Quote Originally Posted by Provengreil View Post
As detailed below, I question your assessment of these tropes.

In who-dunnits, there are two main types. Fair-play and clueless, where the audience respectively does and doesn't have enough clues to make a proper guess before the reveal. OOTS follows neither of these types directly as it isn't that type of story. If you're using who dunnits as a metaphor for any greater mysteries, I'm not smelling what the rock is cooking here.

But OOTS isn't a romance so....ok? Same issue as above.

What parallels are you drawing to these from OOTS?

1: LOTR: Not a direct combat confrontation, which OOTS might not fully resolve with but will definitely involve.
2: Star Wars: Betrayed by an abused ally (possible, but doesn't really need the OOTS in particular here. That's an entire plotline contained within Team Evil right now).
3: Horned King: I only read a couple books and watched the extremely condensed Disney cartoon movie, so I honestly don't understand your point here.
4: Literally God does it for the heroes by the end (unlikely, even though it is Thor's plan).



The "if he did" phrase is doing some world-class heavy lifting in that sentence. Xykon's entire Lichdom has been thematically tied to the gates and Redcloak/TDO's plan. To resolve that story thread anywhere else than the last gate, in whatever condition or circumstance it's in, is the only real play from a Doylist standpoint.
The examples of the tropes are not meant to be reflective of anything in the comic. They are illustrations of my arguments. They show how tropes can define a genre, or a genera's readership can come to expect and even anticipate certain things.

A perfect example of the fantasy trope I wrote about appears in Utterly Dwarfed. Party down, enemy prematurely gloating, the most powerless member of the party does something incredible, good guys win.

Also, Dungeon Crawlin' Fools: surrounded, sword shattered, things looking bad. Useless gesture of outrage results in unexpected victory.