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Narrative
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From YKTTW
Lale: Batman? Love life? Must've missed that movie.
About Harry Potter — the entry points out there are 870 pages — that's a lot of book; was there really too much romance for a book that long?
Shahai: If you cut Cho Chang from that book, its probably about 400 pages long. I have no problem with a romantic cub-plot in my fantasy, but I do have a problem when it was that poorly executed. Its not the Harry Potter universe doesn't need compelling human drama like a romantic sub-plot, it just didn't need that one.
While I'll admit a lot of things could have been cut from the book, I think 300 pages is a bit of an exaggeration for just the Cho Chang subplot.
Shahai: yes, 300 pages may be an exaggeration, but that doesn't alleviate that fact that a huge chunk of an otherwise good book was dedicated to such a bad sub-plot. I'm playing the Single Issue Wonk card here, but that realy killed the book for me.
Someone: I didn't mind it, but I know a lot of people who did. It still fits here.
Whogus The Whatsler: Just for the record, I've just finished rereading the book in advance of the film coming out. I'd say it takes up about: ten to fifteen pages in the chapter "The Beetle at Bay", maybe two or three pages in the mistletoe scene, a page or so when she defends Marietta, and probably thirty or forty random paragraphs throughout the remainder of the book. Maybe, maybe if you tallied it all up you could scrape together fifty pages, but I'd more guess twenty-five to thirty. That doesn't make it a good subplot — I thought it was okay, for me the problem was that Harry spends most of the book in a self-pitying sulk — but your estimate seems way off, and it seems to me like a pretty small thing to kill the entire book.
Lale: Me too. This is the first I've ever seen that was an issue — I didn't like Cho (but she didn't "win," so we don't have to), but I had no problem with the way it was handled. It was introduced two books earlier and gradually progressed, after all.
Shahai: I have only started re-reading for the movie, and I acknowledge that my estimation does encompass the cho-related self-pity. I have nothing against her character, but I have a lot of problems with the way her character is handled and excessive and often times whinnny self-pity, I apologize if that wasn't made clear.
Lale: I'd be whiny too if my boyfriend was killed by a racist evil sorcerer. Anyway, is that for or against the subplot as a George Lucas Love Story?
Shahai: I didn't mean Cho was being whinny, Harry was. I didn't have to listen to Cho for more then a few pages, but the only constant in my mind from reading that book (may change as I am re-reading it) was that about every 10 pages, Harry would bring it up and get really angsty and depressed.
Also, there is no question that it counts as a George Lucas Love Story, it is one. The discussion was on how hilariously bad my overestimation of its relevance was. It was still pretty damn important, just not 400+ pages over-important.
Fast Eddie: This would be nicely balanced by an article on successful romantic subplots. Oddly, though, the only examples that come to my mind would be more fairly described as having the romance in "A"-Story. Maybe romance is just too big for the B-slot.
Oh, and for the record... the romance was the A-story in Titanic. The catastrophe could have been any damn thing at all.
Chazzers: If you take out Cho Chang then Harry would have no interest in girls whatsoever for the entire series until Rowling hands him a ready-made wife, so I'd say the sideplot or something like it should have been there. Of course you could go the other way and say that by that point Harry's life is so dominated by fighting evil that he wouldn't really have romance on his mind. Either way, Harry was just way too depressed and angsty in general, over Sirius as much as Cho. I'd still say it belongs here though, just because it was uninteresting and it could have been easily cut out.
I agree that Titanic does not belong here, since the love story is the focus of the story. I'm removing it.
Ununnilium: IMHO, the time would have been better spent actually setting up the Ginny romance, but I'm a bitter Luna shipper, so.
Charred Knight: I am adding Willie Scott because even though she is not as important as some of them. She is about 10 times as worse.
UncleDark: It's possible that Titanic (and, to a lesser extent Attack of the Clones) are poor examples of this trope. Titanic in particular is not intended to be the story of the doomed ship, it is meant to be the story of a doomed romance that happens to occur on the doomed ship. By the same token, the clone wars and assassination are sub-plots, it's the Annakin-Padme relationship that is the real subject of the story. It's just that it was done so very badly...
Solandra: I'm really beginning to dislike all the natter I find in articles. Took out the Titanic example for reasons already explained above (the romance was the main point, the disaster only the backdrop) and merged or deleted some other bulleted natter with the main body for some other entries. One mention about Fetish Fuel in this article is enough, thankyouverymuch. Duffgirl: Edited out the Danny Phantom example. Danny/Sam took up less time in the series than Danny/Valerie did, and other than realistic moments where the two were jealous of stuff with the other (I mean COME ON, they're teenagers), it was never featured as the focus of the story—all the ghost butt-kicking was the focus. His relationship with his archnemesis was given more development than the romance, and that and the quipping, superheroing, family troubles, and problems with public perception in his town were given 95% of the spotlight. Neither Valerie nor Sam got too much focus, and babes-no-nerd-should-ever-have-a-chance-with are part of the whole superhero genre. I smell an embittered shipper. Lale: Still, the writers didn't even try for subtlety, which is the key to every good ship. Neo Yi: I find that debatable really, if the act is too subtle or used wrongly, I won't be fully convinced that these couple should be together because the hints might be too far and few in-between. Sometimes, I do need to see some blatant romance and hints going on-screen for me to embrace them as a soon-to-be couple...or at least acknowledge it—Danny/Sam fan I am not, I just don't care for them. mysticpenguin: Went through and trimmed out a bunch of bulleted natter and justifying edits that sprang up in the big book-and-movie-franchise examples. Thinking of removing the comments on the reviews for "Pearl Harbor," but they're funny. I never have been able to resist Roger Ebert being catty. Black Humor: There's a discussion about renaming this trope on the forums . Current frontrunner is Romantic Plot Tumor. If you object to that name, you've got three days to go to that topic and object. (this was posted 3/17/09)
Wascally Wabbit: Darth says: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! to the cut request. You don't burn down the town to kill a few insects.
Cliche: Okay, you know what? If no one gives me a reason why they want that redirect to stay, I'm just going to keep putting it up on the cutlist until someone actually does justify their position, because I'm getting peeved off at the fact that the "wait" button is a seemingly guaranteed "cut request declined" button even though no one has bothered to explain why it should be declined. (07/01/09) |
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