Ask the Oracle: Does Satan Run the Internet? Plus, Why is the Oracle in the Tank for Anne Hathaway?

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Tags : Ask the Oracle, Dungeons & Dragons, Ella Enchanted, iPhone apps

Ask the Oracle: Does Satan Run the Internet? Plus, Just Why is the Oracle in the Tank for Anne Hathaway?

Posted on 08 February 2010 by Brent Hartinger, Editor

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: The one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that the book version of Ella Enchanted is soooooo much better than the movie. Does it make me a bad person if I don’t agree? In fact, I think the movie ending is a thousand times better than the book, where she just sort of nonsensically “decides” to no longer be enchanted. — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

A: The Oracle completely agrees with you, at least on the ending. Look, the whole point of the movie was to make a relatively staid children’s book more accessible to teens. Not everything worked, but I thought they gave it the ol’ college try and took some interesting chances.

Speaking of which, there’s one scene that I think is extremely charming. It’s when Ella (who is enchanted to do whatever anyone tells her to do) is commanded to “sing!” by some giants and, mid-performance, is then further commanded to do increasingly ridiculous things:

Yes, the Oracle is in the tank for Anne Hathaway.

Going back to your point about the ending, one of my big pet peeves in fantasy is when a character who is cursed or charmed or under prophecy simply decides not to be. As I wrote two weeks ago about prophecies, once a curse or prophecy has been established as “real,” it’s a colossal plot-cheat to have the author resolve a story simply by having the character “decide” it doesn’t matter any more.

If pressed, the author usually says something like, “Well, she wasn’t able to make that decision until the end! She hadn’t grown enough!”

Of course, that’s ridiculous. Can a character “decide” he or she isn’t susceptible to the laws of gravity anymore either?

And yet, that is exactly the way Ella Enchanted (the book) ends. Ella simply decides, “Well, hey, I guess I won’t be enchanted any more!” Completely unsatisfying to me.

I’m all for having characters change and grow, but that needs to represented by his or her looking at the problem in a new, unexpected way, coming up with a clever, inevitable-in-retrospect, but-still-surprising way to solve the problem.

That’s what Ella Enchanted, the movie, did quite well. Since Ella is enchanted to do whatever anyone tells her to do, the story is resolved she looks at herself in the hall of mirrors and commands herself to no longer be enchanted, to no longer do what people tell her to do.

The perfect ending for this particular story — and one that is far better than the book.

Not Conan

Q: What is the DEAL with all these casting rumors for The Hobbit and Conan? People wrote that Tobey Maguire and Jared Padalecki were “done deals” — but they weren’t. — Jim, Rapid City, SD

A: The problem is the internet.

Look, I love new media and the internet — some of my best friends are the internet! But it’s definitely not perfect.

Here’s how I see the problem: since the internet pays for itself with ad revenue (which is derived from page-views and, increasingly, unique visitors), most websites do everything they can to drive search engine traffic to their site. The “easy” way to do this is to be the first to report something — or at least the first to rewrite the latest rumor from somewhere else. If you get your article up early enough, you’ll come in near the top in search results, and everyone else will link to you.

Sometimes the “news” really is a genuine rumor from someone who might know — now many more people are privy to the behind-the-scenes gossip that used to go on just between industry folks.

But gossip is also often wrong.

Anyway, the end result is many websites breathlessly report the slightest and most far-fetched rumor as “news.” Since many website operators have no training in traditional journalism — and because there’s so much pressure to be “first” — very few outlets ever call the source (or his or her representatives) directly and say, “Before I put my credibility on the line with this story, I just want to know: is it true?”

No, they just repeat what they read on some other site, and soon, another rumor is all the way around the world (not just halfway) before the truth even has its pants on.

Too often, the internet becomes one big echo chamber, with everyone repeating some rumor that just wasn’t all that important to begin with.

It’s not that website operators are evil or stupid (although some are). They behave this way because, as a result of how internet advertising is set up, they’re rewarded financially when they do.

I suspect this new media landscape is here to stay (at least until advertising models shift), so the solution is to either roll with it or learn which websites to ignore.

Q: Can you recommend a good D&D dice roller for the iPhone?

A: D20Touch works for me. Despite the semi-confusing name, it simulates all the D&D dice, not just D20.

Here’s how it works:

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