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PeterWeller posted:"His work is better than an actor's vanity novel" is not high praise. I wasn't praising Gaiman, I was burying Sean Penn. Also, Bob Honey was loving published by a Simon & Schuster division. If only it had been a vanity press. My point was that 'real writers' don't have some magical floor of quality that puts them above 'genre writers'. They can be worse than any dumb average genre book. If a writer is good then they're good, it doesn't matter of they're writing about robots in space, elves, or people being sad. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Gaiman *can* write some genuinely great stuff, especially his children's books. He just tends to go for quantity over quality most of the time since he got famous. He's sort of like Zelazny in that the talent is always there but the effort isn't. This is unfortunately true.
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Oct 14, 2022 04:16
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Am i misremembering or did BOTL do a massive 'hate-read' review of the name of the wind?
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Oct 18, 2022 15:05
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Yeah, but I think it's in the old thread.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:16
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It was great for highlighting the specific very weird interactions with female characters who existed solely to make the ttrpg Bard character look smooth and charming at all times.
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Oct 18, 2022 15:36
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Am i misremembering or did BOTL do a massive 'hate-read' review of the name of the wind? As someone who didn't ever read BOTL, I thought it was utter poo poo. Yeah sure, let's do a readthrough that skips describing what's actually happening in favor of the weakest "literary" quibbles about two or three particular lines in each chapter.
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Oct 18, 2022 19:28
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If you're looking for reasons to hate something you'll always find some.
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Oct 18, 2022 19:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you're looking for reasons to hate something you'll always find some. theres plenty of reasons that you don't have to look for in this series 
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Oct 18, 2022 19:35
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Yeah it was really good critique/takedown, I vaguely remember someone kept posting about how they were going to do a counter-review to set the record straight but that never materialized
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Oct 18, 2022 19:43
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Xander77 posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3365216&userid=191162&perpage=40&pagenumber=2 I read the book, loved it buying deeply into the unreliable narrator theory, and that made me aware I glossed over tons of stuff that made no sense or was the equivalent of "everybody stood up and clapped" moments that happened constantly in the book. It gets very weird incel creepy about a specific female character in general who is sort of but not quite a escort/courtesan who the MC is deeply in love with. I remember at the time a peer who gave me lots of great books to read like Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe read the copy I gave him and really was not impressed by it, which was surprising to me at the time. I genuinly didn't like the sequel because it added a ton of very weird and hosed up stuff specifically regarding woman, between - the Felurian Sex Goddess Who Enslaves Men Via Sex who MC deals with via 'my virgin sex skills broke her brain' - sort of racist Duke's Wife who the MC also dunks on effortlessly - MC saving two girls from horrible sexual slavery/abuse who he then has sex with and they are so happy and glad to enjoy sex with him, -finally the village of female sex ninjas who all have sex with each other and think male-female insemination is a lol-worthy conspiracy theory. By the way, the only reason MC ended up in the village was he was in a merc troop with a sex ninja who was so impressed by his manliness she had sex with him and taught him secret ninja moves, the teaching something that would get her killed because he was just so awesome at sex so he had to go to the village to prove how awesome he was at ninja skills and also sex. Finishing that, taking a step back from the book series, and years later looking at it all in a different context it became really hard to find anything to praise about it, and a lot of the criticisms landed extremely hard, especially the things about how major parts of the book feel like different short stories simply jammed together. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I think that those details about the sequel are 100% accurate no joke exaggeration or anything. pentyne fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 19:46
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pentyne posted:I read the book, loved it buying deeply into the unreliable narrator theory, and that made me aware I glossed over tons of stuff that made no sense or was the equivalent of "everybody stood up and clapped" moments that happened constantly in the book. It gets very weird incel creepy about a specific female character in general who is sort of but not quite a escort/courtesan who the MC is deeply in love with. I remember at the time a peer who gave me lots of great books to read like Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe read the copy I gave him and really was not impressed by it, which was surprising to me at the time. Yes the 2nd book is absurd jammed together creepy nice guy sex pest fantasies where everybody claps and krothfuss is the best at everything and absurdly bad similes are taken as masterful prose by genre fans.
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Oct 18, 2022 20:08
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The Chad Jihad posted:Yeah it was really good critique/takedown, I vaguely remember someone kept posting about how they were going to do a counter-review to set the record straight but that never materialized When a Rothfuss fan doesn't finish what they started, they're just paying tribute to the man himself
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Oct 18, 2022 20:17
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In regards to the merits of the first book, it's arguable that it has some, it's just the entire public existence of Rothfuss has done everything possible to tear it down as any work of note and instead make it seem like basic nepotism and luck rather then success from talent(not remotely abnormal, but eh). He's done/said a lot of dumb things that don't really matter on their own, but the things of note like his Hobbit movie post where he frames it in the perspective of that girl in school you liked who was just nerdy like you later turning into a sex bomb but somehow it's very bad really makes you think that benefit of the doubt for anything regarding female characters written by him is a complete non-starter
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Oct 18, 2022 20:17
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pentyne posted:I read the book, loved it buying deeply into the unreliable narrator theory, and that made me aware I glossed over tons of stuff that made no sense or was the equivalent of "everybody stood up and clapped" moments that happened constantly in the book. It gets very weird incel creepy about a specific female character in general who is sort of but not quite a escort/courtesan who the MC is deeply in love with. I remember at the time a peer who gave me lots of great books to read like Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe read the copy I gave him and really was not impressed by it, which was surprising to me at the time. I agree with all of this. I can maybe muster a defense for the first book because I remember it had some alright stuff in it (I won't because a lot of it is hazy), but the second book has aged super poorly. It was already bad at the time and this was before I knew what the hell an incel was and when you do it goes into super loving creepy territory.
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Oct 18, 2022 20:27
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The Chad Jihad posted:Yeah it was really good critique/takedown, I vaguely remember someone kept posting about how they were going to do a counter-review to set the record straight but that never materialized Eh, I thought a lot of BOTL's takes were weak or lovely. A lot of his takes were pretty solid, but for every good point he made there were 20 or so 'This is BAD because all books should be like THIS and not THIS, because I am CORRECT and my taste is objectively correct.' Or it would critique Rothfuss for not doing something that BOTL wanted rather than on it's own merits. Or he'd drop in quotes from other authors and be smug, which is not that same as actual critique. I reacted to it the same way I reacted to reddit weirdos who poo poo on the Star Wars sequels. Like, I also think that the latest movies are not great, and I also think they were mostly ruined by Disney's corporate agenda. But when folks start going on about woke Disney cultural marxists I kinda want to like the Last Jedi just because the discourse from those people is so loving annoying.
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Oct 18, 2022 23:14
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BotL’s criticism is on another level. I mean that in sort of a good way but also in the way that he can say something is bad because it combines Anglo Saxon and Latinate origin words in ways that apparently cross some sort of line in terms of how language flows that makes it bad.
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Oct 19, 2022 00:56
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pentyne posted:Finishing that, taking a step back from the book series, and years later looking at it all in a different context it became really hard to find anything to praise about it, and a lot of the criticisms landed extremely hard, especially the things about how major parts of the book feel like different short stories simply jammed together. Ccs posted:BotL’s criticism is on another level. I mean that in sort of a good way but also in the way that he can say something is bad because it combines Anglo Saxon and Latinate origin words in ways that apparently cross some sort of line in terms of how language flows that makes it bad.
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Oct 19, 2022 06:40
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Talking about writing craft in a 250,000 word fantasy book where near nothing happens was probably something of a quixotic effort.Xander77 posted:If only the readthrough was about that, rather than "you fool, don't you realize that 'sword' is unnatural while 'stone' is natural? That's terrible!" A sword that "looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords into one" doesn't bring to mind an artifical process? "A sharp stone beneath swift water" has absolutely no relation to nature, I suppose? Benstar fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Oct 19, 2022 |
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Oct 19, 2022 08:37
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Xander77 posted:Yeah sure, let's do a readthrough that skips describing what's actually happening in favor of the weakest "literary" quibbles about two or three particular lines in each chapter. The hate reading was dumb, but why would you want a readthrough that talks about what's happening instead about all the things you'd be looking at analysis for. What's happening is something you can find out by reading the book as it exists.
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Oct 19, 2022 14:08
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As much as I enjoyed BotL casually shanking the books at the time, it was mostly because I was frustrated after being told these books are "masterpieces" and then experiencing some rather bad and boring fantasy. It was kind of a relief to see someone share the opinion that it was bad! Looking back at his posts now, they resemble an animal at the zoo screaming and rattling the cage more than any kind of actual reading exercise. So yeah good riddance, I don't recommend reading these books or BotL's rants about them. Neither is good for your health.
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Oct 19, 2022 14:31
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Benstar posted:A sword that "looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords into one" doesn't bring to mind an artifical process? "A sharp stone beneath swift water" has absolutely no relation to nature, I suppose? M_Gargantua posted:The hate reading was dumb, but why would you want a readthrough that talks about what's happening instead about all the things you'd be looking at analysis for. What's happening is something you can find out by reading the book as it exists.
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Oct 19, 2022 16:40
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This is a review that picks out a lot of what people really didn't like about the second book but in nicer language. This writer thought the first book was halfway decent if a bit over-praised, but he comes down hard the sequel. https://www.pornokitsch.com/2011/06/new-releases-the-wise-mans-fear-by-patrick-rothfuss.html quote:The Name of the Wind ended with the teenage Kvothe established at the University. He's starting to learn the mystical art of naming, he's wooing the elusive Denna, he's in a rivalry with another student and he's trying to learn more about the mysterious Chandrian (demonic entities that killed his family waaaaay back in the early chapters). The Wise Man's Fear ends in exactly the same place. Kvothe is starting to learn the mystical art of naming, he's still wooing Denna, he's still in a bloody rivalry with the same student and his efforts to learn more about the Chandrian have proved completely futile.
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Oct 19, 2022 19:37
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Xander77 posted:Here's a readthrough I like. It focuses on plot and characters first and foremost, with bits of speculation. Quotes and memorable dialog \ descriptions come last. Someone who has never read the books could follow along with the readthrough without getting lost, and someone who has read the books knows exactly what every bit of discussion is about without having to re-read. isn't a readthrough fundamentally different than a critical analysis? Sure, botl's effort itself was, in hindsight, petty and unhealthy; but someone can 100% do a critique of a book, assuming their readers are familiar with it and just engage with what they want to critique, ie: the prose, the structure, a marxist reading, a feminist critique, etc. Like, when Ursula Leguin wrote a critique on Gedo Senki (the adaptation directed by Goro Miyazaki) she didn't retread the plot bc it's not a promo blurb
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Oct 19, 2022 23:38
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Im reading this thing you posted: https://www.tor.com/2011/03/18/a-read-of-ice-and-fire-a-game-of-thrones-part-1/ and well... it's marketing. It's not critical analysis of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's just a summation of each chapter and then some commentary on the plot Leigh Butler posted:Frozen zombies, by George! botl earned his ban and he navel-gazed from inside his body; but there's no need to confuse literary criticism with what are effectively press releases (and I say this as someone who thinks GRMM is a great but poorly understood writer)
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Oct 19, 2022 23:55
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Yeah uh TOR readthroughs are just promotional stuff. There's very little to no criticism or critical analysis in them that I've seen.
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Oct 20, 2022 04:09
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BotL is focused on prose because the Rothfussian party line at the time was that Rothfuss was such an amazing prosesmith that those mean ol literary snobs would have to admit that elf and spaceship books were like, real literature, mannnnn! Going through and pointing out the collection of incoherent metaphors is a fine way to do this.
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Oct 20, 2022 16:18
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:BotL is focused on prose because the Rothfussian party line at the time was that Rothfuss was such an amazing prosesmith that those mean ol literary snobs would have to admit that elf and spaceship books were like, real literature, mannnnn! I think the problem was that the standards for 'incoherence' were never really explained. And metaphors are, uh, not supposed to be perfectly literal, so people do tend to look at a metaphor and if it gives them the right vibe, it's a good metaphor. Rothfuss did *something* to provide that sheen of vibes that evidently worked on some folks. Like, 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day's is 'incoherent' in that days are a measure of time and people dont last 24 hours. BOTL would do a lot of 'I dont like this metaphor' (fine) swing over to 'its objectively bad' (iffy) because 'a ham sandwich is flat not round' (?!?) on to 'quote from famous author' (self indulgent literary penis waving) Maybe they got better at it later on, but it was tedious as poo poo and bad analysis. This is not to say that some good analysis of Rothfuss isn't possible, but it wasn't whatever BOTL was doing.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:BotL is focused on prose because the Rothfussian party line at the time was that Rothfuss was such an amazing prosesmith that those mean ol literary snobs would have to admit that elf and spaceship books were like, real literature, mannnnn! There were was a story from someone who went to see Rothfuss at a con or something, and he proudly bragged that his beta readers would only review the actual content and not the words/grammer because he had refined every sentence to technical perfection, and questioning it would get you dropped from his inner circle. Not sure what the insane pushback against the BoTL shitfest review is all of a sudden. There are serious problems with the book and he highlighted them in great detail while also being a raving rear end about it, but it's still not like he made up any criticisms or framed it in unfair context. As far as metaphors go, I don't think an entire book of properly phrased metaphors make up for the insanely dumb ones like cut-flower sound.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:18
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the JJ posted:I think the problem was that the standards for 'incoherence' were never really explained. And metaphors are, uh, not supposed to be perfectly literal, so people do tend to look at a metaphor and if it gives them the right vibe, it's a good metaphor. Rothfuss did *something* to provide that sheen of vibes that evidently worked on some folks. Shakespeare backs up the summer day and expands upon it. Rothfuss throws out crap like moving with the confidence of one who knows many things and rushes off to the next one. The effect is to invoke confusion in the reader, which is mistaken for depth because "good" authors use metaphor and imagery. It preys on poorly read nerds who live in the SFF section of the bookstore.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:28
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the JJ posted:Like, 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day's is 'incoherent' in that days are a measure of time and people dont last 24 hours. Except the comparison is "Thou art more lovely and more temperate" and both people and summer days are lovely and temperate. You can describe a person as warm and sunny and lovely in a way that lets you draw a metaphor to a summer's day. Things like "deep and wide as autumns ending" fall apart because it's comparing the silence to autumn's ending based on traits that autumn's ending does not posses. Autumn's ending is not deep, it's not wide. Comparing silence to autumn's ending doesn't convey anything except a vauge sense of poetry, even if the comparison is meaningless.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:31
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Is the end of a season typically measured in depth and width? Are river-smooth stones heavier than rough ones? Are cut flowers patient?
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Oct 20, 2022 17:45
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Ccs posted:Is the end of a season typically measured in depth and width? Daffodils yes, roses notoriously impatient drama queens. Actually I hate to say it but if you think of how flowers stay beautiful and alive looking even though they’ve been cut off from the stem, that is kind of patient. Like when people die they turn blue, poo poo themselves, and get an erection. Not patient. Rothfuss still terrible though.
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Oct 20, 2022 18:45
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the JJ posted:Like, 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day's is 'incoherent' in that days are a measure of time and people dont last 24 hours. First, while Shakespeare doesn't use "like" or "as" here, this is better labeled as a simile than a metaphor since it's an explicit comparison. Shakespeare doesn't say the Fair Youth is a summer's day. Second, the poem addresses this exact point. One of the ways in which the Fair Youth is different from a summer's day is his "eternal summer shall not fade" because the poet is going to immortalize it in verse. E: And later the poet changes his mind about that whole immortal beauty thing which is why he tells the Fair Youth to get to loving and making children. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 18:56
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English doesn't have to make sense. You can do whatever you want with the language. Its why music works so well. English is the YOLO of grammer and meaning.
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Oct 20, 2022 19:00
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Even if we go with the radical principles of free-form poetry, Rothfuss phrases are bad poetry. His prose at most has some musicality and rythm to it, a trait that imo is the single one that elevated him above the mass of fantasy authors but it's still not good. And in the books the characters dismiss poets while elevating musicians and I was like uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, bruh they are same. Thinking that poetry is bad while music is good, despite both being literally "the lyric art" told me that Rothfuss engages literature as if it were a pop culture product to consume as a fanboy. He's a "music conossieur", not a "cringey poet"
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Oct 20, 2022 19:09
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Except the comparison is "Thou art more lovely and more temperate" and both people and summer days are lovely and temperate. You can describe a person as warm and sunny and lovely in a way that lets you draw a metaphor to a summer's day. You made me look up word origins for an internet argument. Ahem.  *pushes glasses up the bridge of his nose* "Well ackchually, temperate comes from the Latin tempero for restrained, and as the season of summer is not a literal being with 'emotions' or 'feelings' to restrain, therefore Shakespeare's metaphor here is terrible. And what's he doing anyway, first he's all 'you're like a summer day' and then he's all 'lol nope'. What's the point of bringing up summer then? What a scrub, can't even be consistent. And describing people as warm? Only if they have loving fever! Oooooh, gottem!" *everybody claps*Again, not saying Rothfuss isn't hack, but insisting that metaphors have to be literal is like, the least of the problems here. It's like getting mad that Hamlet's plot doesn't work because ghosts aren't real. It's okay to say 'yeah, that plot device was too unrealistic for me, it broke my immersion.' Or 'man, I had to go too far to follow that metaphor,' perfectly okay critique. 'I feel like a metaphor must be at least this realistic because I refuse to delve deeper than one layer' also fine. gently caress off with saying that it's an objective fact that a metaphor has to work literally or it's objectively bad though. To go to autumn, yeah, in some places the transition to autumn can be a long, slow, moderately melancholic process (days grow shorter, leaves slowly turn, frost begins to appear, just a little at first and then every morning) compared to the advent of spring (the snow melts! the flowers bloom! birds return!) I don't think it's a particularly good metaphor, or the kind of writing I personally enjoy in a fantasy novel, but it's not bad on it's own merits. I can see what it's trying to say well enough if I bother to engage with the text. Yeah, you might not want to engage because the author is a shithead who is up his own rear end, but doesn't mean it's not there. PeterWeller posted:First, while Shakespeare doesn't use "like" or "as" here, this is better labeled as a simile than a metaphor since it's an explicit comparison. Shakespeare doesn't say the Fair Youth is a summer's day. Sorry for not using my SAT words correctly. I'll mark myself up for a switching and 5 demerits o' Headmaster. quote:Second, the poem addresses this exact point. One of the ways in which the Fair Youth is different from a summer's day is his "eternal summer shall not fade" because the poet is going to immortalize it in verse. drat, like, it wasn't literal? No poo poo, you're blowing my mind here. quote:E: And later the poet changes his mind about that whole immortal beauty thing which is why he tells the Fair Youth to get to loving and making children. Oh, nevermind. *pushes glasses up the bridge of his nose* "Seasons can't have kids, the comparison is totally dumb. God, what author can't keep his tone or metaphors consistent? Why did I even read this stupid sonnet if he was going to drop the summer thing. I don't get why everyone is slobbering on this Shakespeare guy's nob, all his fans must be virgin losers, fantasizing about being chad's like his author insert Othello." *everybody claps*Again, I don't like Rothfuss, but BOTL had an equally lovely ego and as much if not more unearned pretensions of true literary genius. Pacho posted:Even if we go with the radical principles of free-form poetry, Rothfuss phrases are bad poetry. His prose at most has some musicality and rythm to it, a trait that imo is the single one that elevated him above the mass of fantasy authors but it's still not good. And in the books the characters dismiss poets while elevating musicians and I was like uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, bruh they are same. Thinking that poetry is bad while music is good, despite both being literally "the lyric art" told me that Rothfuss engages literature as if it were a pop culture product to consume as a fanboy. He's a "music conossieur", not a "cringey poet" I would lay money that Rothfuss put that in Kvothe's mouth to go 'look, he isn't a perfect self insert' and in fact in real like he has a high regard for poetry, because he has a high regard for himself, and therefore 'writing' and 'craft' and 'storytelling.' This I freely admit is based only on my low opinion of Rothfuss as an individual, and backed by zero evidence.
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Oct 20, 2022 20:26
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pseudanonymous posted:Daffodils yes, roses notoriously impatient drama queens. I turned the corner and encountered my beloved Deena, my body seized as surely as any corpse. I turned blue as she gazed into my face, dinner plate eyes full of sweet music. making GBS threads myself, she began to frown. I felt terror as her gaze began to lower towards
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Oct 20, 2022 21:05
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mewse posted:I turned the corner and encountered my beloved Deena, my body seized as surely as any corpse. I turned blue as she gazed into my face, dinner plate eyes full of sweet music. making GBS threads myself, she began to frown. I felt terror as her gaze began to lower towards Okay, God help me, I'm going to engage with this in earnest so I can show what I'm talking about. quote:I turned the corner and encountered my beloved Deena, my body seized as surely as any corpse. This is an improper use of a comma. Punctuation is optional of course, but not using a period here is a high school error to make, and doesn't feel like deliberate literary choice. If it was deliberate on the part of pseudoRothfuss, it doesn't seem to be doing anything but distracting the reader. If I were being nitpicky, I'd also quibble with 'encountered' here. There are definitely other verbs I'd use in a case like this. quote:my body seized as surely as any corpse. 'as surely as' is a kinda clunky, pseudo-old timey phrasing. PseudoRothfuss is using it to give an air of profundity, and to remind readers of better writers. I personally find it kinda dull. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke does this sort of thing much better, more integrated, and in service of a much better plot. Overall, the comparison of the character's seizing to rigor mortis is... interesting. It's pulling in elements of terror and horror into a moment we might otherwise expect happiness or joy. It does emphasize the character's inability to interact with Deena in a healthy way. Overall, not bad, but I think pseudoRothfuss here is displaying more touch than the actual Rothfuss usually does, although I refused to reread the Name of the Wind to confirm that. Perhaps I'm being uncharitable to the actual Rothfuss. quote:I turned blue as she gazed into my face, dinner plate eyes full of sweet music. Another bad comma. English grammar conventions would attach 'dinner plate eyes full of sweet music' to the noun on the other side of the comma, but context tells us that it is meant to be attached to 'she.' quote:I turned blue Repetitive, we've already had the narrator's emotional state compared to death, moving to him choking isn't adding anything here. quote:dinner plate eyes full of sweet music Again, it's a bit hat on a hat over here. Dinner plate eyes is a cliche of a cliche, and brings and air of mundane that clashes with the 'as surely as' feeling. I don't think this is an effect pseudoRothfuss is looking to foster here, and it's not really doing much for me. 'Eyes full of sweet music' is pretty bad. I get what it's doing, showing the narrator's weird worshipful attitude towards Deena, I just don't like it. quote:making GBS threads myself, she began to frown. Another bad comma. The use of 'making GBS threads' here again clashes with that old timey air, again to no good effect. We're also repeating once again for another example the narrator's terror, which is done better earlier. So we're hurting the tone and not really gaining anything out of it. Also, it's ambiguous as to the literalness of the narrator making GBS threads. Deena's eyes aren't literally the size of dinner plates, so it glosses pretty easily as metaphor. But because making GBS threads is a biological function we expect from the narrator and in the next sentence Deena's eyes drift down, we're caught in that zone of processing that either as 'the narrator is afraid' or 'the narrator has lost control of his bowels'. Instead of processing the text as it comes to us we have to stop and think, 'is she looking at the narrator's tiny member, or the literal effluence leaving his body?' Mercifully, this is just a fragment, not a full paragraph, so we'll never have to find out. Overall, this snippet could use a little more show, a little less tell, and could dial back the speed and volume of metaphor and adjectives. If I were the editor here, I'd say that this can be trimmed considerably and the end result would be punchier. It's possible that it plays better in context, but I doubt it.
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Oct 20, 2022 22:36
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gently caress off, patrick
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Oct 20, 2022 23:06
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the JJ posted:
It's a perfectly fine comma. The problem is "making GBS threads myself" is a dangling participial phrase that does not modify the subject of the following clause: "she".
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Oct 20, 2022 23:09
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I'm not reading this, glad you enjoyed my rendition
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Oct 20, 2022 23:12
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