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Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Monday June 03, 2024 @07:00PM (#40568683)
Making up random arbitrary things whenever needed to get out of a fix is just bad storytelling.

One of the great things about LOTR is the ring is ascribed various powers, and then the consequences of that play out. The rules within its world are consistent.

HP has no consistency.

Probably why I also prefer hard scifi - it must follow the known rules of physics, or at least have plausible extensions.

I liked GoT a lot as it was driven by human decisions and foibles. But it slowly devolved into convenient magic absurdities, like resurrecting dead people, and I lost interest.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by dylan604 on Monday June 03, 2024 @07:31PM (#40568962)
> Probably why I also prefer hard scifi - it must follow the known rules of physics, or at least have plausible extensions.

Well, if you're going to put in plausible extensions instead of following the rules then "i'm not interested in such lazy writing" as you stated. In any fictional story telling, there's going to be some creative licensing involved to tell the story. Hell, even in biopics and "based on true" there's a lot of creative license just to make the story interesting. Following the rules of known physics just limits the imagination to make for bland stories.

> I liked GoT a lot as it was driven by human decisions and foibles. But it slowly devolved into convenient magic absurdities, like resurrecting dead people, and I lost interest.

From the very off of the show, the resurrecting dead people was involved in the story. If it wasn't, "the night is dark and full of terrors" and "winter is coming" would be pointless. Just because the dead coming back was timed to happen with the story is just part of it.

I mean, next, you'll tell me that Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead were pointless since they were resurrected dead people too.

I think you've moved into the comic book guy territory of "worst book/movie/comic ever" type of meme

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Monday June 03, 2024 @09:58PM (#40569957)
I was referring to the Jon Snow resurrection, which came out of nowhere.

While I watched all the episodes, my interest in it dropped dramatically after that.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by dylan604 on Monday June 03, 2024 @10:37PM (#40570155)
oh, that one. yeah, you might actually have a point with that one! However, at least it gave some purpose to the Red Lady other than smoke assassin.
Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by alternatetwo on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @02:43AM (#40571372)
It very, very clearly came not out of nowhere, even in the show. We had the Brotherhood of Banners resurrecting Bendric several times using the same magic, and in the book we had Lady Stoneheart to show what can also happen after being resurrected.

While the resurrection is probably going to happen if Winds ever comes out, it's not clear if Jon will actually be the Jon we know, or even Jon, after he comes back. Warging into Ghost will probably play a role, as that's a common theme in Dance.

Oh and, we had wights right from the very first book, maybe even Prologue ...

So it's not "convenient", nothing for GRRM is convenient currently, otherwise Winds would be out by now ...

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @01:19PM (#40576858)
The JS resurrection was not related to the zombies, as JS was able to resume a normal life.

If this could happen in the GoT universe, wouldn't you think that there'd be a massive effort by kings and others to resurrect dead family members? Or even talk about resurrecting them? There was no hint of that.

(Zombies violate the laws of physics, like conservation of energy, which makes it sad that most zombie movies try on some hackneyed explanation for them being the result of some virus. If you're going to try a scientific explanation for them, don't blatantly violate fundamental laws of physics.)

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by dragonwriter on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @03:17AM (#40571559)
That... didn't come out of nowhere.

The capability of priests of the Lord of Light was established as was the stage for Melisandre to grasp on to the Jon after the defeat of Stannis.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @01:22PM (#40576883)
Was it? The exposition of the LoL was that it wasn't clear if they were real or frauds. Sort of like Rasputin.
Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by kelnos on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @04:07PM (#40578443)
How does that change anything? If anything that adds a suspense element to the story: we're not sure if all the Lord of Light stuff is true, but finally when Jon is resurrected, we find out that it is.

To be fair, though, it was established before then that it was true, unless you didn't believe that Dondarrion had actually been repeatedly resurrected, and that it was just a story they told to make him more fearsome. Which is also fair, but it still feeds into the point of the suspense: if you had trouble buying the fact of the Dondarrion resurrections, then you finally got your answer when Jon got his treatment.

Also recall -- if you read the books and aren't just relying on the TV series -- Catelyn Stark was also resurrected after her death during the Red Wedding, though her resurrection didn't go quite so well physically, since her body had already partly decomposed in a river, or mentally/emotionally, as she turned into a non-empathetic vengeance machine.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @11:29PM (#40581094)
I didn't like the Catelyn Stark resurrection, either. My interest in the books waned at that point, and I didn't finish it.

I liked the GoT where it was about human power plays, action, politics, intrigue, alliances, betrayal, love, death, etc. Suddenly mixing random magic into a well established structure just didn't work for me.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by dragonwriter on Wednesday June 05, 2024 @12:16PM (#40586792)
Both the book series and the show open with magic. It (and the fact that the people doing human squabbling, despite having a huge history of warnings about it that have faded into myth, were unprepared for it, and how they respond) is fairly overtly the theme of the series, and marketed as such.

I get not being interested in that theme, but being surprised and disappointed that the series progressively turns out to be about exactly the thing it tells you is the lurking force that most in the setting disregard that it is going to be about is... well, surprisingly poor media literacy.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by dragonwriter on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @03:01AM (#40571461)
> I liked GoT a lot as it was driven by human decisions and foibles. But it slowly devolved into convenient magic absurdities, like resurrecting dead people, and I lost interest.

The (inconvenient, in context, for anyone who might be considered a protagonist) resurrecting of dead people is a major point in literally the first sequence of the first episode of the series, which is literally telling you what is coming that the people making mundane human decisions based on mundane human foibles and passing off anything more exotic as superstition were ignorant of to their peril. The return of that kind of magic to a largely unprepared world was telegraphed as the central theme of the series.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by krisoft on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @06:50AM (#40572914)
> Making up random arbitrary things whenever needed to get out of a fix is just bad storytelling.

It is also poor form when you are trying to make a point.

> HP has no consistency.

Perhaps so. Then why did you not choose to criticise something which happens in the actual books?

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by foldr on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @06:52AM (#40572936)
>One of the great things about LOTR is the ring is ascribed various powers, and then the consequences of that play out. The rules within its world are consistent.

LOTR has not one but three people rescued in the nick of time by enormous flying eagles that can talk. That's technically all fine within the rules of the universe, but it hardly seems any less of a stretch than flying cars in Harry Potter.

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by WalterBright on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @11:46PM (#40581184)
True about the eagles, but fortunately they came in at the end. The eagle thing is well known flaw in LOTR.

But I forgive Tolkien because of the many hours of enjoyment I derived from his books!

Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by foldr on Wednesday June 05, 2024 @04:57AM (#40582825)
Not just at the end. They also rescue Gandalf from Orthanc.
Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire by bigstrat2003 on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @11:43AM (#40575763)
> HP has no consistency.

That is just plain false. The rules are not as clearly defined in HP (because it's not trying to be a hard magic system), but when Rowling makes a rule she follows it. For example, you can't bring people back from the dead. That's a rule which is clearly stated and is followed through the series.

In your example, no rule was broken. The book never said "things can't fly in this world". In fact, it's established pretty early on that broomsticks can fly by means of specific enchantment spells. The fact that someone got the idea to apply those enchantments to a car doesn't break the rules of the world. The fact that Harry's friends showed up to rescue him at the right moment is certainly convenient, but also doesn't break the rules of the world. The book explains why they were worried and came to check on him, after all. No rules were broken in this scene, you just don't like it. Which is certainly your right! But it's not poor writing which breaks the rules of the world.