This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: I'd say Oz doesn't count. The tour of the area is often the whole point. It's a Travelogue Plot.
Pteryx: A quibble about the Deathly Hallows example: I felt that the Invisibility Cloak turning out to be Special was a natural surprise, and the Elder Wand added some drama even though it wasn't resolved in the best way. The Resurrection Stone was superfluous, though.
Lale: IMO, the Stone should have been left out, the Cloak should have remained an average Invisibility Cloak, not least of all because it's never hinted in any way that is some super cloak that works better than any others do, and the book should have been titled Harry Potter and the Elder Wand. This makes me worry what they're going to cut come movie time. If they cut the Deathly Hallows, the story loses nothing. But they would have to change the title.
DomaDoma: If you leave out the Stone, you leave out What Happened to Dumbledore's Hand (thus, a good chunk of Dumbledore and Snape's motivations), you leave out the spirit escort in Chapter 34, and the culmination of the whole mortality theme becomes an isolated incident within the book, not the result of a beautiful build-up. Now, there's no reason Harry's Cloak has to be a MacGuffin (except that JKR apparently started out with that bunny), but the number three does feel more complete. With that in mind, yeah, I don't think the Deathly Hallows plot counts as an example.
Lale: The ring was also a horcrux, which have a tendency to try to kill people who touch them as it is, and the spirit escort was sweet but entirely not necessary, fulfilling the requirement of filler. The mortality theme is delivered by the horcruxes and the Elder Wand. What this adds up to is the most expendable part of the story.
DomaDoma: Inessential does not mean unintegrated. In addition to the mortality theme and Dumbledore's darkest secrets, we have Harry's obsession with the Hallows, which hearkens back to the Mirror of Erised, we have two-thirds of Dumbledore's will (the one part tying to Grindelwald and giving a particularly pointed example of Death Eater tactics, the other aiding in the crucial point of the book), and it's not as though James's cloak had never been seen before. So I'll grant you that it may not be absolutely critical, but no way do Hammerheads and pygmy shrews have so many ties to the main themes, characters and plots.
(Quidditch, on the other hand, hasn't been remotely integrated since "Grim Defeat".)
Danel: Cut the Harry Potter example entirely - it doesn't really fit:
- Quidditch throughout the Harry Potter series. More so as time goes on, which may
- Are you sure? It seems to me that Quidditch is neither A)a tribe or B)irrelavant to the plot. A better example might be the Centaurs in the first book.
Danel: Pulled a few examples, and I'm also not sure about the other Order Of The Stick example - as the Author's Commentary in the book explains, the bandit sidequest is intended to provide Character Development for Roy, and to get the group really working as a team. Which it does.
Dausuul: Both of those are true, but the episode remains a Wacky Wayside Tribe - it does exactly nothing to advance the plot.
