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Karnegal posted:I'm just going to quote something I wrote 20 pages ago instead of rehashing it I saw what you posted before. I disagreed with it then and I disagree now. If you have to work multiple jobs and maintain academic excellence as a full time student just to barely keep your head above water, you're poor. Yeah, you're really lucky and privileged to be able to attend the university, but you are still poor. Poverty isn't just starving and totally destitute, though Kvothe is that at one point as well.
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Aug 1, 2014 06:58
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Wittgen posted:I saw what you posted before. I disagreed with it then and I disagree now. If you have to work multiple jobs and maintain academic excellence as a full time student just to barely keep your head above water, you're poor. Yeah, you're really lucky and privileged to be able to attend the university, but you are still poor. Poverty isn't just starving and totally destitute, though Kvothe is that at one point as well. No. Working a job to pay for school and pay for your living expenses and managing to do so is called being middle class. He's not even missing meals. There's no social wellfare to support people in his world. He's doing great by the standards of said world. Not being able to go to school at all because you can't afford it is being poor.
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Aug 1, 2014 07:00
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So in your opinion, in the real world, no one who is attending college is truly poor?
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Aug 1, 2014 10:08
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I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to think well of Kvothe and his behaviour. If this is the case I'm even surer that that's why the present-day sequences exist (knowing they were added in later drafts). I am just as sure that the text does a lousy job of giving you the impression that you're supposed to think he's a little poo poo. e: I do think the narration is mostly reliable, just that the authorial intent is not for you to think Kvothe is awesome, even if that's what Kvothe wants you to think. But piss on authorial intent, it reads too much like the kool-aid has been drunk. neongrey fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 10:21
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Karnegal posted:We're at what, 2500 pages of book at this point? What are people hoping for with the unreliable narrator thing? If we get to 3500 and we get a "haha, that was all bullshit" are people going to be happy? They shouldn't because that's a godawful pay off.  The alternative was just too horrible. I also think that the "unreliable narrator" suggestion is giving the author far too much credit, from what I've seen of him elsewhere I really don't give it much weight. And anyway, whether that's what he's going for or not is irrelevant if he does it in a way where it brings nothing to the story. Just writing a dicky character isn't enough to make it all cool and subversive.
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Aug 1, 2014 12:33
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So I read the Bast short story and thought it was ok. Bast is one of my favorite characters in the main books and it was fun seeing things the way he sees them for a bit. Did he seem written a lot like Kvothe to anyone else though? The constant thoughts of how he would set something up or trick someone seemed a bit Kvothe-y. Makes me wonder how good the Auri novella will be. I guess we'll finally see if Rothfuss can write from a female perspective.
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Aug 1, 2014 13:39
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Wittgen posted:So in your opinion, in the real world, no one who is attending college is truly poor? He's the first guy to get paid to attend classes at a highly prestigious magic school and then he manages to get room and board for free by doing something he loves to do (And that same thing also lets him earn money by playing in a tavern). He's not rich, but he sure as hell isn't poor. Srice fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 16:28
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Karnegal posted:We're at what, 2500 pages of book at this point? What are people hoping for with the unreliable narrator thing? If we get to 3500 and we get a "haha, that was all bullshit" are people going to be happy? They shouldn't because that's a godawful pay off. 
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Aug 1, 2014 16:58
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I loved Name of the Wind back when I was in high school. (seven years ago, wow) Reading it again makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking. I'm guessing most of us understand it's a very flawed series, but still want to know how it ends.
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Aug 1, 2014 18:37
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Wittgen posted:So in your opinion, in the real world, no one who is attending college is truly poor? This is a world without fertiliser, plumbing, refrigeration. It's medieval fantasy land. The economies are going to be agricultural, and 90% of people will farm till they drop with no hope of social climbing. In that environment, the time for education alone is a huge luxury. And Kvothe isn't just getting an education - he's at the most prestigious university in the world studying alongside literal royalty. The common people (who are constantly mocked by the Ruh/Rothfuss/Kvothe's narration) would probably give anything just for the opportunity to make those magical lanterns all day for coin, or to even get a shot at being scouted by some patron of the arts. Alternatively, Kvotheland might be the sort of floaty fantasy setting where crops don't matter and we just have the modern world ruled by a dude called 'king' - which I don't think we do.
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Aug 1, 2014 21:59
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Wittgen posted:So in your opinion, in the real world,
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Aug 2, 2014 02:15
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Karnegal posted:No. Working a job to pay for school and pay for your living expenses and managing to do so is called being middle class. This is why I think that Karengal has lovely beliefs about what constitutes poverty in the real world. If he holds Strategic Tea's opinion that the world's ye olde economy makes Kvothe not poor, I can understand and respect that. I still think the way Kvothe thinks about money makes sense for a poor person who has managed to edge out of it.
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Aug 2, 2014 06:59
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You really don't have to drudge up social justice poo poo because of someone's opinion about a wizard in a book.
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Aug 2, 2014 07:12
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Wittgen posted:This is why I think that Karengal has lovely beliefs about what constitutes poverty in the real world. I've been saying that Kvothe is wildly better off than the majority of the people in his world so it's insulting to claim that he know about what it means to be "truly poor" and that this is represented in the Imre sections. In the real world, a person who can attend one of the best schools in the world while paying their own living expenses and never missing a meal is not truly poor. (Remember, if we're comparing Kvoth's experience to the real world, we're talking about a person who received no scholarships and is paying off loans with absurd interest at the end of each semester). Their ability to do all three of those things mean that they are better off than the majority of people in the world. A lovely opinion about poverty is thinking that middle class white people are the ones who have it tough.
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Aug 2, 2014 08:03
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Karnegal posted:I've been saying that Kvothe is wildly better off than the majority of the people in his world so it's insulting to claim that he know about what it means to be "truly poor" and that this is represented in the Imre sections. Standards of poverty differ depending on culture, country, and era. You can still be really loving poor without living in a mud hut dying of malnutrition.
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Aug 2, 2014 08:14
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the biggest problem with kvothe's "poverty" is that he repeatedly screws up his chances to be financially stable by loving with ambrose. he'd be well off otherwise. knowing that, the constant scrambling for money gets tiresome after the first incident.
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Aug 2, 2014 11:37
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Chichevache posted:Standards of poverty differ depending on culture, country, and era. You can still be really loving poor without living in a mud hut dying of malnutrition. And by most standards, being paid to attend the most prestigious school out there, getting room and board for practicing your hobby, and also being able to make use of that hobby to earn a fairly steady income would be considered "not poor". Certainly not rich, but definitely not poor either. Above Our Own posted:You really don't have to drudge up social justice poo poo because of someone's opinion about a wizard in a book. This is true and heck if people really want to go down that route, why not go hog wild and talk about how Kvothe decided one day to stop being a poor orphan and practically bootstrapped himself in a single day. Srice fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Aug 2, 2014 |
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Aug 2, 2014 13:19
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Vincie posted:the biggest problem with kvothe's "poverty" is that he repeatedly screws up his chances to be financially stable by loving with ambrose. he'd be well off otherwise. knowing that, the constant scrambling for money gets tiresome after the first incident. Plus the impulsive spending that he acknowledges as being stupid. "Sure, I could spend this money on tuition, room, and board....or I can buy an insanely expensive instrument immediately and figure out how I'll eat later!"
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Aug 2, 2014 14:06
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Vincie posted:the biggest problem with kvothe's "poverty" is that he repeatedly screws up his chances to be financially stable by loving with ambrose. he'd be well off otherwise. knowing that, the constant scrambling for money gets tiresome after the first incident. I think the biggest issue is that he never really has to worry about adverse consequences of his lovely fiscal decision-making, whereas real poor people are constantly aware that they're treading water and are always stressed out about the fact that they're a couple of bad choices away from bankruptcy or prison or any number of terrible outcomes. Kvothe has these Invincible Magic Shitlord Powers that will always allow him to sustain himself pretty comfortably no matter what happens. Yes, he stresses over his tuition and whatnot sometimes, but, as people have discussed, this is almost always his fault and is always resolved pretty handily. Real poor people don't have the luxury of ~knowing that they can make a small fortune whenever they go play an impromptu gig at the bar because they are The Best Singer Who Ever Lived. I mean yeah he is an emotional wreck in the present-day sections but that's presumably because of whatever happened with Denna and whatever metaphysical nonsense is going on, rather than because he is impoverished (which he isn't). he's not a good character for tackling issues of poverty because the nature of this character means that poverty is never a real threat to him. It is not even good drama. PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Aug 2, 2014 |
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Aug 2, 2014 15:40
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Dienes posted:Plus the impulsive spending that he acknowledges as being stupid. "Sure, I could spend this money on tuition, room, and board....or I can buy an insanely expensive instrument immediately and figure out how I'll eat later!"
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Aug 2, 2014 16:17
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But almost all those young adults make it out fine because they aren't in genuine poverty. They're going through arty, urban unemployment or doing the ~poor student on ramen~ song and dance. Most begrudgingly know they have family to fall back on in the worst case. And only guessing here, but that's probably the closest Rothfuss (who spent like ten years as an undergrad) has come to being truly poor as well. Kvothe, supposedly, doesn't have any of that. Even if they're 16, I can't see someone literally spending that month's meals - not in a hand-to-mouth, 'I will not eat tonight' way - because ooh pretty lute.
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Aug 2, 2014 18:17
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:AKA every young adult. That argument loses weight the second you realize that its the only 'normal' trait Kvothe has.
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Aug 2, 2014 21:15
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Kvothe is broke, but he isn't poor.
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Aug 3, 2014 03:15
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Strategic Tea posted:But almost all those young adults make it out fine because they aren't in genuine poverty. They're going through arty, urban unemployment or doing the ~poor student on ramen~ song and dance. Most begrudgingly know they have family to fall back on in the worst case. And only guessing here, but that's probably the closest Rothfuss (who spent like ten years as an undergrad) has come to being truly poor as well. Perhaps Rothfuss written view of poverty is biased because of his ten years as an undergrad as you pointed out. Which if I use my peers as a comparison. Still affords you the benefit of apple notebooks and five dollar frappuccino daily. Using the american culture as a guide, I can understand how Rothfuss easily writes away physical or mental nourishment for in the now creature comforts. TLDR: Kvothe in my opinion shows a poor understanding of required needs and money management because Rothfuss lacks this him self. I blame the onset of court room TV for this. Oh and it is still a book about Elves and magic. Despite some rushed ideas and shortened chapters, I still find the world we know currently to be interesting enough to finish the next book.
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Aug 3, 2014 04:15
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Strategic Tea posted:But almost all those young adults make it out fine because they aren't in genuine poverty. They're going through arty, urban unemployment or doing the ~poor student on ramen~ song and dance. Most begrudgingly know they have family to fall back on in the worst case. And only guessing here, but that's probably the closest Rothfuss (who spent like ten years as an undergrad) has come to being truly poor as well. This is what I'm saying. In the real world this isn't actual poverty. Meanwhile in Kvothe world, Kvothe never actually has to deal with actual poverty once he decides to leave Tarbean. The fact that he just wakes up one day and decides he's going to solve all his problems is a pretty good indication that actually investigating a character climbing out of poverty isn't a think Rothfus is interested in. That would be fine if he didn't feel compelled to hit us over the head with HOW POOR KVOTHE is all the drat time. He really is doing great in the context of his world, and the only time this wasn't true was the Tarbean portion, which I've noted never really seems to play a significant part in his life again.
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Aug 3, 2014 15:47
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Even after Kvothe starts making money, it's not until much later where he has any insulation from financial catastrophe. Whenever admissions come up, he has to scrimp and save to pay them. He even says once that any financial crisis would utterly ruin him. Yeah, he makes a subsistence wage doing piece-work at the fishery and playing at Ankers and the Eolian, but while he's not completely destitute, he is by no means rich.
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Aug 3, 2014 18:53
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Also, he did spend years penniless on the street. Of course constantly obsesses about money. Even if you don't think he's poor, I don't see how you can say his preoccupation with money doesn't make sense given his history, let alone that it's insulting to actually poor imaginary people.
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Aug 3, 2014 19:58
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Karnegal posted:To summarize: if Rothfus wanted to do an unreliable narrator he did a piss poor job of it. If you're going to do unreliable narrator, you need to either write a short story or give enough evidence that that's what's going on as the story is happening. We're at what, 2500 pages of book at this point? What are people hoping for with the unreliable narrator thing? I think the book has signaled multiple times that Kvothe is, if not making all this up, certainly presenting the story in his own way. We get this the moment Denna shows up in the narrative. Literally, Bast calls time out, we hop back to the framing device and Bast tells the Chronicler/us 'yo, you've got some serious rose-tinted goggles when it come to this chick.' It's also signaled in that he's going to gently caress up and be a mess because that's the entire framing device. I don't know what other signals you want out of this. Again I point to the sex goddess thing. Many people are like 'ugh, that'd be such a cool fun thing clearly this is Rothfuss living vicariously' and Young Kvothe agrees and merrily takes those skills and fucks his way across half the continent. Yay. But when it comes to the one girl Kvothe cares about this adventure (and Kvothe's attitude towards it, and his assumptions about this dream girl he clearly doesn't actually know that well) bite him in the rear end. And Kvothe the story teller has several times pointed out events his younger self missed or misunderstood. I guess that's what some of us are getting to when we say we're expecting a twist. It's like half this thread is saying "Kvothe is too perfect it's boring, ugh, obvious author insert blegh" and the other half is saying "he's an incompetent idiot gently caress up." I guess I'm in camp two and I'm sticking around for the end of the story. Wittgen posted:Also, he did spend years penniless on the street. Of course constantly obsesses about money. Even if you don't think he's poor, I don't see how you can say his preoccupation with money doesn't make sense given his history, let alone that it's insulting to actually poor imaginary people. Yeah, I think this is the point. Kvothe's never said 'woe is me I am destitute and starving, utterly abject' aside from the time he, you know, was, he's very aware that he's got a better lifestyle thing going on but also aware that he needs stability to stay there. I know a lot of people living very middle class lives who are one bad accident away from complete ruin, I think it's okay for them to both be concerned about that and not literally be eating cat food at the same time.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:06
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the JJ posted:I think the book has signaled multiple times that Kvothe is, if not making all this up, certainly presenting the story in his own way. We get this the moment Denna shows up in the narrative. Literally, Bast calls time out, we hop back to the framing device and Bast tells the Chronicler/us 'yo, you've got some serious rose-tinted goggles when it come to this chick.' It's also signaled in that he's going to gently caress up and be a mess because that's the entire framing device. I don't know what other signals you want out of this. If you want to see what a good unreliable narrator looks like go read Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. There is too little in the narrative of Rothfuss's novels to indicate if Kvothe is or is not an unreliable narrator, imo. Actually, go read Book of the New Sun regardless. It's outrageously good.
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Aug 4, 2014 22:57
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Benson Cunningham posted:If you want to see what a good unreliable narrator looks like go read Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. There is too little in the narrative of Rothfuss's novels to indicate if Kvothe is or is not an unreliable narrator, imo. Oh, and when you do just remember none of the words used in the books were made up fantasy words. None of them.
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Aug 5, 2014 00:50
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There is no consistent narrative thread pointing to an unreliable narrator. For every hint it might be, there are several more it might not: -Descriptions of his remaining personal power in the present -A repeated foreshadowing that Kvothe genuinely lost his power in some catastrophic event -The strong implication that Kvothe did something cataclysmic to cause all the crazy demon poo poo happening around him It's true that Denna wasn't as interesting to other people as she was to Kvothe as his love interest, but that's hardly an example of unreliable narrator. Nothing seems to suggest that the story Kvothe is telling about the power he had and lost is untrue in any way, and in fact it would violate some major plot points in the framing story if it were true. If Rothfuss does pull a "made all poo poo up, peaaaace" at the end it's going to be the shittiest use of the device ever.
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Aug 5, 2014 01:01
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Above Our Own posted:There is no consistent narrative thread pointing to an unreliable narrator. For every hint it might be, there are several more it might not: Rothfuss has been accused of many things, but literally going "sike! Aren't I a great writer" is not likely to happen. More likely would be the Chronicler leaves with a fantastic tale and then Kote tells the disappointed Bast the real story, a truncated version of the series, and Bast kills him out of anger.
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Aug 5, 2014 04:53
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Yeah but that would still be pretty much 'sike' if it happened at any point other than the start of the next book. I can't see a way to pull off the unreliable narrator deal at this point without it being very unsatisfying. Also I mean, what exactly would he be lying about and why? Most of his adventures have this weird presentation where kvothe tells a wicked cool version of the events then everyone agrees that it wasn't cool at all and omg kvothe I thought you were cool (see the dragon fight for example)
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Aug 5, 2014 05:37
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He didn't even want to tell Chronicler or anybody his story, it was more or less forced out of him. It doesn't make sense for the character to have been lying this whole time.
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Aug 5, 2014 05:40
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Above Our Own posted:There is no consistent narrative thread pointing to an unreliable narrator. For every hint it might be, there are several more it might not: He can be an unreliable narrator while still having great powers, can't be?
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Aug 5, 2014 06:52
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There's unreliable and there's unreliable. There's basically no reason to believe he's lying about any of this. There's reason, I think, to think he's painting the best possible picture he can of himself while not deviating from the literal truth.
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Aug 5, 2014 07:35
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neongrey posted:There's unreliable and there's unreliable. There's basically no reason to believe he's lying about any of this. There's reason, I think, to think he's painting the best possible picture he can of himself while not deviating from the literal truth. I would consider that to be an unreliable narrator. 
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Aug 5, 2014 08:25
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Yeah and I wouldn't say it's fully reliable myself. Just saying that I don't much think outright lies are the thing to be looking at when discussing his reliability or not. Like really, I think everything he narrates is basically true. And I think the authorial intent, for what that's worth, is for us to not be taking Kvothe's awesomeness as gospel, and I think that's one of the things signalled by the frame story. I also think the frame story does a fairly poor job of selling the idea that we're intended to think he's the snot-nosed little shitheel he is. (I don't think the frame story is enough to carry that, and too much of the text is devoted to autofellatio, I think)
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Aug 5, 2014 09:36
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I don't think Kvothe is lying, but he must have ulterior motives. The story is not oblivious to how stories are influenced by the prejudices of the teller. In fact, the way our stories suit our need and change our view of reality is a huge theme of the books. When Kvothe tells the story of the old beggar running into people on the road, his friend points out that it's pretty racist in its depiction of his people as money obsessed bastards. The first time Kvothe waxes poetic about how perfect Denna is, Bast cuts in with how weird her nose is. We get two stories about the Chandrian that more or less agree about events, but one paints them as evil and one paints them as heroes. The Chandrian kill Kvothe's parents for telling a story they don't want told. Kvothe creates a dramatized story about the Chronicler to make a point about the power of stories. For an example of what I'd expect for unreliability, take Kvothe's murder of the fake Ruh troop. Kvothe tells it like he killed them to save the kidnapped women. If you look at the chronology, though, he decides to poison their soup and kill them all as soon as he finds out they're fake. He doesn't find out just how monstrous they are until later. It's pretty slick sleight of hand that makes his reasoning look a lot more righteous than it actually was. I would be shocked if Kvothe wasn't telling his story in the particular way he is for a specific purpose.
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Aug 5, 2014 09:40
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Wittgen posted:I don't think Kvothe is lying, but he must have ulterior motives. Yeah, I don't know if anyone here is saying 'Kvothe's been lying all along, he's just some dude with red hair.' We know for instance, that the countryside is being torn apart by civil war and one of Kvothe's nicknames is 'Kingkiller' so right there that's a pretty big lead in to 'Kvothe's a dumbass who thinks super short term and gets unreasonably pissed at Ambrose.' We've also got a lot of points where there's all ready been a dissonance between how the young Kvothe is reading situations and how the older Kvothe is, even as he's narrating it from the perspective of the information that his younger self has. We've already seen the older Kvothe throw a lot of 'yeah, I was a dumbass, look how smart I was at being really stupid.' So in that sense I think our framing narrator is also playing along with the whole 'twist' bit. We know that this story ends with the hero, alone, powerless, sitting out the apocalypse and referring to the love of his life in the past tense. It's not some cheap 'psych' moment for the author to go 'and then Kvothe hosed up and it all went to hell.' Like, that's the expected endpoint. If you miss that then you missed, well, most of the point of the books as far as I've read them. From page one we are given the set up 'he is a dude of legendary powers and skills, a once in a thousand years savant, in short, a protagonist of a bad fantasy novel. A Gandalf, an Aragorn, a real Achilles. Now let's read about why he's serving drinks while the world ends.' Like there's a lot of poo poo to criticize, the main character being a boring Sue who is perfect in every way isn't one of them. And while 'the main character seems like a dumbass' is a perfectly fair statement, I don[t think that makes it a bad story because I generally dislike stories about perfect Sues.
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Aug 5, 2014 10:27
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