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   Ghislaine :dancing_z: (ghislaine@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 08:46:04 JST Ghislaine :dancing_z:
   I feel like Stranger Things and Wheel of Time have a similar problem in that they made the antagonist way too strong. Thus the only way for our plucky heroes to beat him is for him to make just bafflingly stupid decisions and forget to use his most OP moves at crucial times.
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     Cap'n Kong (slightretvrn) (kang_kong3@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 08:46:03 JST Cap'n Kong (slightretvrn)

     in reply to
     @Ghislaine Very few writers are capable of writing a character smarter than themselves in a believable manner. Haven't watched either of those shows though.
     BowserNoodle ☦️ likes this.
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     Ghislaine :dancing_z: (ghislaine@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 08:47:04 JST Ghislaine :dancing_z:

     in reply to

     • Cap'n Kong (slightretvrn)
     @Kang_Kong3 It's like really effective and scary to make the badguy be all knowing and be able to like tear your head off psychically and have a massive army of nigh unkillable goons. But like you're sort of making a promise that you'll find a clever way for your heroes to beat him anyway. Like in LOTR this is actually handled well. They gave the ring to a hobbit and sent him to destroy it while pretending they had it and we're going to use it to fight sauron. Which flushed his armies out of Mordor and kept him occupied for long enough for the hobbits to get the job done. Satisfying. What wouldn't have been satisfying is if aragorn and the fellowship just killed all the orks with plot armor and knocked over barad dur with magic or something then destroyed the ring after.
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     Cap'n Kong (slightretvrn) (kang_kong3@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 08:47:04 JST Cap'n Kong (slightretvrn)

     in reply to
     @Ghislaine I think you've got to keep the antagonists scalable to the heroes in terms of smarts and power. You can have the overboss being all masterminding in the background, off camera and have their lieutenants be the direct obstacle.
     Which again fits the Tolkien blueprint
     BowserNoodle ☦️ likes this.