On Feb 18, 2004, at 10:58 PM, Mark A Mandel wrote: > Verra isn't out for a fun roll in the hay, she's out for revenge on the > Jenoine. She's a manipulative b***h with plenty of power and the > capability for very long-range planning. We know Vlad is the > reincarnation of Kieron's and Aliera's brother; maybe as such he's > fated > or prophesied for some special destiny. One thing I don't care for in Fantasy especially is the prophecy gambit. You invest so much in your protagonist as an average schmoe thrust into or choosing themselves to take on an epic adventure, then you find out halfway through, or several books in that they were fated/prophesied etc to be the hero/ine. This invalidates a great deal about how they get to where they're going. All the external - and internal - struggle they go through becomes relatively meaningless if they were _always_ going to somehow make it because it was foreseen, or because they had that special something all along. I've been grateful - and very impressed - that Steve has put Vlad skating on that thin edge without falling into the stew. I hope that continues. David Brin wrote a critique of Star Wars in this very vein - Luke starts out the innocent every-farmboy, but you find out he's really basically the only one in the galaxy (or one of the two) who could eve have pulled off what he did. Regardless of what else I think about Brin, the article crystallized this preordained hero problem for me. > Being Zero Man (Noam Izenberg's nighttime superhero avocation)