Fantasy-Faction Book Battles: Favourite Main Protagonist Bracket & Discussion

[Hedin]

Can anyone who has the books handy give me a quote for Wyndrin?  Google is letting me down.

[ScarletBea]

I can already see 2 for round 2 that will have me crossing my fingers...

[Hedin]

Just a heads up I will be traveling and in meetings most of the day tomorrow.   If I have Wi-Fi at the airport I'll try to get the next round up but it may be Tuesday before I can.

[JMack]

Wow that was a lot of ties.

[ScarletBea]

That's because we love them all... it will be so hard to choose next time!!!

[ScarletBea]

Wow so many ties at the moment!
I think when we get to the final it won't be a protagonist battle, it'll be a member battle

[Hedin]

I kind of wish I had limited the amount of Discworld characters.  We have a strong Discworld contingent on the forum that definitely helps those characters along. 

[JMack]

I kind of wish I had limited the amount of Discworld characters.  We have a strong Discworld contingent on the forum that definitely helps those characters along.

And most of them aren't the same type of characters as others. I'm not such a great fan of DEATH as a character. I mean, really? Better than Frodo? Better than Harry? Better than Vin? Better than Jorg? The books may be more enjoyable, but the character?

[Lady Ty]

I kind of wish I had limited the amount of Discworld characters.  We have a strong Discworld contingent on the forum that definitely helps those characters along.

And most of them aren't the same type of characters as others. I'm not such a great fan of DEATH as a character. I mean, really? Better than Frodo? Better than Harry? Better than Vin? Better than Jorg? The books may be more enjoyable, but the character?

As you know I am a Discworld addict and agree it may seem unbalanced, but there are forty Discworld books, so does that put it a little more into perspective? Other series have limited number of main protagonists who are the same throughout even GRRM. Discworld has many stars, each in their own right.

I am sorry we seem to have swamped other people's favourites, and in future battles such as side kicks, villains or rogues, maybe we should agree to leave Discworld out and run a separate grand Discworld battle all on its own sometime later There's not much we can do about this battle now.

ETA

Spoiler for Hiden:

Totally tongue in cheek, no offence intended and with no one in mind at all -
Like next time you have an election, maybe you should ask the unexpected shock winners not to run again?

There is something else that nags at me a little, we have a flood of nominations at the start of these Battles but seem to hover around max seventeen actual votes. Do all nominators always come back and vote, I wonder?
I doubt we get many from elsewhere. 

However this works out it has been fun and has brought out yet more for TBR. I have to find out more about these guys giving Granny and Sam a run for their money.


PS Jmack YES HE IS 

[eclipse]

Don't worry Locke will destroy dis world characters and that idiot Fitz!

[Hedin]

There is something else that nags at me a little, we have a flood of nominations at the start of these Battles but seem to hover around max seventeen actual votes. Do all nominators always come back and vote, I wonder?
I doubt we get many from elsewhere. 

We had 21 nominators so an average of 17 votes out of 21 isn't bad.  Some of those may be like me and don't bother with the abstain option if they have no preference (of course I can see the poll results either way).  I haven't really been advertising on Twitter and Facebook, last few times the site Twitter account never retweeted me to go out to a larger audience and as far as I can tell unless the Facebook people are already members they haven't been coming in either.

[Peat]

I kind of wish I had limited the amount of Discworld characters.  We have a strong Discworld contingent on the forum that definitely helps those characters along.

And most of them aren't the same type of characters as others. I'm not such a great fan of DEATH as a character. I mean, really? Better than Frodo? Better than Harry? Better than Vin? Better than Jorg? The books may be more enjoyable, but the character?

In what sense are they not the same type of characters? Academically curious to what you mean by that. And yes, I'd say that Death is a more interesting character to read about than Harry or Frodo (but slightly low bar there) - haven't read the other two.



I dunno on this one. I mean, I can understand the frustration of seeing characters you love about knocked out by a series you may be lukewarm about or have never read* and seeing a ton of characters from it. But that can happen to anyone - it's happening to me right now on another fantasy forum. And I'd be frustrated if my favourite characters never even had a chance to get in at all. I also think it would be a great shame if we didn't see what the forum**  thought, because we took away the most popular characters ahead of time.

If you draw a line, where do you put it? Abercrombie had 3 characters in the poll, with 2 from the same trilogy, both of whom are in the quarters too. Are there too many from there? Given that Discworld's 40 books with several different groups of protagonists and series, and there's 2 series with multiple characters represented, arguably Discworld wasn't the over-represented one. Arguably.

I can see the appeal of putting in some limits to get a wider field of contestants, but that should go across the board. Say, one a series. But then, do you call Discworld one series, or a group of series? Because the latter still sees as many Discworld characters, but to call it one series seems inaccurate and unfair unless you count all of an author's works in a single world as being one series.

*I cannot understand why a fantasy fan wouldn't try Discworld though - it's very popular for a reason***
**By forum, I actually mean a small number of the more vocal members of the forum, but barring forcing everyone to vote or be banned, that'll have to do
***Its popularity is probably not really due to the footnotes which I'm currently mimicking. But I do love the footnotes.

[ScarletBea]

I can see the appeal of putting in some limits to get a wider field of contestants, but that should go across the board. Say, one a series. But then, do you call Discworld one series, or a group of series? Because the latter still sees as many Discworld characters, but to call it one series seems inaccurate and unfair unless you count all of an author's works in a single world as being one series.

I think that was the logic behind accepting varied Discworld characters.

But I understand and agree with Jmack about Death: it *is* a very funny character, but deep and developed throughout the books it isn't.

[Hedin]

But that can happen to anyone - it's happening to me right now on another fantasy forum.

Do I need to sue someone for intellectual property theft?

The size of Discworld definitely makes it a unique case.  It was just a little jarring seeing that out of the four polls there is a Discworld character in three of them. 

[Peat]

But that can happen to anyone - it's happening to me right now on another fantasy forum.

Do I need to sue someone for intellectual property theft?

The size of Discworld definitely makes it a unique case.  It was just a little jarring seeing that out of the four polls there is a Discworld character in three of them.

My lips are sealed

I can understand that (and it feels like some people have found it very jarring). Be interesting to see what others have to say.

I can see the appeal of putting in some limits to get a wider field of contestants, but that should go across the board. Say, one a series. But then, do you call Discworld one series, or a group of series? Because the latter still sees as many Discworld characters, but to call it one series seems inaccurate and unfair unless you count all of an author's works in a single world as being one series.

I think that was the logic behind accepting varied Discworld characters.

But I understand and agree with Jmack about Death: it *is* a very funny character, but deep and developed throughout the books it isn't.

Two part answer because I find this fascinating, not because its relevant to ought -

How many fantasy characters are deep and developed throughout the books? That should really be a separate topic but I feel like there's a substantial number that aren't.

More to the point, I'd disagree that Death isn't deep and developed throughout the books. The character we see in Mort is very different from the character in Thief of Time because he has undergone a number of things that have altered his perspective.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I mean, compare and contrast the clumsiness with which he hints at romance to Mort, with the way he's able to manipulate Susan into helping in Thief of Time. Or the subversiveness that comes through his reactions to the Auditors of Reality. His sense of compassion grows too for my money, particularly over the course of Reaper Man. And stuff and so on.

Minor point - I can understand seeing Death as somewhat different to other characters; they're imaginary humans, he's the anthropomorphic representation of Death. But that only applies to him out of the Discworld characters.

Corollary to minor point - I actually find it a small shame that out of all the incredible range of possibilities that exist in the fantasy genre... pretty much all the popular characters are human warriors or magic users.