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I don't think I will ever not chuckle upon remembering the enigmatic Silent Doctor character present in many Modegan plays.
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Feb 9, 2019 08:32
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eyes luminous with the beginning of tears
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Feb 9, 2019 08:36
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BotL, can you explain in at least 250 words what it is about Patrick's prosaic prose that keeps you up at night shaking your head whilst wistfully whispering, "drat. He's just- drat. Wow."
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Feb 9, 2019 08:44
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Sham bam bamina! posted:And readers who see Denna as indicative of Rothfuss’ lack of artistry are not looking at the evidence. (Of course, one thing this whole f**king election season has demonstrated is that, when people make their minds up, all the evidence in the world is as a shrill wind that passes by and leaves the landscape unmoved, so I’m not going to try hard to convince anyone of anything. I’m just going to point out a few things and leave it to you to make up your own mind.) My eyes glassed over so hard trying to read this article they retroactively generated nuclear detonations due to the universe trying to backassedly justify their change.
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Feb 9, 2019 09:05
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Sham bam bamina! posted:And readers who see Denna as indicative of Rothfuss’ lack of artistry are not looking at the evidence. (Of course, one thing this whole f**king election season has demonstrated is that, when people make their minds up, all the evidence in the world is as a shrill wind that passes by and leaves the landscape unmoved, so I’m not going to try hard to convince anyone of anything. I’m just going to point out a few things and leave it to you to make up your own mind.) It would be awesome if this chucklehead would take all the effort of doing mental gymnastics to justify to themselves why Rothfuss isn’t actually poo poo at writing women and just... use it to read fantasy books with actually good female characters. Perhaps—and I know this is a lot to ask of the average SFF nerd—even books by women.
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Feb 9, 2019 09:32
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Doctor Faustine posted:It would be awesome if this chucklehead would take all the effort of doing mental gymnastics to justify to themselves why Rothfuss isn’t actually poo poo at writing women and just... use it to read fantasy books with actually good female characters. No, I don't know either why she'd write a sentence like "The mysterious, damaged, and possibly not-entirely-human Auri is drawn with particular sensitivity, and her character substantiated with nuance and depth." Some kind of fandom poisoning.
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Feb 9, 2019 10:31
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I wouldn't say Rothfuss is bad at writing women. I would say Rothfuss is bad at writing.
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Feb 9, 2019 11:22
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porfiria posted:I wouldn't say Rothfuss is bad at writing women. This pretty much sums it up. I think a large part of it is the fact that the books are multiple unrelated tales stitched together, so very little or nothing carries over between them. For example, after his parents die, he spends 6 months in the wilderness somehow surviving alone. When he goes to the city he promptly forgets this and stays despite the fact that the wilderness was easy enough to survive entirely off-screen while the city is full of evil rapists, drug addicts, inquisitors, and guards. But then when this section ends, all of his trauma and issues from his time in the city is literally washed away with a single bath and suddenly he looks like a particularly handsome nobleman's son. At this time, roughly 15, leaves and goes to wizard college where... everyone treats him like he's a good 5-6 years older than he is, to the point that nobody gives him any poo poo at all for being a fifteen year old brat and in fact only gets poo poo for being a 1st year-er. He hangs out with people much older than him and goes drinking like he's much older than he is and I'm pretty sure the fact that Denna is his age is never thought of again. It's clear that at some point he WAS the same age as everyone else, but I guess he couldn't fit in a 5 year gap. I'd wager most of the college stuff in both books was written at about the same time, but then the Pirates+Maer+Bandits+Felurian part was one section, and then the Ademre was it's own. The bandit part where Kvothe is a mysterious maybe-rapist who murders everyone before he even finds out about the kidnapped girls was entirely it's own thing - it was actually the short story that got people interested in Rothfuss. The part directly after the murders where he takes the girls home and beats up a kid for being a jerk and probably the rest of the book feels like it was all written at the same time. So when you take all these disparate parts and don't try particularly hard to work them together, you get two awful books.
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Feb 9, 2019 11:58
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Edit: Wrong tab.
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Feb 9, 2019 13:00
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Speaking of Rothfuss' deep and compelling female characters, I was trying to think of whether they passes the Bechdel test and someone did the work to check. The answer is hahaha are you kidding? I doubt it even passes a weaker version of two female characters discussing something other than the main character.http://bunwat.booklikes.com/post/700867/thoughts-on-name-of-the-wind-and-the-bechdel-test posted:Among many other things, this got me to thinking about the Bechdel Test. (Or to honor Allison Bechdel’s preference, the Bechdel/Wallace test since it was actually invented by her friend Liz Wallace.) Name of the Wind most certainly fails, in fact it fails pretty spectacularly. I was a few chapters in before I started to wonder where all the women went, so I might have missed something early on but as far as I can tell the first female character appears after seven chapters, there are nine chapters before a female character speaks, forty chapters before a female character has an actual conversation, sixty chapters before two female characters appear in the same scene and speak to one another and never do more than two women appear in any scene nor do they speak to one another about anything except a man.
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Feb 9, 2019 14:45
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Of note is that Fela obviously doesn't save herself, kvothe just talks poo poo about how she totally could have.
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Feb 9, 2019 18:12
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She literally knows the supposedly all-encompassing name of stones or earth or whatever yet couldn't muster that to escape a building fire. Yeah, okay Rothfart.
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Feb 9, 2019 18:27
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Of note is that Fela obviously doesn't save herself, kvothe just talks poo poo about how she totally could have. It makes sense if you interpret it as Kvothe trying to neg her.
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Feb 9, 2019 22:39
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Sham bam bamina! posted:And readers who see Denna as indicative of Rothfuss’ lack of artistry are not looking at the evidence. (Of course, one thing this whole f**king election season has demonstrated is that, when people make their minds up, all the evidence in the world is as a shrill wind that passes by and leaves the landscape unmoved, so I’m not going to try hard to convince anyone of anything. I’m just going to point out a few things and leave it to you to make up your own mind.) Lmfao, imagine writing this
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Feb 9, 2019 23:31
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Kchama posted:This pretty much sums it up. I think a large part of it is the fact that the books are multiple unrelated tales stitched together, so very little or nothing carries over between them. For example, after his parents die, he spends 6 months in the wilderness somehow surviving alone. When he goes to the city he promptly forgets this and stays despite the fact that the wilderness was easy enough to survive entirely off-screen while the city is full of evil rapists, drug addicts, inquisitors, and guards. Horatio Alger for fantasy incels
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Feb 9, 2019 23:36
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f**cking penis season
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Feb 9, 2019 23:36
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I guess these extremely promiscuous sex ninjas don't understand how sperm works, brilliant
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Feb 11, 2019 20:04
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ElGroucho posted:I guess these extremely promiscuous sex ninjas don't understand how sperm works, brilliant I still have no idea what kind of conclusion Rothfuss wanted us to draw about them from that whole thing. Unless, of course, he just wanted an excuse for endless sex scenes.
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Feb 11, 2019 20:51
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I think I can at least take a guess at his "conclusion".
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Feb 11, 2019 21:12
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The best part was Kvothe just kinda shrugging and saying, "I guess since I can't explain it to them in a way they can understand, their view is just as correct as my scientifically proven view."
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Feb 11, 2019 21:36
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Maybe Rothfuss wanted to make it clear Kvothe is a dumbass who is outdebated by other dumbasses who are coincidentally sex ninjas.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:43
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Rothfuss's plan to get laid by making women better fighters and magicians in his fantasy world backfires when they have all the agency of a dog fart.
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Feb 12, 2019 05:24
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Solice Kirsk posted:The best part was Kvothe just kinda shrugging and saying, "I guess since I can't explain it to them in a way they can understand, their view is just as correct as my scientifically proven view." It's even funnier in the audio book, since they have swedish accents for some reason, so you've got a bunch of horny Swedes too stupid to understand what even the most primitive tribesmen figured out 100,000 years ago.
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Feb 12, 2019 05:27
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Rothfuss was creating his own magic world, so he could have actually decoupled sex and reproduction, and written about the ramifications. In fact, I'll just assume that's true and everyone just got tired of trying to explain to Kvothe that he was an idiot.
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Feb 12, 2019 05:55
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ElGroucho posted:It's even funnier in the audio book, since they have swedish accents for some reason, so you've got a bunch of horny Swedes too stupid to understand what even the most primitive tribesmen figured out 100,000 years ago. Wasn't there some pop anthropology meme floating around a few years ago about how it was plausible some early cultures didn't necessarily get the sex = babies connection? I remember thinking it was pretty implausible but I definitely recall reading about it.
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Feb 12, 2019 10:22
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Found this while looking for the TV Tropes take on the issue: But here's their actual discussion: quote:The Adem don't know that sexual intercourse causes pregnancy because they have so much sex that no one never linked the two. However, they do practice animal husbandry. Wouldn't that have clued them in? Without selective breeding, they would not be able to domesticate their livestock. All of their animal products, like meat, leather and wool, would be inferior to those outside their borders. A large percentage of the eggs they eat would be fertilized. quote:OP Again: Here's a related question: Adem don't believe that sex causes pregnancy, and one female character even laments that men have nothing to offer the world. So why would Adem keep male animals around? From their perspective, what would be the point of tending a male cow past the first opportunity to slaughter it for meat and leather? How would they keep their herds populated? Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 11:21
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Imagine defending this terrible writing. Why did Rothfuss even add this aside? It adds nothing, and makes the ademe, who hes been building up to be The Best People, look like a bunch of grade-a morons. Edit: a better way to extricate Kvothe from the land of boring ninjas, would be that he destroys their world view on reproduction, so they exile him. Whoops! Check this out: Kvothe gets the sex ninja preggers, but doesn't know it's his. 9 months later, an extremely red headed child is born. He gets the boot. Now, kvothe has a child that he hasn't seen in years. He is a Bad Absentee Father, and now his character isnt just the goodiest good boy. And, in the future, his relationship with Denna is further complicated by the sudden arrival of sex ninja #1 and a little redheaded girl. This poo poo honestly writes itself. ElGroucho fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 13:24
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ElGroucho posted:Imagine defending this terrible writing. Why did Rothfuss even add this aside? It adds nothing, and makes the ademe, who hes been building up to be The Best People, look like a bunch of grade-a morons. Except to the people who really want to be into these stories, they're not morons. They're mystical people who will gently caress anyone, even you, the reader! Those fans have to believe that the adem are that stupid. Also, only complete donks say things like, "I committed a fallacy."
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Feb 12, 2019 13:28
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Atlas Hugged posted:Except to the people who really want to be into these stories, they're not morons. They're mystical people who will gently caress anyone, even you, the reader! Lol, touché
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Feb 12, 2019 13:32
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I committed a phallos
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Feb 12, 2019 16:10
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Found this while looking for the TV Tropes take on the issue: that first paragraph, oof why do you want magic to make seeeennnsseee
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Feb 12, 2019 16:51
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I don't know at what point in fantasy book history it became a thing to explain magic systems. I don't give a gently caress how it works, I just want it to be cool.
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Feb 12, 2019 16:53
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The whole "the Adem don't believe in fatherhood as a concept" was my second-lowest point in WMF. I mean, it wasn't really hard just to have a society that understands the mechanisms of reproduction (because, duh) but doesn't grant fatherhood any legal bond because it traces lineage and inheritance matrilinearly, people have multiple partners, etc. I know he tried to have his strong women society but it ends up undermining them by presenting european/western notions of fatherhood as scientifically sound (Kvothe's position) and the Adem as wilfully ignorant
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Feb 12, 2019 17:42
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ElGroucho posted:I don't know at what point in fantasy book history it became a thing to explain magic systems. I don't give a gently caress how it works, I just want it to be cool. yeah I dunno? for all the influence LotR had its magic is explicitly not explainable beyond "the wizard is an angel and god does stuff sometimes" so it ain't that. maybe it's a side effect of D&D's popularity. which points to Jack Vance as the culprit but The Dying Earth only has a system insofar as spells are too complicated to keep more than a few in your head at once. infact the very first story in TDE is about a mediocre magician trying to treat magic like science and having it fail miserably.
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Feb 12, 2019 18:23
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porfiria posted:Wasn't there some pop anthropology meme floating around a few years ago about how it was plausible some early cultures didn't necessarily get the sex = babies connection? I remember thinking it was pretty implausible but I definitely recall reading about it. IIRC there's a South Pacific culture that historically didn't make the connection because, it's hypothesized, they ate a lot of a root vegetable with high levels of hormones that may have acted as a low-effectiveness birth control. I don't know if that was ever actually supported, but that was the claim that got tossed around. None of this makes the decision to include that as a part of an already inexplicable sex ninja village make any more sense.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:04
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The joke with magic in Dying Earth is that the world is so hosed up that even magic has been broken and become inflexible rote memorization.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:29
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The joke with magic in Dying Earth is that the world is so hosed up that even magic has been broken and become inflexible rote memorization. yeah I guess Turjan's "book of the last 100 spells mankind knows" makes that point right off the bat and then contrasts it with the alien god wizard who explicitly is not on Earth I like the part with the server banks
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Feb 12, 2019 19:35
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ElGroucho posted:I don't know at what point in fantasy book history it became a thing to explain magic systems. I don't give a gently caress how it works, I just want it to be cool.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:39
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Systematic.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:17
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