antishurtugal_reborn

From:

"Astragarl"

Any relation to the demon king Astfgl from the Discworld?

By the way, I have a genuine question that I wonder if anyone knows the answer to – the world seems to have collectively decided that the generic fantasy hero is, in fact, a young farmboy, and that’s the descriptor that tends to be used as a shorthand for such a character… but where does that trope come from in the first place?

Huh, good question. Earliest example of a similar trope I can think of is from those old myths about the King starting out as a swineherd or something.

Then again, I’ve never even seen a real farm.

I have! It had cows and crops and everything. The short description: expect lots and lots of mud. Also cowpats.

But as Elminster runs, he’s pleased to think to himself that at least he never told the wizard that Elthryn is his father.

If he's a nobleman's son, what on earth is he doing working as a shepherd?

He knew some folk had whispered that a common forester’s lass must have used witchery to find a bridal bed with one of the most respected princes of Athalantar—but Elthryn had loved her. And she him. He gazed in horror at her pyre, and in his memory saw her smiling face.

This is hardly the time or place to be thinking about that, my dude.

Though I have to wonder… why did Greenwood destroy Heldon in its very first appearance? Surely this would have been more affecting if he allowed us to become attached to it first? Honoring the dead is one of the chief duties of my guild, but… I don’t know any of these people but Elthryn, and him only barely! How can I honor the dead when I don’t know them!?

He broke one of the golden rules of writing fiction: introduce the initial setting and the characters in it before you destroy it and kill everyone. In the last fantasy trilogy I wrote we get to see the protagonist's home and how he lives in it and who his friends are and such in the first chapter. Later on when the place is laid waste by the villains I made special mention of him seeing the dead bodies of the named characters I had previously made a few mentions of, which helps to hammer home just how much he has lost and that these were people and not just faceless redshirts who were murdered.

“Wait until ye’re older, an’ve gathered coins enough to buy mages of thy own.

It's THINE own, you moron.

Ye’ll need them—unless ye want to spend the rest of your days as a purple frog swimming in some palace perfume-bowl for the amusement of some minor apprentice of the magelords.

"She turned me into a newt!"
"A newt?"
"...I got better."

Greenwood… you’re really enjoying writing about how hilariously awful these people were, aren’t you?

You know what this reminds me of? The first draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. According to Roald Dahl, he originally had like twenty odd awful children whose awfulness he described in great detail because he was having so much fun doing it. Then he showed the manuscript to his daughter, who said "Dad, this is really boring". So he sensibly trimmed it down to the four we see in the mostly final version.

Elminster heads off, practicing with his sword, and Helm watches him go, wondering when he’d hear of the lad’s death.

So we've got head-hopping as well. Wonderful.