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Post by North Star on Apr 12, 2005 15:09:49 GMT
Heh. I've never seen a US keyboard, but I've often had to muddle through one invisibly (e.g. after a reinstall and US settings come as default).
NS.
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Post by stardragon on Oct 24, 2018 22:53:33 GMT
From Shadow on the Sand: The grim-faced Sharnazim encircle you, their razor-sharp scimitars glinting in the afternoon sun. 'Take him!' shouts Maouk. 'But take him alive!' KL, gender defender Also in Dawn of the Darklords, a mini adventure in the Magnamund Companion in which you play as Banedon, after meeting Lone Wolf part of the passage reads: "The Kai Lord studies the message and a great sadness fills his eagle eyes. ‘Alas, the wisdom of this warning has arrived too late to save my kin. The war has already begun and my brothers in arms were the first to fall to the evil host of Helgedad. They are dead, and I am all that remains of the Kai. Your mission is complete, Banedon, but mine has only just begun. I, Lone Wolf, must journey to Holmgard to warn the King. He will know what must be done to save our land.’ Instinctively, you remove your Crystal Star Pendant and hand it to the last Kai warrior. It is a talisman of good luck and you pray that it protects him on the perilous road ahead.
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Post by johntfs on Oct 25, 2018 18:11:17 GMT
For example, Lone Wolf never has any experience that "flaunts" his masculinity. Like when he takes a bath in Book 5 - with all his clothes on. Or the fact that he never has a romance. Thoughts on this? Bathing with his clothes: maybe he wanted to wash them at the same time? Even if you are a man, you still want to look good. Never had a romance: I don't remember him meeting a girl with whom he might had a chance to get a romance with. Serocca loves someone else (and, besides, she lives in another universe), Alyss seems too young for him and Queen Evaine would rather married someone from a royal bloodline. Maybe he had an affair with Baron Vanalund's daughter after he saved her? Lone Wolf usually comes off as so "mission-focused" as to be asexual. He'll occasionally note someone as "attractive" like the Cartwheel woman from Fire on the Water (even if Gary Chalk's illustration makes her look like something out of the Puppet Master horror movies). The closest I've seen Lone Wolf come to "romance" with a woman was in book 18 when he meets Baroness Coryene. Even then, the interest seems to come more from her than from him.
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Post by heroaltair2 on Nov 27, 2018 20:56:43 GMT
In the Dessi Legend, it tells about the birth and rise to the greatness of two "koura-tas-kai" (Sons of the Sun), so Lone Wolf must be a male, since, if he were a female, he couldn't be the Skarn from the legend.
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Post by Lost Wolf on Dec 20, 2018 13:15:01 GMT
Lone Wolf usually comes off as so "mission-focused" as to be asexual. He'll occasionally note someone as "attractive" like the Cartwheel woman from Fire on the Water (even if Gary Chalk's illustration makes her look like something out of the Puppet Master horror movies). The closest I've seen Lone Wolf come to "romance" with a woman was in book 18 when he meets Baroness Coryene. Even then, the interest seems to come more from her than from him. There is also a rather obscure passage in Fire on the Water (obscure cause it's not a very common route to be taken, I think) where a girl in a tavern helps Lone Wolf against a ruffian of sort, showing "simpathy" for the Kai Lord. As usual our monk has to pursue his mission and so jumps in pursuit of another ruffian or something.
But yeah basically Lone Wolf comes off as someone that takes notice of female beauty when he sees it, but isn't interested in pursuing women. I actually like this because it enforces the fact that Lone Wolf can be really YOU regardless of even reader's sexual orientation.
As for the main topic, my personal opinion is that the books were written at a time when most RPG gamers and such were male and so it probably came out "natural" to have a male protagonist (hence the Lord in Kai Lords), but I do think that if the books were written today the idea that the protagonist is YOU, regardless of who the reader is, would be even more enforced. Even the fact that a physical description is never given and a clear depiction of the protagonist was abandoned from covers in subsequent reprints enforcers this idea of the "whoever protagonist". It's quite clear from the first printings that Lone Wolf was envisioned as a fair-skinned blonde young lad, archetypal Sommlending. But in the newest videogame, for which Mr. Dever did much counseling, Lone Wolf has brown hair and beard. Meaning that a canonical fixed physical image of the protagonist was abandoned.
Canon-wise Lone Wolf is male (there are some illustrations in the New Order series too), and probably the whole of the Kai Order in the eighties was thought of as males (but this is just an hypothesis of mine only due the Lords thing). Still I like that Kai Lords isn't all males regardless of whatever the original idea was.
While Lone Wolf is canonically male I like to think that a reader wouldn't have much problems thinking of being female within the adventure, because in book 1-20 the thing that would say you aren't is basically just grammar.
Fun fact: when Lone Wolf arrived in Italy as "Lupo Solitario" the Lords were translated as Cavalieri, which is the italian word for knights. Knights sounds more gender neutral than lords, and maybe had better reception with female audiences (just another hypothesis).
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Post by bravestar on Dec 23, 2018 18:22:22 GMT
Honestly I've always seen the Lone Wolf gender issue as being like Link in the Legend of Zelda. You can argue there is an 'intended' path, but it's not such a rigid one that alternate interpretations are automatically refuted. The idea of a Lone Wolf who is female but mistakn for male, for example. It's really just in how you decide to interpret the discrepancies to suit the 'narrative' you created.
Also if people are willing to argue over the interpretation of the rules and the language defining those rules (or nevermind the 'in-universe' parameters supporting or refuting something like, say, dual-wield), I think a similar case can be made for background details to be equally open ended.
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Post by johntfs on Jan 2, 2019 3:01:54 GMT
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Post by stardragon on Jan 2, 2019 16:38:56 GMT
Very true. For instance, Luke Skywalker was the head of the new Jedi Order and he was the most powerful one and for a while the only one. But, there is no indication that Luke changed the rules and it can be implied that he was celibate, that was when Disney ruined the franchise though, unlike in Legends.
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Post by oede2joy on Jan 5, 2019 7:06:55 GMT
At the end of 'Eclipse of the Kai', when Lone Wolf is searching the ruined Kai Monestery, one of the corpses he finds is of a beautiful young girl, who, rather inconveniently, has had her heart eaten out. Presumably she must have been either a Kai Lord or was being trained as one. Anyone with the book want to confirm what is said about her? It's been a good 15 years since I read it.... Yeah, page 229 of Eclipse of the Kai. If you look about halfway down the first paragraph on that page it reads: (The preceding text is (c) Paul Barnett 1989) Well remembered, Vonotar, though it seems a strange and very obscure thing to commit to memory. Replying to a thread that's almost 15 years old, though I did enjoy reading about all the topics discussed. But I just thought it's funny the passage in "Eclips of the Kai" was mentioned, and you note that it's a strange thing to remember. The dead Kai girl with her heart eaten out is one of the few things I remember from the Legend of Lone Wolf books that I read. I read a couple books and recall that there was a girl named Quinefer, a Giak character, a game with some chess pieces that bite your fingers...I didn't even remember the title of the books until it was mentioned, but that girl Lone Wolf finds whose hear was eaten has definitely stuck in my mind. It is quite a vivid picture really.
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Post by johntfs on Jan 6, 2019 6:30:22 GMT
Very true. For instance, Luke Skywalker was the head of the new Jedi Order and he was the most powerful one and for a while the only one. But, there is no indication that Luke changed the rules and it can be implied that he was celibate, that was when Disney ruined the franchise though, unlike in Legends. We can choose to assume Luke was celibate in the Disney timeline, though there's really nothing to prove or disprove that one way or another. In the Legends timeline he married Mara Jade and fathered a child, Ben, with her. So, not celibate there.
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