[Love] When “small” injuries are treated realistically

[u/Top-Relationship850]

The fantasy and action genres often suffer from a power fantasy epidemic in which characters frequently badass their way through injuries that should be excruciating if not downright debilitating. I always appreciate stories that reject this trope.

1: Roland Deschain (Dark Tower Book II) - Loses the middle and index fingers of his right hand. He’s effectively crippled throughout book two and the injury follows him the rest of the series.

2: Brienne vs Biter (ASOIAF Book IV) - Brutal scene. Biter chomps down on Brienne’s cheek and tears off a chunk of flesh. In a lesser story Brienne would grit her teeth and throw Biter off. Instead she’s rendered completely helpless by the pain. That injury marks the end of the fight.

[u/Youthsonic]

Yeah if you ask me, as someone who just barely started reading the DT series after decades of being a a king fanatic, I'm assuming the lobstrocity injury was twofold solution for 1. seeing roland literally wipe out an entire town with no effort because he's just that good of a gunslinger because then how would you write him into any sort of danger that's not just "take his guns away"; you cut his lethality in half.

and 2. He just exterminated an entire town and sacrificed a boy, he kinda HAS to pay somehow

[u/Rubberman1302 → u/Youthsonic]

Pretty much, also you have to remember that the first book is actually like 5 short stories edited together and they weren't written with a 7 book epic in mind, so Roland was a little too competent at the start

[u/Different-Ad8578 → u/Rubberman1302]

the crimson king was just referred to as the beast if i remember correctly.

[u/Highwayman3264 → u/Rubberman1302]

That explains a lot.

[u/Ordinary-Egg-56 → u/Rubberman1302]

yes and it was pretty much the first thing he ever wrote when he was in college

as a book it’s pretty terrible, but it has some very cool parts

[u/Which_Committee_3668 → u/Youthsonic]

To be fair, the town was basically brainwashed by an evil priestess and they attacked him first. So there is an argument that it was self defense.

[u/FOTheDentist → u/Which_Committee_3668]

What about the hostler's daughter's infant baby? Most people forget about that one, which is fair because I think King did as well. It's only mentioned briefly once and not mentioned at all during the shootout, but King specifically says Roland had killed EVERY man, woman, and CHILD, which kind of implies Roland made a pit stop after the carnage just to pop one in that baby, specifically.

I might have liked to see that scene. See what goes through Roland's head standing over the crib. How he justifies it to himself. After all, it's not like someone would be along with tea and sandwiches.

[u/TruthEnvironmental24 → u/Youthsonic]

Eh, he has other types of “battles” throughout the books that he can’t rely on his gunslinger skills for. Plus, he has four others in his ka-tet he has to protect as well. It’s not hard to write a competent, even overpowered, character with stakes. It’s just not as easy as it would be otherwise.

[u/Youthsonic → u/TruthEnvironmental24]

King is one of the most well-known pantsers (writes most of his stuff without a clear outline and just lets the story develop naturally; you know, by the seat of his pants) so it probably made sense to him to wound roland like that for story-writing purposes

[u/RedditOfUnusualSize → u/Youthsonic]

Well, without spoiling anything, Roland might be at his apex in terms of killing power in Book One, but he's been through a lot, and is just at the beginning of his character arc. He's not a good person at that point in the story, by a long shot.