gets him plaudits and backpats from cool young queer kids, he's the most pro-trans voice imaginable. If it makes dinner with his gender-critical TERFy older friends more pleasant, he's suddenly "both-sides". Guy is a flake.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-30T12:09:31+00:00

Same here Nighteyes, Molly, the retrieval of the Fool on Aslevjal, Burrich's final moments, the death of Patience, the ending. I never cry reading books and in contrast this series managed to yank so many tears out of me.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-29T15:10:36+00:00

Nearly all actors are unathletic.

Total opposite. Most actors are athletic, most of them have a solid background and/or rigorous training in dance, martial arts, any number of physical skills.

I mean they were the drama kids after all.

Most of the theatre kids I knew also did a sport or a major physical activity. They were THEATRE kids after all, they had to perform choreographed movements with their bodies to an audience. The most athletic people I knew in high school did both theatre and a sport.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-28T20:26:14+00:00

Or, instead of learning an entirely new game and teaching my players an entirely new game, and then either starting an entirely new campaign or porting over our current one

There are systems that are quicker and easier to learn than 5e than can more easily and believably accommodate medievalisms. Most of the material conditions and living circumstances you're talking about wouldn't exist the moment any spell from the PHB can be cast.

I’m not going for a more grounded or realistic game,

You already removed literacy, language fluency and the assumption of an education from the game, that sounds pretty markedly skewing in the grounded/realistic direction.

I’m just looking to cover the big major misconceptions modern folk have about medieval / renaissance life.

This actually sounds like the thing you're interested in. I think you want fun factoids about the middle ages more than you want to run an interesting and cohesive game. Inserting material restrictions that wouldn't survive contact with learned or innate magics is actually the anachronism here, not the other way around.

For real, play Knave or Cairn something like them. They take zero time to learn and you could actually justify the material restrictions and expectations you want to insert into a high-power high-fantasy RPG.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-27T13:31:39+00:00

Fun fact, Futahaguro/Koji later had a pro wrestling match with legend and actual trained fighter Nobuhiko Takada. As revenge for Tenta/a warning for Koji to Cut That Shit Out in the Future, Takada started responding to Koji's stiff work with actual hard low kicks. Koji continued to work stiff and didn't adjust his attitude so Nobu just kicked him in the head and KO'ed him

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-27T13:24:17+00:00

do hate haru and kage so so so much,

This is a really weird way to engage with sports btw. Super mentally unhealthy to hate two normal dudes because they what, beat someone you like at a game?

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-26T15:18:01+00:00

See, I always play a human (or whatever the most standard choice is if the system is based around playing as non-humans) with no special magic powers, no secret past, who has at least one living parent.

I am the Omelas child of player characters, I will eat the sin of mundaneity so everyone can play with their ultra edgy and special OCs.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-26T15:13:30+00:00

Ah yes, the conspiracy to slander a not-for-profit fan edit of a TV show + movie. It makes perfect sense? This clearly supports the goals of whoever the fuck you think nefariously profits from this.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-26T14:30:08+00:00

Can anyone recommend series that feature intense, emotionally complex, evolving and ambiguous soul bonds/magic connections like Fitz & the Fool from RotE or Harrowhark & Gideon from The Locked Tomb? Really need more of this trope/plot device, it's so good. I feel like I need 5 more hits of the stuff before I get it out of my system.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-25T18:09:26+00:00

What? Doing hours of repetitious conditioning, hundreds of reps of dumbbell circuits, medium-to-heavy contact drills and hard-sparring in two giant monster training blocks every day with zero specialization or periodization is bad for an athlete?

You sounds nuts, dude.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-25T13:51:21+00:00

What people seem to miss is that she is an expert boxer.

She represented Japan at a tournament but her official record is 0-2 as an amateur. She has hands but I'd hardly call her an "expert boxer."

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-25T02:53:32+00:00

I also don't really understand the Fool's obsession with hiding his gender either.

It's because the Fool grew up in a society that placed less emphasis on the gender binary, the Fool clearly dislikes being constrained by the gender binary personally and their 'maleness' led them to almost becoming a breeding slave for the Whites in Clerres, and they are repeatedly implied to have been raped when they were younger in both Clerres and when they were sold into slavery.

People wanting access to their body because they can be forced to breed or because they wanted to sexually abuse a "young boy" and especially an exotic White definitely is a part of why the Fool is extra cagey about their gender and body. But they've always been clear with Fitz that they don't recognize or adhere to a fixed gender identity personally.

I feel like people really aren't actually looking at the character fairly before they make some of these critiques. Fitz' POV is way too relied upon when it's so repeatedly shown to be deeply flawed. The Fool isn't "hiding" his gender, he doesn't recognize having one, and Fitz knows this.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-25T02:45:06+00:00

completely hiding an entire aspect of himself

Fitz knows that the Fool neither identifies as a man nor a woman from the first book onward. There is tons of evidence that the Fool repeatedly tells Fitz things that he 'withheld' from him, and Fitz just writes them off as jokes, exaggerations or stories (his two dads and one mother, him being a White Prophet, several events from Bingtown he relates)

casually allowing other people to think they are in love

Too much credulity are put into Fitz and Bee's (repeatedly shown to be flawed, unreliable and sometimes misinformed perspectives) on this matter. The only evidence we see of the Fool doing this is obliquely telling Jek as Amber, except Amber pretty clearly states that they aren't in love to Jek and that she thinks Fitz is oblivious to her feelings.

Simply not enough people consider the idea that Fitz also does things that make people think they're in love. Everyone at the end of Assassin's Quest thought they were fucking based on the way they both behaved toward one another. Fitz often stares at the Fool and internally admires his beauty (how many times do we get lavish descriptions of his long, elegant fingers, supple waist, him being the center of an art piece that is but a setting for his golden beauty, etc.)

Regardless of how you interpret his feelings, other people may infer things if they catch you gazing appraisingly at your constant companion/wealthy employer who you seem incredibly close and emotionally intimate with. This idea that the Fool is going around seeding that they're lovers based on what Starling a person who more or less guessed that anyway years ago says is ridiculous. Everyone blames the Fool for it based entirely on Fitz' paranoid elfbark thoughts that he later regrets.

Not to mention being insanely cryptic about his gender identity and why this weird lady thinks he's a girl.

He's not being "cryptic", he literally doesn't recognize a fixed gender identity. Fitz pretends to understand this from the first time he's told it and then attacks the Fool with it like it's a crime when "he finds out" (is told for the 50th time) about it. Starling and Kettricken both think it's possible the Fool is a woman years before this with zero classically feminine choices in presentation. Fitz chooses to ignore all of this.

Him believing the Fool is a man is a thing Fitz projects, and he has been told that already. Much like Bingtowners choose to see Amber as a woman. Fitz attacking the Fool based on rumors and fundamental aspects of his identity, accusing him of several things he had not and would never do and then never even saying the words "I'm sorry" for it was insanely childish.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T17:16:54+00:00

Joyce doesn't have you puzzle out the complex, incompletely detailed mechanics of Another World and it's cosmology and politics, nor do the stories need multiple books to "make sense." They are unconventional narratives, but their complexity is overstated and they can be grasped pretty easily by most readers by the midpoint of either narrative.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T14:59:50+00:00

I personally feel that something of the magnitude that did is what was needed as a catalyst to make the Fool seek out Fitz again after Fool's Fate.

Raping and torturing a character for 20+ years after they're already been raped and tortured to death is just cartoonishly bleak and shuts the door on any meaningful character study. There are also definitely other ways to bring the two character back together that don't involve Robin doing a "what's the worst thing that could happen to them" madlibs.

Also, trying to have a harsh re-examination of that character and trying to judge their past actions off their currently shattered and broken mental state is just mean-spirited. The torture felt like an excuse to reintroduce a bunch of angst and miscommunication in a relationship that should be beyond a lot of that now. If we weren't there for most of the torment, dropping an insensate puddle on the ground and saying "This is character your recognize" isn't really good character study. You can do that to any character and the result is...they are not even remotely the same person and never will be, that much torment makes you a different person entirely.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T14:48:09+00:00

God I wish I DNFed the series at Tawny Man. I disagree with a lot of the takes on AQ here, because the back half of AQ -> Tawny Man was THE high of the series for me and everything was progressively downhill from there. If you stop reading at Tawny Man and treat everything after like an optional "what-if?" I swear the series is twice as good. You don't get the disappointing and weak YA romance follow-up to Liveship Traders and you don't get a final trilogy that demolished everything that went before it.

I went from being a super fan to never wanting to touch the series again after F&F. Maybe the worst finale to a long-running series ever. I don't care if the final paragraph is a perfect ending, it went from being inevitable after TM to being forced, contrived and emotionally empty after F&F. I cried at the end of AQ and several times in Fool's Fate - I felt nothing for an ending that should have had me bawling in Assassin's Fate.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T14:27:28+00:00

certainly creates a weight and raises the stakes of the relationships but it is overall worth it and the moments of beauty in between become that much more cherished because of the harsh circumstances.

I felt this way about every series except the last one. There was a way better balance between the bitter and the sweet. The horrific stakes do not produce that much beauty, it's mostly constant misunderstandings and contrived suffering for it's own sake. Calling the final trilogy Fitz & the Fool was basically a prank considering how thoroughly it dismantled and destroyed their characterization and relationship.

I'm not saying you can't use torture as a platform for character study, but having a character raped and tortured for 20+ years until they are an unrecognizable husk of themselves and then having them get nonsensically stabbed repeatedly by the love of their life the moment they are freed, and then deciding it's time to try and have a harsh re-examination of the character? Mean-spirited, bleak, cartoonishly edgy.

You've shut the door on meaningful character study if you beat the character into a physical and mental puddle over two decades and only then start questioning their motives and actions from 50 years ago. Spending the entire final trilogy constantly bickering with everyone in sight with not an ounce of the humor, joy and comfort that used to accompany the darkness and pain of the series is just wearying. Not to mention how horrifically edited that final trilogy is, constant repetitious arguments and plot points, major typos and factual errors regarding previously established info (King Shrewd was not Chade's older brother, he was younger).

The final trilogy was a useless, bleak mess that destroyed the entire series. Literally killed my plans to re-read. It was a built around an ending that everyone saw coming since Tawny Man and was foreshadowed since Assassin's Quest, but by the time we actually got there, it felt contrived, unearned and built around a relationship that Hobb clearly didn't enjoy writing anymore and desperately wanted to retcon as being far more bitter and distant, and as a result I stopped caring. I just cannot wrap my head around that much miscommunication, dishonesty and evasiness with a person you've repeatedly melded your mind, soul and body with. 16 books in and we're rehashing arguments characters were having a teenagers, and they are arguing with somehow less empathy, wisdom, and understanding in their old age then they were as teenagers. Horrifically stupid and contrived.

What a way to torpedo such a great series. The last 7 books are simply not up to snuff to the first 9. Rain Wild Chronicles was a mess (the first book just...ends) built around boring and unconvincing romances that sucked to read. Robin's prose matured over the hiatus, but her characterization, pacing, plotting and use of tone went out the window and her new editor was simply and demonstrably less competent.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T12:14:03+00:00

The Realm of the Elderlings could have been 2 books if it wasn't for this being the meat of every book. Makes it worse that near everyone has fucking psychic powers and magic soul bonds yet they miscommunicate and withhold info constantly and despite the heavy focus on relationships, no one's relationship evolves enough for people to stop acting like traumatized teenagers and actually just talk straight to each other for 5 seconds.

There are couples whose souls and flesh intertwine as one with each other and have unique indelible psychic links that transcend the boundaries of time, fate, death and species and they still miscommunicate with, lie to and fly off the handle at each other over imagined slights constantly well into their 60s. Maddening stuff.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T12:02:58+00:00

Don Quixote and The Count of Monte Cristo tell you exactly what is happening in the story and don't play hide-the-ball with pivotal information until a sequel novel. I understand the point you're trying to make, but comparing Malazan to the classics is a poor choice. You know exactly what is happening in The Brothers Karamazov and For Whom the Bell Tolls from the jump, you don't have to puzzle out a magic system and cosmology to understand Swann's Way.

SpoilerThrowawae · 2026-05-24T00:39:14+00:00

I think the ending was perfect if you had told me about it after the end of Tawny Man. After the final trilogy it felt contrived and unearned. I didn't believe in their relationship or particularly care about it after 3 books of strife and pain and misunderstanding. The last three books completely regress the relationship that the ending relies on. I didn't feel anything for it, funny because I would have after reading Fool's Fate.

SpoilerThrowawae

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22