Darkest Dungeon - What Do You Think of the Ending?

[Mordokai]

What? No of course. Its a game and its management mechanics make it more interesting.

I meant for the THEMING and interaction. Not necessarily for gameplay.



Yeah again this is sorta what I meant. Turning in my opinion a really good simple "the horrors of the unknown" story into "Elder Gods Duke it out!"

I am unsure what your problem here is: the fact that the game seems to be cruising on the well known and used tropes that you consider to be superfluous to the game itself? Or something else entirely, that I seem to be missing?

If the former... why do you consider it so bad? Those tropes have worked before and in my humble opinion, DD is richer for using them. You are free to disagree with me(and I say this with full sincerity and no sarcasm whatsoever), but I would be interested in why you think like that.

Unless I'm missing something, CoM doesn't release until Tuesday. Which gives me a sad, as this is my weekend now and it comes out right as I go back into work.

The one thing I wish they'd done with the Stress/Affliction/Quirk mechanic in the game is to tie it into what the heroes were actually doing at the time. Randomly getting "Fear of Beasts" on a hero is a tactical thing that changes how you manage that hero. Having 3 of your heroes suddenly become afraid of Beasts after a Swinetaur impales their teammate helps build up who these characters are by their experiences.

It's also too abstract - a hero gets -10 Accuracy against Beasts, and you just plan around that and maybe give them a trinket that increases Accuracy. Having your tank hide behind the healer because they're terrified is a whole different kettle of fish.

Then again, maybe it's for the best. I have nearly 400 hours into the game as-is. If they made that game the way I've always envisioned it I'd likely be dead.

I love DD and pretty much all of its mechanics. But one thing I find very silly(and that term is not necessarily used in derisive way), is how traits/quirks are allocated randomly. In the case you illustrated, the character that got gored by swinetaur(or any of their companions), is just as likely to develop fear of beasts, as they are to develop fear of undead, which is totally unrelated.

Like I said, I love the game mechanics, randomness included. But perhaps, just perhaps... sometimes, a little less randomness would be welcome.

[Scowling Dragon]

Those tropes have worked before and in my humble opinion, DD is richer for using them. You are free to disagree with me(and I say this with full sincerity and no sarcasm whatsoever), but I would be interested in why you think like that.

DD is a vidyagame and is copying mechanics laid out far before its time. I do not blame it for them and overall the execution of those mechanics makes the game have more elements. Still too random and grindy for my taste, but its a element.
Im annoyed at those mechanics that where laid in the past. In a ROLEPLAYING game (A real one, not just one with stat mechanics). A Tabletop Roleplaying game. The Grand puh-bah, Call of Cthulu thats now more then 30 years old.

The way it laid out its mechanics really has poisoned the Whole Lovecraftian horror genre. And Cthulu as the posterboy was the extra step of blegh. Because Id say Cthulu is the weakest of all his elements as are his elder gods overall (That stuff was what caught on and he even made fun of it with official "Hiegharchy" charts that where meant as satire but people took it seriously).

"It drives you crazy just by you looking at it!" is one of those things that sounds cool at first but then you realise how LAZY it is. Its not scary because its somekind of philosophical horror. Its horror because it just does that by force which could come from anything.
A Hallucinigenic that when inhaled induces brain damage has the same general level of threat as creatures that "DRIVE YOU CRAZY" when you stare at them too long.

Elder Gods are a non-story elements. They are the story equivalent of taking your ball and going home. You don't need to have detail, or sense or logic or buildup or character. "TOO GRAND TO COMPREHEND!" is more of a brushoff then a reason.
Which means they are about the narrative equivalent of a Natural Disaster. Which is fine, but its this unearned sense of Importance. Its thinking its being more clever then it really is.
Too me the Ancestor was by far the scariest part in the game. A man whos lust for power destroyed everything around him in a never-ending lust. Its truly fascinating and terrifying.

Lovecraftian horror isn't rich. Literally. Its quite dry (Also Pulpy). Its academic, which is because its supposed to feel like it could happen in the real world. That some rando writes a report about all this horrific stuff occuring.
And so when its smaller and more personal it rings much more true, and therefore effective.

The Colour out of Space is in my opinion one of his better works. Its a incomprihensible natural disaster. And leaves you in fear because just as it happens it goes away without a second thought....So whats stopping it from coming back?

Turning the Color out of Space into another "Elder God" kinda sucks in my opinion.

[Lector87]

I agree that "Elder Gods" and "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know" can be a lazy substitute for intelligent horror. But in the case of DD (in spite of my stated objections to the ending), I think the revelation at the end is a genuine source of existential anguish, one that goes beyond "it's just too vast and incomprehensible!"

The heroes spend the game desperately fighting against something they perceive as an alien evil, something fundamentally foul that must be confronted and can be defeated. In the end (if the HoD's words are true, of course), they discover that they themselves, and every living thing, are basically parasites crawling on the hide of something as vast as a world, an organism that gave birth to their race, and will one day re-absorb it.

It's as if the heroes are a band of dust mites, breeding on your body and feeding on your skin cells, who suddenly become aware of your existence, and the vast gulf between them and you.

The situation isn't incomprehensible - it's actually quite simple. The horror of it lies, first, in the straightforward fact of the heroes' insignificance and helplessness, and second, in their kinship, their hereditary link, to a Thing they have conceived of as the ultimate evil.

Not my sort of story, but I'll give Red Hook credit for doing it well.

[Scowling Dragon]

I agree that "Elder Gods" and "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know" can be a lazy substitute for intelligent horror. But in the case of DD (in spite of my stated objections to the ending), I think the revelation at the end is a genuine source of existential anguish, one that goes beyond "it's just too vast and incomprehensible!"

Like I mentioned before: We live at the moment in almost the exact same circumstance as the DD world. It just doesn't scowl and have evil looking tentacles.

edit:

Still I guess its an alright twist. I just find the flesh aesthetic uninspired after the rest of the game looked so great.

[Lector87]

Like I mentioned before: We live at the moment in almost the exact same circumstance as the DD world. It just doesn't scowl and have evil looking tentacles.

edit:

Still I guess its an alright twist. I just find the flesh aesthetic uninspired after the rest of the game looked so great.

Yeah, "pulsing red meat-sacks" has never been my favorite look.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yeah, "pulsing red meat-sacks" has never been my favorite look.

I mean its OK, but its, funnily enough, pulpier and less gothic.
"Flesh Meat sack" is something you can stab and kill. Even Parasites and bacteria kill their hosts and cause serious damage.
It would be more fitting if it was more...cosmic I suppose.

Maybe Giger if you want to go with an organic look?

[Slayn82]

I mean its OK, but its, funnily enough, pulpier and less gothic.
"Flesh Meat sack" is something you can stab and kill. Even Parasites and bacteria kill their hosts and cause serious damage.
It would be more fitting if it was more...cosmic I suppose.

Maybe Giger if you want to go with an organic look?

So, black flash, acid instead of blood, more carapaces and teeth, webs instead of tentacles? Less octopus and more bugs? I disagree. This time, WE ARE the aliens. Made by our Creator in clay in his image and similitude.

And about the theme of the expansion, I leave an article I always liked when discussing Lovecraft:
https://heteromeles.com/2013/07/12/i...n-cthulhu/amp/

I hope a future expansion has an industrial revolution. Let's drill for Earth's blood, break it's bones, and become the masters of the unnatural World.

[Eldan]

Ooh, that's a lovely article. I do like new takes on HPL.

[Wraith]

I would say you're a masochist, but the word doesn't seem strong enough.

You're not necessarily wrong, but it's more that I feel it is sometimes appropriate for a video game to have a downer ending, if not a bittersweet one.

Fallout 1 was the earliest game I finished that fell into the latter category, and I remember it being an innovation, as well as emotionally powerful. Fallout exists in a crap-sack world, and there being a lack of happy ending is entirely appropriate; one of the key themes of the series is that even though people die and are lost, humanity itself survives and perseveres.

Fallout 3 was similar, not just because it was Fallout but for the birth/death and alpha/omega stuff that bookended the game. How they handled the writing of the final scene was a bit of a hack, but in principle what they had us do? I thought that a heroic sacrifice was a perfectly reasonable way to end a game. Not that I was disappointed by Broken Steel, of course, but at the same time I wouldn't have complained if it were mid-game DLC rather than post-ending.

Mass Effect 3... had issues, I don't deny that, and I think a lot of what I like about it might be my own head-canon that wasn't deliberately intended before the DLC ending was brought out...
However; I always felt that one of the themes of the game was about just how much bigger the galaxy is than one person, or even one species, and for all of humanity's efforts to amount to very little. For the end of the story to be just how unfathomably immense the Reapers were, and that there was no way to beat them except to have them beat 'themselves', was an unpopular but reasonable kind of poetry.

Darkest Dungeon feels like that, to me. The Darkness is such an immense, incomprehensible entity that for it to have a definitive beginning and end is diminishing to it, and to do that makes it lose some of it's scariness.
I'm not advocating that games start stabbing us right in the feels every single time, telling us that the whole thing was pointless and that we shouldn't even have bothered, but I do appreciate a game that is prepared to tell a story that is bigger than just one person's experience.

[Scowling Dragon]

So, black flash, acid instead of blood, more carapaces and teeth, webs instead of tentacles? Less octopus and more bugs? I disagree. This time, WE ARE the aliens. Made by our Creator in clay in his image and similitude.

I meant the organized nature of his stuff, the denseness of the detail and the compact nature of his creation. Have you seen how Terminator 2 nearly had the insides of Skynet be inspired by Geiger?
That sort of thing.
We look NOTHING like bloated blobs of flesh unless we are rotting.
This creature is supposed to be more then just a big blob of flesh if it grants magical powers and warps reality.
Heck, go all Biblical if you want things that we might be "Made in the Image of".
It should maybe be made in its image but it should look perfect, not worse then us. Make humans the incomplete version of IT, not the perfect ones.

Edit:

And about the theme of the expansion, I leave an article I always liked when discussing Lovecraft:
https://heteromeles.com/2013/07/12/i...n-cthulhu/amp/

This is missing the point of his writing so hard. . Its one thing to write about how mechs are worse then tanks but then there is this.

[Slayn82]

I meant the organized nature of his stuff, the denseness of the detail and the compact nature of his creation. Have you seen how Terminator 2 nearly had the insides of Skynet be inspired by Geiger?
That sort of thing.
We look NOTHING like bloated blobs of flesh unless we are rotting.
This creature is supposed to be more then just a big blob of flesh if it grants magical powers and warps reality.
Heck, go all Biblical if you want things that we might be "Made in the Image of".
It should maybe be made in its image but it should look perfect, not worse then us. Make humans the incomplete version of IT, not the perfect ones.

Edit:



This is missing the point of his writing so hard. . Its one thing to write about how mechs are worse then tanks but then there is this.

I will answer the first issue you raised by roleplaying the Ancient's advocate:

"We ARE flawed. Notice how it's blessings bring us closer to its pristine magnificence. Don't talk of beauty, for those are flawed concepts born of flawed minds and the illusion of individuality. For us, our purpose is sufficient, and in it we shall find the true beauty that is reserved for us.

Once it rises, it's true form will be to our mortal flesh like a symphony is to the croaks of a frog in a well. Pray you cannot perceive even an inkling of his full glory."

I confess my current ideas on the Dungeon come from a few places:

1- the Marvel's Earth X limited series plot: a Celestial Embrio has been growing in the center of Earth for Aeons, and about to hatch.

2- Final Fantasy VII's plot about the Planet and Jenova - a interstellar parasite travels through the cosmos and devours the energy of planets supporting life to reproduce. Meanwhile, life energy of the planet also is some kind of afterlife. Jehovah has a range of powers: Mind control, Hallucinations, Mutations on willing minions, can bring particular minions back to further its purposes by sacrifice of other minions.

3- a Asian webnovel I'm currently reading, Immortal Mortal. Not everyone's cup of tea, but the Author have a few interesting twists on old cliches of the genre. Those being, reincarnation cycle and the idea of the protagonist having access to a secret dimension, safe from enemies as long as he is alive.

In this novel, cultivators (the usual monks or mystics) may become obscenely powerful in comparison to mortals, and the differences in the scales between power levels is quite absurd. As they evolve their spirituality, at a certain point they start developing their sea of consciousness, a integral part of the cultivator, that grows as they get more powerful.

Sometimes a cultivator fights something stronger and is destroyed, but their Spirit and Sea of Consciousness remains, becoming the equivalent of an Eldritch Location. Less powerful cultivators, like a full tier lower, often not even notice the consciousness of the spirit, but are attracted by the chance of taking pieces of the place to use for their own evolution, while the more powerful entity, with limited control, tries to attract people to his traps, so he can feed on their energy to regrow a new body, since the lower cultivators are usually unfit for possession without massive power loss. This process may go on for millions of years.

And even more powerful cultivators, instead of simply having a sea of Consciousness, develop their own inner Worlds, like the protagonist. But if they fail to develop it properly, the world may destroy the cultivator and go to somewhere in the Cosmos, becoming a life bearing planet, with an Eldritch Location like the one Just described. And all the treasures accumulated through eras by the creator become priceless, supreme treasures to the incipient habitants.

[Scowling Dragon]

I will answer the first issue you raised by roleplaying the Ancient's advocate:

"We ARE flawed. Notice how it's blessings bring us closer to its pristine magnificence. Don't talk of beauty, for those are flawed concepts born of flawed minds and the illusion of individuality. For us, our purpose is sufficient, and in it we shall find the true beauty that is reserved for us.

And this is where I go to "Why Elder Gods are a Lazy Plotpoint".

I guess to "Motive, character, personality" I can also add "Design" to another list of stuff that "YOUR MIND CAN'T PROCESS IT!" can be brushed aside by the laziness of the "Elder God" plot point.

I confess my current ideas on the Dungeon come from a few places:

Errr.....What? I kinda missed the point of your argument.

[Slayn82]

My argument is that you look too much as how consistent as a story frame the story should be, and is bothered by what you call lazy storytelling elements. Fine, alright for you.

While I am on the camp of looking how consistent the overall scenario as presented is and what underlying assumptions I can make, what elements of other stories I can contrast, to better enjoy the story. Death of the author is the birth of the reader. What can't be understood by characters perceptions isn't always an author cheap save for thrill and drama, but invitations to the reader to create those elements for himself to better enjoy the story.

And personally, I like when one side's Lovecraftian horror tale may be just an average incident for another protagonist, with a bit more of understanding and perception. For all they speak of sacrifice of flash in the game, there's too much effort to develop strong heroes to... Scratch the Core's new Itchy Pimple? No, that's a path to develop and them crush spirits. Flesh is cheap, easy and fast to raise, see all the minions the Dungeon throws around. The sacrifice of some cows should be more than enough.

No, this for me is about consuming their Spirits, and raising Spirit is difficult. Thus, all the system in place, and all deceptions and lies.

[Scowling Dragon]

My argument is that you look too much as how consistent as a story frame the story should be, and is bothered by what you call lazy storytelling elements. Fine, alright for you.

Sorry I didn't connect how I look into story consistency too much. I kinda don't get it. Your being very verbose and eloquent but I don't get your point. What is your argument. I genuinly don't get it. Is the idea that in your own headcannon you made reasons why the Darkest Dungeon does certain stuff and because it matches up with some other completly unrelated series that headcannon is justified, therefore something something something?

Again please clarify for the dum dum that is me.


I don't even see it even potentially as lazy as....bad.
Like some authors write this stuff with genuine intent.
But we as the audience are left with NOTHING for the sake of themes that are kinda weak on their own anyways without eloquent prose to prop them up.
Ironic **** posting is still **** posting.

So making a plot point that means nothing matter and you can get away with anything still matches up with a plot point that would be called lazy otherwise.
Its like dues ex machina is generally seen as a lazy plot element, but insert a Elder God into the mix and now suddenly its deep.

[Eldan]

This is missing the point of his writing so hard. . Its one thing to write about how mechs are worse then tanks but then there is this.

REally? I don't think it does.

After all, they were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being. Nature had played a hellish jest on them — as it will on any others that human madness, callousness, or cruelty may hereafter dig up in that hideously dead or sleeping polar waste — and this was their tragic homecoming. They had not been even savages — for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch—perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defense against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia ... poor Lake, poor Gedney... and poor Elder Things! Scientists to the last—what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn — whatever they had been, they were men!"

I mean, I don't like the idea of Yog-Sothoth as "the internet", but Azathoth really is not unlike a black hole. He's more than that, but not unlike it. And the entire article really is an expansion on the idea that for all their supposed godlike power, the star spawn were defeated and could not live in the universe, and their high priest Cthulhu had to go into a stasis from which he could not willingly awake. HPL's writing really is full of races who rule planets for a time, then either move on or go into hibernation, so this really makes sense to me.
The incomprehensible beings in Lovecraft are at the top. The Yog-Sothoths and Nyarlathoteps and Shub-Nigguraths, but below them, there are hosts of what are not so far from your standard Sci Fi alien races.

[Scowling Dragon]

REally? I don't think it does.

Its making logical assumptions about things that by their very nature defy our understanding of logic.

I hate that as a plot element but this reminds me of those stories about how Humanity Conquers Heaven / Hell because the writer artificially applied scientific standards to fantastical concepts.

Even if you go the "Science" route applying earthly science to beings that would evolve completely differently also misses the mark from a Sci-Fi Angle as well in my mind.

[Eldan]

But the aliens in Lovecraft do follow science and logic. They always have. Their technology is much more advanced than ours, and uncomfortable to contemplate for humans, but it often says, quite clearly, that their ability to fly through space or create servitor races like Shoggoths is a form of technology. The protagonist of At the Mountains of Madness empathizes with the Elder Things and even wishes the first meeting between the races had been more peaceful. The Protagonist of The Shadow Over Innsmouth ends his journey by going back to join the Deep Ones and seek a glorious eternal life under the sea. The protagonist of the Shadow out of Time eventually learns to communicate with the Ythians and finds their motives quite understandable, if callous towards the races they displace in their quest for survival.

[Scowling Dragon]

But the aliens in Lovecraft do follow science and logic. They always have. Their technology is much more advanced than ours, and uncomfortable to contemplate for humans, but it often says, quite clearly, that their ability to fly through space or create servitor races like Shoggoths is a form of technology.

Thats being quite pedantic in my opinion. Almost "GOTCHA".

Like yeah I guess its Technology, but even as such it would be Technology that would serve to mainly disprove all our notions of physics, chemistry and biology, for all intents and perposes making it magic.

Whatever, why am I defending a genre I don't even like?

[Eldan]

Huh. It feels to me as if you're attacking the genre, not defending it. Which is why I am defending it, as I see it? I've always felt that people who just say "Cthulhu is omnipotent, everyone who sees a ghoul in Lovecraft immediately goes gibbering mad forever and everything is incomprehensible magic" are cheapening Lovecraft.

[Cazero]

things that by their very nature defy our understanding of logic.

I've heard of things that defy our understanding of time, space, physics and humanity, but logic? That's not gonna happen in a way that can be conveyed with words.

[Scowling Dragon]

Huh. It feels to me as if you're attacking the genre, not defending it. Which is why I am defending it, as I see it? I've always felt that people who just say "Cthulhu is omnipotent, everyone who sees a ghoul in Lovecraft immediately goes gibbering mad forever and everything is incomprehensible magic" are cheapening Lovecraft.

Fair enough. I think I hate the elder god stuff and more enjoy the lower level stuff.

I think more then anything I hate the general "Hype" its built up. And I feel like DD plays more into that general hype tone then going with the stuff I liked more out of lovecraft....

Or I guess it does the entire game until it just finished with the stuff I don't like at all.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Huh. It feels to me as if you're attacking the genre, not defending it. Which is why I am defending it, as I see it? I've always felt that people who just say "Cthulhu is omnipotent, everyone who sees a ghoul in Lovecraft immediately goes gibbering mad forever and everything is incomprehensible magic" are cheapening Lovecraft.

I feel this way too. The point isn't really that the universe is incomprehensible. It's more that things we take for granted which gives us a sense of accomplishment, worth or happiness aren't strictly true. The people experience madness when confronted with these uncomfortable truths. People in the thrall of some comforting delusion or who reject reality can be safe, but it's difficult, because there would always be that understanding which cannot really be suppressed.

Sometimes, people go mad because it's easier to live like that, casting off all those "false" values that bound one's actions in artificial and unhelpful ways. Cultists exist because they're trying to adapt their psyche to handle the new information, and they come out less human because of it.

Although I do feel it's worth pointing out there are some takes on the genre which do indeed take a more "magical" approach. I don't think that was ever HPL's intent, but the people who wrote more after him didn't seem to always strictly adhere to the former presentation. I don't think that approach is nearly as interesting.

I do like the vernal pool interpretation, though. That's essentially what the Great Race of Yith already do, they're just not bound in linear time. Having ancient alien ruins exist because of the more mundane version of this sort of thing would easily fit into the overall setting.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I've just never thought much about the ecology of Lovecraftian aliens (which is weird, for an ecologist), but now that I've seen it done, it makes a lot of sense.

As for other writers in the same general line, the less said about Derleth the better. (Cthulhu is a water elemental my ass.)

[Slayn82]

Sorry I didn't connect how I look into story consistency too much. I kinda don't get it. Your being very verbose and eloquent but I don't get your point. What is your argument. I genuinly don't get it. Is the idea that in your own headcannon you made reasons why the Darkest Dungeon does certain stuff and because it matches up with some other completly unrelated series that headcannon is justified, therefore something something something?

Again please clarify for the dum dum that is me.


I don't even see it even potentially as lazy as....bad.
Like some authors write this stuff with genuine intent.
But we as the audience are left with NOTHING for the sake of themes that are kinda weak on their own anyways without eloquent prose to prop them up.
Ironic **** posting is still **** posting.

@scowling dragon: sorry if it looked like I was **** posting. It was never my intention. It's just that I was fatigued, writing from my phone, and struggling to touch a few subjects on a way distinct from the way usually would do, talking about religion, because that's a topic that we shall not approach under the forum rules, so we can maintain our forum civil and cordial. Thankfully, others have made their own arguments far better than I could.

You call Elder Gods lazy plot points, and then when we speculate on their nature and true objectives, you kind of argue they should be great, innefable and unsondables?

Your reading of the work seems to me, and please don't understand it as any kind of personal attack, too restrained to the author/narrator's thoughts and point of view. That just don't suits me.

One thing is understanding the narrator, and another is making sense of the narrative, where I think the fun begins when it comes to the Mythos, or works derived from them. Speculation seems to be one of the charms of the genre, and you admit you don't like it or the genre. That's fine. Each one follows on his own ways.

Moving on, there's the issue of Deleth's work, Magic and Madness. If you are a religious person, dealing with the Mythos has one set of implications, and if you aren't religious, the Mythos gets another connotation.

If Gods exist, and those things are demons and horrors from beyond, it's because Magic is a force present in the natural order of things, and the execution of rites is very important. Madness sometimes becomes synonymous with spiritual evolution. Souls may even have a final destination.

If Gods don't exist, and it's just aliens, then Magic is just advanced technology, even if it deals with things like psychic powers and souls, if souls aren't just backups of memories of a being in a strange medium. Rituals become just cargo cults attempts of attracting or averting their interest. Madness is partially stress, partially the glimpse of a new paradigm making you care less for husband's sensibilities.

[Knaight]

I feel this way too. The point isn't really that the universe is incomprehensible. It's more that things we take for granted which gives us a sense of accomplishment, worth or happiness aren't strictly true. The people experience madness when confronted with these uncomfortable truths. People in the thrall of some comforting delusion or who reject reality can be safe, but it's difficult, because there would always be that understanding which cannot really be suppressed.

This ends up sharing a lot of issues with a number of existential works in terms of getting parts of a modern audience too - the big central horror of being unimportant and lacking intrinsic meaning was terrifying for most of the audience when they came out. Now it just gets a shrug from people who grew up basically assuming that.

[Scowling Dragon]

@scowling dragon: sorry if it looked like I was **** posting.

I didn't I just made the comparison. It was a bad one on my end, my bad.

You call Elder Gods lazy plot points, and then when we speculate on their nature and true objectives, you kind of argue they should be great, innefable and unsondables?

Its two unrelated things in a way. Clashing to a certain extent.

On one hand I do hate the finality of Elder Gods. Their just the writing equivalent of a Natural Disaster that makes you crazy for an arbitrary reason.
On the other hand I do hate smart alek application of science to things beyond that sort of thing:

"Dragons wings would not be able to support their own body weight and structure so they should be 3 feet tall, and look like chickens! "

This^ sort of thing I really hate.

So I ended up defending a plot type I dislike from a method of Analysis I also dislike.

[Rodin]

I didn't I just made the comparison. It was a bad one on my end, my bad.



Its two unrelated things in a way. Clashing to a certain extent.

On one hand I do hate the finality of Elder Gods. Their just the writing equivalent of a Natural Disaster that makes you crazy for an arbitrary reason.
On the other hand I do hate smart alek application of science to things beyond that sort of thing:

This^ sort of thing I really hate.

So I ended up defending a plot type I dislike from a method of Analysis I also dislike.

Personally, I always liked Pratchett's take on dragons. They are obviously implausible and impossible, therefore obviously magical. That's all the explanation you need from me for the mechanics of how a fantasy (or indeed horror) creature works - it's drawing on energy/mystical force from somewhere to make the impossible possible.

Sci-Fi has to work a bit harder for the same justification, although for the most part I'm willing to let things pass on pure "Rule of Cool".

[Eldan]

I think my view on Elder Gods as plot points is that they shouldn't show up on screen, except maybe for the barest glimpses. They really shouldn't interact with any characters in the story significantly. I'm fine with them existing. After all, our universe is full of mindboggingly huge things (we're about five levels above galaxies now for universal structures, I think?), so a fantasy universe can easily have something that huge that is also kind of sentient. But it should stay alien, distant and frightening.

[Lector87]

I think my view on Elder Gods as plot points is that they shouldn't show up on screen, except maybe for the barest glimpses. They really shouldn't interact with any characters in the story significantly. I'm fine with them existing. After all, our universe is full of mindboggingly huge things (we're about five levels above galaxies now for universal structures, I think?), so a fantasy universe can easily have something that huge that is also kind of sentient. But it should stay alien, distant and frightening.

Not to derail the thread, but this ties into problems I had with a couple other series - namely, Mass Effect and Battlestar Galactica (the reboot).

Spoiler: slight BSG spoiler

Show

In both series, the alien menace threatening the heroes starts out as something, well, alien - inscrutable, implacable, and vast. But in both cases, the creators undermine the atmosphere and the dramatic tension by showing too much and explaining too much. In BSG, you start to get narrative from the POV of the Cylons, which completely ruins their air of terror and mystery.