|
Why are we still using spoilers in the spoiler thread?
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 13:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 04:24 |
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:Why are we still using spoilers in the spoiler thread? Probably because the current discussion got sparked by someone asking if the last three books were worthwhile.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 13:11
|
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:Sanderson may have trouble with writing characters sometimes but he does a good job at action scenes which is like most of the last books he wrote. his action scenes are very video gamey
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 13:22
|
|
|
I gotta say that I strongly disagree that Sanderson's action scenes are good, especially compared to Jordan. On my last reread I was incredibly impressed by how well he expressed the reality of fighting at different scales (1v1, small groups, armies) and how he used that always to reinforce themes or drive the characters or plot forwards. Sanderson...writes combat like a D&D encounter, right down to rules lawyering. Androl annoyed me more for that reason than for diverting attention from Logain. Having a gateway talent was fine. Using it how he did was, bleh.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 13:24
|
|
|
Yeah, Sanderson is "good" but for me at least it's the difference between, say, Kubrick's Apocalypse Now and, say, Captain America: Civil War. Ive watched both and enjoyed both but they aren't on the same level. There wasn't a massive fantasy writing talent who also had lived experience of combat available to take over the series though so hey credit to Sanderson for managing to do as well as he did. If nothing else Sanderson got things close enough that I can imagine how Jordan might have written it. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 13:26
|
|
|
I liked Sanderson's Mat. He actually was funny, instead of the previous 11 books' Mat whom Jordan just kept telling me was funny (but all he did was swear and grouse about having to do things). I mean maybe that means that to be fair, you have to have a very high iq to "get" Mat and I missed  as much as Sanderson did but that wouldn't surprise me
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 14:40
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I liked Sanderson's Mat. He actually was funny, instead of the previous 11 books' Mat whom Jordan just kept telling me was funny (but all he did was swear and grouse about having to do things). 
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 14:44
|
|
|
Mat thought he was funny and bad with women. I don’t think anyone actually thought he was funny in the books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 14:47
|
|
|
A lot of Mat's humour wasn't him being intentionally funny, it came from unintentional irony. It's sort of like Nynaeve "Men are so violent. I should box all their ears."
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 14:49
|
|
|
Just a little lace. I am not a lord!
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:10
|
|
|
Yeah, Mat's comedy under Jordan character driven -- "I'm no hero, I'm not a lord" (wears lace) (marries nobility) (constantly does heroic things because GODDAMMIT those idiots need help). Basically Mat has zero self-insight and that's his charm. He's a good dude who thinks he's selfish and wants to be selfish -- which we can all identify with -- but keeps on doing the right and necessary thing anyway. Mat's comedy under Sanderson was quippy. Not bad, just not as well-executed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:27
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I liked Sanderson's Mat. He actually was funny, instead of the previous 11 books' Mat whom Jordan just kept telling me was funny (but all he did was swear and grouse about having to do things). I...have no idea how you came to any of this. Who even said not getting why Mat's POV chapters are super funny means you're stupid?
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:29
|
|
|
I don't know, I was just riffing on the Rick & Morty thing because I feel like I missed a lot of crucial subtext and dramatic elements that everyone else understood because I read it badly.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:35
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I don't know, I was just riffing on the Rick & Morty thing because I feel like I missed a lot of crucial subtext and dramatic elements that everyone else understood because I read it badly. No such thing as reading badly. Just didn't vibe with you and that's fine. Don't you have some friend who's like super aggressive about WoT? Maybe that put you off it so you weren't reading closely, or it was audiobook so you were only half listening, or whatever else.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:45
|
|
|
I thought besides that goofy monologue about women he did, Sanderson basically kept him charming and the best character, so I wouldn’t stress it too much.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 15:46
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:No such thing as reading badly. Yeah it was a hateread as much as anything else, but I was bound and determined to absorb as much of the letter and spirit of it as I could so I could stand up under interrogation. e: I did a 75-page lol thread on another forum as I read it, complete with custom reaction gifs and sarcastic scene drawings and everything, and then the forum got pwned and all the data was lost. Still salty about that, it was my greatest achievement but now it is gone forever, so now I am forced to switch to the Sincere side Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Oct 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:04
|
|
|
Why in the world would someone 'hateread' a 14 book fantasy series 
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:11
|
|
|
How are u posted:Why in the world would someone 'hateread' a 14 book fantasy series Because I would inevitably be confronted with "You don't know what you're talking about because YOU NEVER READ IT  " as I had several times before.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:14
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Yeah it was a hateread as much as anything else, but I was bound and determined to absorb as much of the letter and spirit of it as I could so I could stand up under interrogation. Yeah that's it then, if you were hate-reading you probably weren't looking for dramatic irony, especially since a lot of readers miss those parts of Jordan's character humor even when reading sincerely If you want to spend the time, go re-read the battle of cairhien chapter and the one after it and pay attention to the difference between what Mat says, what he thinks, and what he does. It's the same kind of humor you see in Clerks with the guy going "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" the whole time he's working. Just because Mat's being a hero doesn't mean he can't bitch about it. Most of the major characters have similarly "off" interiority. Rand spends several books trying to pretend he's sane while talking to voices in his head (bashere's "I don't know what that is but maybe we shouldn't break it" when Rand starts screaming about breaking the Seals without realizing); Perrin thinking he's being calm and thoughtful while threatening people with a huge axe; etc. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:15
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Because I would inevitably be confronted with "You don't know what you're talking about because YOU NEVER READ IT Well why would you even want to offer criticism or opinions of a book series you never read in the first place?  e: like, I can criticize Sanderson's writing in WoT and in the first 1.5 Mistborn books that I read, but I know he's written like 20 other books so maybe his writing gets a lot better in those? Never read em so I can't say and don't really need to say.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:22
|
|
|
Nynaeve decrying the violence she sees around her and in the same sentence wishing she had a big stick so she could beat the violence out of everyone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:24
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:Because I would inevitably be confronted with "You don't know what you're talking about because YOU NEVER READ IT I mean yes that's a valid critique of your argument then yeah One of the many things about WoT is that it absolutely deserves a lot of criticism for a lot of reasons but it often attracts undeserved / overly simplistic criticism from people with only a superficial knowledge of the series. Like, e.g., we had a guy in discord going on a lot of long rants about how WoT was getting the medieval era "wrong" based on the first few chapters of Eye, because he didn't realize WoT is set in a renaissance / early modern technological level society, just without gunpowder (because gunpowder is a trade secret for a guild and thus not developed). People who only read cover summaries or parts of the first book tend to assume it's just another Tolkien ripoff and so say a lot of inaccurate things and it gets annoying. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Oct 15, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:38
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Perrin thinking he's being calm and thoughtful while threatening people with a huge axe This is one of the funniest things about Perrin. He's almost as tall as Rand, he's wider than Rand (who is already loving ripped), and he's got glowing yellow eyes. He doesn't have to have a war axe strapped to his belt and running his thumb up and down the thing to intimidate anyone. There's also multiple instances of him just picking someone up and setting them aside when he needs to get across some space.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:38
|
|
|
I started the series as a kid and it was my introduction to unreliable narrators. It was very cool to see that interiority as a pre-teen - even these grown up guys with magic powers still struggled with a lack of confidence and uncertainty in their own skills. Jordan leaned on the trick a lot, especially with Nynaeve, but I found I still enjoyed it on a reread.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:42
|
|
|
How are u posted:Well why would you even want to offer criticism or opinions of a book series you never read in the first place? I mean let me be clear, I wasn't criticizing it. I wasn't taking any stand. What would usually happen would be that I would bring up my inability to write fiction well, and he would say "Well let me tell you about MY guiding example of Best Author Ever and Best Worldbuilding Ever", and I would say "well I can't speak to WoT having not read it, but as a Tolkien nerd here are the things I admire about his stuff", and he would say "gently caress Tolkien and his fairies and unicorns, what you need is to read WoT which is all about OORAH POWERFUL MAN written by VIETNAM VET who ACTUALLY SAW WAR unlike sissy fairy Tolkien". Upon which I would retire to my quiet dark corner to nurse my grudge. Hello this is E/N right
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:51
|
|
|
B- but Tolkien was in ww1?
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:54
|
|
|
Sounds like your acquaintance was kind of a dick.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:55
|
|
|
I was very pleased we got the final 3 books and at a decent pace too. I think the biggest shift is less about how Sanderson uses the magic system, but more how a lot of the dialogue gets "modernized" I think for lack of a better term. Characters seem to take on more modern movie archetypes for how they speak and present themselves, Mat of which is the most obvious as he becomes snarky comedy guy for a bit. I think he settles into a good space by ToM, but Gathering Storm in particular felt a bit jarring coming off of Crossroads. By time I got into ToM I think I had mostly moved on from that and just enjoyed the ride to the finish. I'm sure I'd have preferred a Jordan penned finale, but that wasn't an option so I think Sanderson did a generally strong job of finishing it out. I'm glad he got to and that what we got was of generally good quality that was respectful to the journey we'd all been on for a long time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 16:57
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:I mean let me be clear, I wasn't criticizing it. I wasn't taking any stand. What would usually happen would be that I would bring up my inability to write fiction well, and he would say "Well let me tell you about MY guiding example of Best Author Ever and Best Worldbuilding Ever", and I would say "well I can't speak to WoT having not read it, but as a Tolkien nerd here are the things I admire about his stuff", and he would say "gently caress Tolkien and his fairies and unicorns, what you need is to read WoT which is all about OORAH POWERFUL MAN written by VIETNAM VET who ACTUALLY SAW WAR unlike sissy fairy Tolkien". Upon which I would retire to my quiet dark corner to nurse my grudge. That dude sounds like a dick. Jordan was a gentle giant and a gentle man and his clearest statement on war was Thom going "in wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes."
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 17:05
|
|
|
Colonel Cool posted:B- but Tolkien was in ww1? You would think the drat Somme would make a good rebuttal but lol But yeah, this is someone who has a heron-marked sword and intends to get the arm tattoos and who claims to have visited Jordan ~2 years before he died and was given a tour of his house and all his artifacts and knows more about all the lore than anyone including Sanderson. So you can imagine why my attitude going in was … “complicated” This thread has been very helpful in pointing out all the bits I glossed over or was not in the frame of mind to be suitably impressed by however, like Mat’s Cairhien battle
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 17:53
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:But yeah, this is someone who has a heron-marked sword and intends to get the arm tattoos and who claims to have visited Jordan ~2 years before he died and was given a tour of his house and all his artifacts and knows more about all the lore than anyone including Sanderson. So you can imagine why my attitude going in was … “complicated” Hahahahahahahahahaha
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:07
|
|
|
Poser doesn't even already have the arm tattoos
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:08
|
|
|
Please post pics when the idiot finally gets the tattoos.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:16
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Poser doesn't even already have the arm tattoos At the very least he could have lost his left eye or dyed them yellow. It’s like he doesn’t even care. Saw a new promo on Twitter, looks like Logain is going to feature heavily earlier in the show than in the books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:18
|
|
|
Yeah the Logain actor is the biggest name they've hired for the show, he's just big in like Spanish speaking countries. Millions of Twitter follows. My guess is he is the new Mazrim Taim too.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:20
|
|
|
Data Graham posted:You would think the drat Somme would make a good rebuttal but lol Please buy him an account, hell I'll pay for it, and please for your own sanity just ignore people like this.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:26
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah the Logain actor is the biggest name they've hired for the show, he's just big in like Spanish speaking countries. Millions of Twitter follows. My guess is he is the new Mazrim Taim too. I sure hope they don't blend those two characters together, but I guess I could see that being a choice. I would rather they actually just make real the OG theory that Taim was Demandred to not have that be as weird in the end game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:29
|
|
|
I'd be absolutely shocked if Rafe went that direction based on the stuff he's said about Logain previously. (Also yeah that would really suck and make very little sense)
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:30
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah the Logain actor is the biggest name they've hired for the show, he's just big in like Spanish speaking countries. Millions of Twitter follows. My guess is he is the new Mazrim Taim too. I still think he’ll take Asmodean’s role as Rand’s teacher. A conflict between Moiraine and Logain over Rand would be a great source of dramatic tension.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 04:24 |
|
|
Nah they need at least one harp in the series.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:37
|
|
