Subject: It's actually more like the opposite
Author:
Posted on: 2012-08-25 01:50:00 UTC
The Sues have read the books and seen the movies multiple times, yet they still seem to have zero knowledge about anything regarding Middle-earth. The fic takes place after the series has ended, though, so there's not a lot to have foreknowledge on. It's just general useful information they seem to have not to know.
I'm still working on my first mission, and I have a question. It's a LotR trans-dimensional hopper - the Sues go from England to Rivendell - which would be standard as they come, except they've all already read LotR, because the books and movies exist in their earth. This has to be a common occurrence, but I'm not sure what the protocol is. Is that a charge? Or is it just annoying?
With, I would imagine, further charges if they use the fact that they've read the books/seen the films to give them detailed foreknowledge of events, which is something I've seen a few times.
Particularly if the accuracy persists once they start meddling with things, the 'Butterfly Effect' rarely seems to come into play in this kind of badfic.
The Sues have read the books and seen the movies multiple times, yet they still seem to have zero knowledge about anything regarding Middle-earth. The fic takes place after the series has ended, though, so there's not a lot to have foreknowledge on. It's just general useful information they seem to have not to know.
When I read 'the Sues go from England to Rivendell' I just assumed that they were doing that in order to join the Fellowship.
AFAIK, the only things dealing with stuff after LotR proper are in The History of Middle-earth -- there's something about the Fourth Age and the New Shadow or something similar in The Peoples of Middle-earth (IIRC) and there's something about Dagor Dagorath somewhere, but that's about it.
Still, 'Sues that saw the movies and read the books and yet still miss general know-how are annoying. As well as not making the least bit of sense.
"Falling into Middle Earth" is a charge. It could be counted as an implausible time travel charge of some sort, if you agree with the Sixth/Seventh Age commentary at the bottom of this page.
I agree that Sues that claim to have read the books/seen the movies/etc. yet know next-to-nothing about the canon they've been placed into are annoying and chargeworthy. Also, just because it's the Forth Age (do the Sues in the fic even know that that's what it's called?) doesn't mean that you can turn canon and plausibility on their heads!
On a tangent, I've just gotten a plotbunny; a fic about the end of the Fourth Age. That would be interesting...
The Forth Age? The Age in Which Plotbunnies Come Forth? But that's some plotbunny. If only there was more to work with...
'Falling into Middle-earth' should cover it.
Or, in the interests of promoting inter-department wossnames: why not call in an agent of Despatch (technically the combined Departments of Trans-Dimensional Snatching and TD Hopping, as I recall) to help deal with that part? You'd have to write your own for the piece, as no-one's written Despatch for a long time... if you're not up to that, just having your agents phone them and ask if they need to do anything special would be a nice call-out.
hS, promoting wossnames