(no subject)

[kippurbird]

Reading limyaael's rants and came upon this in her rant about Teenage runaways:


3) Don’t dump all the problem-solving on the Helpful Stranger. You know the ones. They must have high-duty sensors that tell them when fantasy teens who would die in two seconds flat otherwise flee their guardians. Then they follow behind them, meet up with them, and wipe their noses and asses for the rest of the quest, until the climactic battle when Lord or Lady Clueless somehow defeats the Dark Lord.

Sure, your character has got to get help, unless we’re talking about the aforementioned nomad teenager, but that doesn’t mean that someone should pop out of nowhere and decide to help out of the goodness of his heart. It goes double if most people are suspicious of strangers (for whatever reason). It goes triple if the Helpful Stranger has no magic, destiny, or high-duty sensor, but somehow happens to know everything about the protagonist’s fate and bloodline anyway. This often comes from recognizing a piece of jewelry or the protagonist’s face. But then, no one else in the book seems to notice, including the clueless evil guys (whom I privately suspect are fantasy teens who for some reason never left home and got snatched up by the Dark Lord instead). It doesn’t work that way. Either it’s common enough knowledge that a total stranger would have a good chance of knowing it, or you make the Helpful Stranger not a real stranger. Chance meetings that turn strangers into the teen’s retainers are sickening.

Helpful Strangers will pick up after the teen, teach the teen cool things about the world, give the teen lessons in swordplay or magic (at which the teen will surpass them in a matter of days or months, never mind their years training in it), get angry but always apologize when the teenager turns out to be Right ™, and fight to the death for someone they met only a few days before. And they always show up before the character really suffers.

Here’s an idea: Introduce some suffering, and it helps me suffer the teenagers much better.


Hello, Brom.

Comments

Oh, Garion

[(Anonymous)]

Reading this just keeps making me think of Garion, and how much of a better stupid hero he is. Sure, the book is simple as heck. Sure, Garion turned out to be a powerfully magical king with a pretty sword and a rock. But Polgara and Belgarath were almost always right. And Garion was almost always wrong. And Garion was wonderfully stupid- and realized it. He didn't even know how to read. I'm sure half of Eragon is based on Edding's writing, yet somehow Paolini didn't manage to pick up on the good parts of it. Argh.

~Nikara

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

See, this is why my novel's Helpful Stranger decides to hook up with the hero not so much because he has Much To Teach Him, but because he thinks hanging out with someone like that would be interesting. And why one of the first things he says is 'here's how I recognised you, here's how to disguise yourself so everyone else doesn't'. And why the extent of his Helpful-ness is basically the fact that he's a bit of a wandering vagabond and knows the general geography of the kingdom and how to deal with street merchants and inn keepers and the general base-level population of a feudal society.

So, really, he's not so much a Helpful Stranger as, well, a mildly helpful stranger.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

I thought of that rant of hers when you first started telling us about Brom. I think I remembered it while watching the movie too. Limyaael is as accurate as always. :P :D

[indescane.livejournal.com]

Silly Brom, just let Eragon DIE already!

...my Helpful Stranger helps protect the protagonist-in-question because she wants the protagonist's Shiny Rock (tm). Then she gets her friends. Now all three of them have their motives for helping the protagonist, but none of them are really concerned for the wellbeing of the protagonist herself.

Could you supply a link to that? I'd love to read it. And I'd love you if you gave me a straight route to reading it.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Go to her livejournal and check her memories under rants. It's all there. Lots of good stuff.