The 10 Most Successful Failures in Geekdom

Great list! I wouldn’t say Frodo failed spectacularly, though. I mean, he got close enough to the edge for Gollum to bite off his finger and fall into the lava, right? That had to count for something. So if Frodo failed, I certainly wouldn’t classify it as spectacularly. I’d say sorta failed.

And for the record, my dear departed father called it–that Luke Skywalker would take up the mantle of Darth Vader. I remember it. It was in 1983, and after watching Return of the Jedi, he told me the story continues and Luke will be the next Darth Vader. He was joking, I’d imagine, but for a while, I thought he was telling the truth (I was 5).

is it really *SPOILER lasting peace? *SPOILER

Nitpicks:

Fry wasn’t saving the last bit of data from the brainspawn.  Once they had collected that last bit of data the infosphere opened to scan itself, making itself temporarily vulnerable to an attack.  Which is what Fry was sent to do, that is detonate a device that would remove the infosphere from our universe.

Also it was the brainspawn who sent Fry back to 1999, not Nibbler (as Fry, the infosphere, and the entire brainspawn were now in some parallel reality where they were the only things in existence.)

Considering how badly EVERYONE fails in The Venture Bros., I’d say Brock is more competent than anyone else in the series. 

Interesting that the whole weird Starbuck thing was left out of the BSG post… but I guess compared to all the other stuff it’s pretty minor.  

Frodo’s failure might be my very favorite part of Lord of the Rings! Well, okay, “I AM NO BRO!” is actually my favorite part of Lord of the Rings, but Frodo’s failure is thematically the best part.

And thank you, Mary Sue, for backing up my BSG-related rage.

Ummm… Not to nit-pick but I think someone needs to rewatch their BSG. You kinda got everything about the 13th tribe wrong.

I’m not sure Frodo qualifies, since his failure really wasn’t a fridge moment, it was part of the film’s big climax.  That said, one could argue that Frodo both did and *didn’t* fail, in that he took pity on Gollum: if he chose not to, then Gollum wouldn’t have attacked him, and led up to the sequence of events which led to the ring’s destruction.  Frodo’s strength may have failed him at the end, but the strength of character he showed in the past turned disaster into success.

Or something like that.  In any case, it sure isn’t like Jedi…

Apologies in advance for the nitpicking, but this is one of those things that Just Bugs Me(tm), and it seems to come up every time the BSG finale is mentioned.
The “Mitochondrial Eve” concept doesn’t mean everyone else died out. It’s finding a common ancestor based on the fact that we only inherit mitochondria from our mothers.

Start with two families. One has all girls, or a mix of girls and boys. The other has all boys. The mother who has girls? Her grandchildren will inherit her mitochondria. The mother who has all boys? Her mitochondrial line will disappear, even if she has more grandchildren than the first.

One character being Mitochondrial Eve doesn’t mean every other family died out. It just means that over time, each other line had at least one generation of all boys.

I never got that one part about the ending of Mockingjay.
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It seemed as though they all voted (or got out-voted)  to have another Hunger Games, but they never pick up on whether they actually ended up doing it. Coin getting killed seemed to indicate that her replacement was a more sane and less ruthless person, leading a government that Katniss and Peeta could at least stomach as they lived out the rest of their lives. If the new government went ahead with the Hunger Games, I don’t really get the point…especially with the last line in the book.

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I disagree with almost everything about the Hunger Games mention. Katniss’s prime objective is not to keep from dying. That’s her secondary. Her primary objective is to protect her family. And the examples given of how she puts herself in danger are usually because she has judged that the risk of that danger is less than if she didn’t. The ones when she is in the hunger games themselves is because she is manipulating the circumstances. The rest are because she sees it as the best way to protect her family, especially Prim.

I’m not going to say more on that because I’m really trying not to spoiler even though I think everyone should have read the books, go read them now!

Wait. How is Utena a failure? 

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Utena brings about a revolution… it’s just that the world revolution was to free Anthy from her role as Rose Bride. So, not only did she win the ultimate prize of revolution, but she also freed her friend from an eternity of self-loathing and self-imposed punishment. I don’t see that as a failure. Even if it takes place in the confines of Ohtori, that was Utena and Anthy’s WORLD, so it was a world revolution. And who says world revolution has to be big?

I took it to mean that in the aftermath of Coin’s death, the plans for the new Hunger Games were dropped. It should have been made a bit clearer, though.

Or that those generations of girls who possessed other mitochondrial lineages didn’t reproduce or that their offspring didn’t reproduce. It could be a sloughing effect if the Mitochondrial Eve lineage was just more plentiful or more successful over a longer period of time.

Oh sure, RUB IT IN. Like to see you do better, Mary Sue.

HUNGER GAMES SPOILER! 

But you forget what the whole point of Katniss even volunteering was – to save her sister. And in the end, while she saves her for a time, ultimately Prim still dies and Katniss is powerless to stop it. So while things end in a sort of HEA, Katniss failed at what she originally set out to do. 

She only failed because the other side that was supposed to be her side cheated. I do agree, she failed on that goal. After that happened though, her next main goal was revenge on the cause, which was almost denied her through clever shenanigans, but she got it right.

I think Frodo gets full marks for just delivering the proverbial toxic waste to the dump site. Sure it dominated him because it dominates anyone who bears it (except Sam, who’s strangely immune, and Tom who is not-so-strangely immune).

I wonder if slipping the ring on a bunny, and then taking a cage full of well-fed invisible bunny to Mount Doom would have bypassed the whole domination thing. Or maybe the bunny would figure out how to escape. Stupid bunny.