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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotActuallyTim" data-source="post: 6758732" data-attributes="member: 6804638">Rethinking the Wall in Faerun, for a second.In fiction, to maintain drama, characters behave in irrational way, right? They act emotionally rather than reasonably to create tension. This leads to many characters turning out to actually have been behaving like massive jerks when put under a microscope by fans. There's all kinds of things in fiction that when examined, showcase how nonsensical the setting is or how petty minded the people in it are. See <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic" target="_blank">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic</a>So, the Wall. Now, I'm not sure what originally inspired the writers of FR stories to create the Wall. While it could have certainly been because of DM/player strife, that seems a little too convenient. It could have also been an establishing character moment for Myrkul, who made the wall, and while that would seem like it was enough, that doesn't explain why the authors would bring it back after they had Kelemvor break it to pieces.Now, there's plenty of speculation on <a href="http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/62456/why-are-the-faithless-condemed-to-the-wall-of-the-faithless-after-death" target="_blank">In-Universe reasons for the wall</a>. But I'm focusing on writers reasons for such a plot structure, and I'm getting a funny feeling about the wall as a narrative element. (1) The wall makes every 'reasonable' or 'good' god look like an ass to astute readers thanks to Fridge Logic(2) The wall is here to stay, at least so far, despite fan objections, as the last attempt to remove it from the setting just failed(3) The wall has been (I think) tangentially involved in some major events in the Realms, but never really featured as a major set piece in a plotSo. We've got a narrative element that's nonsensical both in and outside the setting. It's completely unused. I'm calling it now. The Wall is an unused Chekhov's Gun, one that should have been used a long time ago. It was created for the express purpose of being dropped as a bomb on the readers, but now everybody knows about, so the surprise is sort of ruined. The implication of this is that the writers are waiting for everyone to forget the Wall exists, so that they can surprise everyone with it.But no one will ever forget about the Wall. It's too bad a piece of writing to ignore. It rubs everybody the wrong way. So it's permanent, not because anyone actually wants it in FR, but because the authors won't use it until the fans forget, and the fans are watching it every single day, hoping that today is the day it gets kicked out the setting.A watched Wall, never falls.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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