killing the Big Bad

[pinkpolarity]

Here's a fiction question for you all: When, after the long wait and confrontations with lesser villains, you finally get the big climactic confrontation against the Big Bad, how much does it matter to you how it dies

Comments

[pinkpolarity]

TY! I don't know why I was feeling uncertain about this-- there's a lot of emotion in what I have in mind, and a lot of dialogue about the problem of immortality, and oh heck, a lot of buildup. I just love the idea of all of these very supernaturally powerful people can't figure out a way to end this guy without triggering his safeguards, and in the end it comes down to a distraction and a bullet in the noggin.

(It's silly since so far this just lives in my mind, but I've felt like I shouldn't be writing anything down until I have a better idea of character, world, and plot. Which has slowly been coalescing. I'd like to try to write snippets of things, especially backstory. This whole thing could never have worked as well as fanfic!)

And yeah, I've had that in my head with Harry Potter for years. "My AK beats your AK!" I don't recall anything in canon about him and danger sense. Sure, he could do magic against someone in front of him brandishing a gun and firing, but could he stop a Muggle half a mile away on a roof with a good sniper rifle and a bullet he doesn't know is coming?

[darth_eldritch]

You're welcome!

It's funny because I had a recent discussion about using high powered slug throwers taking out a Sith Lord. One guy had a fic where his Jedi like characters take a side arm or two in taking out a nest of dark pathers. It was pretty well thought out, too.

A sniper bullet would be ironic indeed.

[pinkpolarity]

I've had conversations like that too. Rob pulled a good one in-game, there's some kind of wide-angle anti-riot gun in the SWRPG that's virtually impossible for a single Jedi/Sith to deflect and good for taking one prisoner.

But I just like the idea that sometimes power isn't what's needed to combat power. (See my comment downthread to Sophy for context.) This character is a quieter authority, and the greatest power her ancestress had was the ability to self-sacrifice and endure. It's that no matter how this story and its setting grows organically away from it's SW roots, it's still very much a comment about what I hate about SW. And the bigger, bigger ever flashier bang is something I hate about SW. I think the most successful things in that franchise are some of the quietest. Kreia. Vader throwing Palpy down a well. Jacen and his dhuryam. They're epic, but they're not BIGGER! MORE!

[darth_eldritch]

But I just like the idea that sometimes power isn't what's needed to combat power.

Yes, I see what you mean, and those examples are great ones. It goes with the principle of understated power, the kind that others overlook in their fixation with raw power. Excellent example you mention below.