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anilEhilated posted:I guess it's time to start trawling fanfiction.net for writers, then. A ton of genre fiction in general tends to fit that billing
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Dec 15, 2015 18:36
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:So Kvothe is the most awesome person ever... but he worked to become the most awesome person ever? What I'm guessing Rothfuss is going for is the concept that badassery is not just a light switch that can be flipped between Kote and Kvothe. It takes time, preparation, practice & luck. Kote is trying to use the story to warn Bast about just presuming someone's awesome because you "heard the tales", when in actuality the tales left out a lot of important (yet dull/dry/boring/uninteresting) aspects that the story couldn't have existed without.
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Dec 15, 2015 18:47
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anilEhilated posted:I guess it's time to start trawling fanfiction.net for writers, then. Start? Publishers have been digging into fanfiction for a while now, but wish fulfillment fantasy has been very popular for a long long time before "fan fiction" was a thing.
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Dec 15, 2015 18:47
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The big problem with WMF is that it had overt flaws that highlighted the same flaws in Name of the Wind that were initially subtle enough to be ignored or could be justified by Kvothe being a 16 year old creative type, or that he was still early on in his legend. When these flaws were put to the forefront in Wise Man's Fear it became impossible to write them off in NotW, and it made it much worse in retrospect. It's not often that you can say that a book is so bad it retroactively ruined its pretty good predecessor without hyperbole, but here we are and it is frustrating as hell because Name of the Wind really felt like the start of something special.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:08
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Earwicker posted:Start?
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Dec 15, 2015 19:34
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anilEhilated posted:I guess I'm just not used to it being so... I don't know, obvious? I mean, sure, fantasy is riddled with Mary Sues but with Kvothe it's just being put front and center. It's not just a fantasy thing or even just a fiction thing. Like I mentioned before, I see Kvothe's version of his story as similar to a ghost written celeb memoir, an egotistical and arrogant person's portrayal of their own life story as they would like it to be remembered "for the ages". These types of books are consistently very popular, a huge number of them become bestsellers. And most of them are way more blatant about being wish fulfillment than this is.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:43
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So from what I can tell some people think the meta-narrative/frame story justifies the main story's flaws, while others shrug the meta-narrative as inconsequential, and treat the main story as standalone when determining the book's overall quality. For those of you who don't think the frame story justifies the storytelling flaws of the main story, what are your opinions of the interlude chapters? Personally I enjoy the Kote chapters more than the Kvothe ones. The part where Kote gets the poo poo kicked out of him, and you see him staring in confusion at his own fantasy kung fu moves not working, were pretty drat good, along with the final Bast/Chronicler sequence. I'm more interested in seeing what happens to Kote and Bast than anything else, and in that I think Rothfuss succeeds. But maybe I am an outlier in that regard.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:45
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, but the Bast short story shows that he has the ability to write a succinct and entertaining story. Maybe the problem with Rothfuss is that his works spiral out of his own control and he'd be better served writing a ton of short stories based in his world. I always liked Stephen King's short stories more than his giant novels. Maybe be Rothfuss will turn out being the same way.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:45
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ugh 200 new posts and thiissssssfuck
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Dec 15, 2015 23:19
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Earwicker posted:It's not just a fantasy thing or even just a fiction thing. Like I mentioned before, I see Kvothe's version of his story as similar to a ghost written celeb memoir, an egotistical and arrogant person's portrayal of their own life story as they would like it to be remembered "for the ages". These types of books are consistently very popular, a huge number of them become bestsellers. And most of them are way more blatant about being wish fulfillment than this is. It's certainly possible, but I don't really buy it given all the Kote parts. Those seem to all be completely in earnest, and all point to him being an unironic 25 year old grizzled bittervet
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Dec 16, 2015 00:30
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RentACop posted:It's certainly possible, but I don't really buy it given all the Kote parts. Those seem to all be completely in earnest, and all point to him being an unironic 25 year old grizzled bittervet He sucks in the Kote bits because he renamed himself. It couldn't be more telegraphed.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:47
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The problem with Rothfuss is his editor. Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring writers- your editor is your single most important relationship in the industry.
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Dec 16, 2015 04:34
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Benson Cunningham posted:The problem with Rothfuss is his editor. Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring writers- your editor is your single most important relationship in the industry. The one at DAW who helped salvage his book and turn him into a #1 New York Times bestseller?
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Dec 16, 2015 06:44
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SpacePig posted:I don't think Kvothe being an unreliable narrator would make it any better. It would just mean I wasted my time on reading a made up story about a made up story. We could be dealing with two unreliable narrators here. The author in writing the book is deliberately making the Kote parts unreliable by inventing legends that couldn't possibly exist. Then he's straightforwardly writing the result of a fictional unreliable narrator's tales. So both halves are bullshit.
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Dec 16, 2015 09:41
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Thoren posted:The one at DAW who helped salvage his book and turn him into a #1 New York Times bestseller? A dignity also borne by luminaries such as John Grisham and Masashi Kishimoto. Rothfuss's books aren't ultimately bad because of a lack of editing. They're bad for the same reason post-Tolkien fantasy is overwhelmingly terrible, which is a disconnect with literary tradition. Lord of the Rings is a great book, but it's a terrible book as a writer's first inspiration. It's a highly idiosyncratic assay at creating a new mythology, and the result is a bold combination of epic and fairy-tale. The reason writers inspired by Tolkien fail is because they try to respond directly to Tolkien, instead of going back to Tolkien's sources. This is how you get authors like Robert Jordan, and readers of Robert Jordan who found Tolkien "too hard" such as goon favourite Brandon Sanderson. At best you get authors who produce entertaining pulp, like Joe Abercrombie does. A few steps down further you get another source of innumerable bad fantasy novels, Dungeons and Dragons. This is where authors like Rothfuss were schooled, hermetically sealed so that the touch of pre-RPG literature would not sear their flesh. They may read Tolkien one day, they may have been told a fairy-tale as a child, and they may have heard the names of Homer, Leiber, Ovid, Shakespeare, and Vance. But their literary mentor was Gary Gygax, and their quill pens were won as loot from an orc guarding a chest. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Dec 16, 2015 |
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Dec 16, 2015 10:51
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quote:The reason writers inspired by Tolkien fail is because they try to respond directly to Tolkien, instead of going back to Tolkien's sources. This is how you get authors like Robert Jordan, and readers of Robert Jordan who found Tolkien "too hard" such as goon favourite Brandon Sanderson. I don't really see how Robert Jordan's books has much to do with Tolkien, his Wheel of Time books are more influenced by stuff like Star Wars and Dune, and his Conan books follow a different pulp tradition that was around well before Tolkien. He's a bad writer but that's got nothing to do with Lord of the RIngs. quote:This is where authors like Rothfuss were schooled, hermetically sealed so that the touch of pre-RPG literature would not sear their flesh. They may read Tolkien one day, they may have been told a fairy-tale as a child, and they may have heard the names of Homer, Leiber, Ovid, Shakespeare, and Vance. But their literary mentor was Gary Gygax, and their quill pens were won as loot from an orc guarding a chest. Eh... unless he's specifically said this in an interview or something, this really seems like a reach. How do you know what any of these people actually read or did as a kid? Earwicker fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Dec 16, 2015 |
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Dec 16, 2015 16:19
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Earwicker posted:Eh... unless he's specifically said this in an interview or something, this really seems like a reach. How do you know what any of these people actually read or did as a kid? Interviews.
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Dec 16, 2015 16:25
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Earwicker posted:I don't really see how Robert Jordan's books has much to do with Tolkien, his Wheel of Time books are more influenced by stuff like Star Wars and Dune, and his Conan books follow a different pulp tradition that was around well before Tolkien. He's a bad writer but that's got nothing to do with Lord of the RIngs. Jordan wrote Eye of the World explicitly as a Tolkein style callback. There's no escaping it as an important root of the series.
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Dec 16, 2015 16:26
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Grimson posted:Jordan wrote Eye of the World explicitly as a Tolkein style callback. There's no escaping it as an important root of the series. Interesting, to me it seemed more like a Star Wars level of story set in a generic medieval-ish universe (which or course is later revealed to be far future Earth etc.), and about the only similarity with Tolkien is that pseudo-medieval setting.
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Dec 16, 2015 16:39
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I remember being a teenager and trying to read the first book in the Wheel of Time series. I had just come off the Lord of the Rings and loved it, so I was excited for a new fantasy series. I put it down five chapters later frothing at the mouth at how similar it was to Tolkien, especially the Silmarillion. Still can't look at that goddamn thing without feeling pissed off.
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Dec 16, 2015 17:47
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Being inspired by possibly the greatest work of fantasy literature ever, how dare Robert Jordan!
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Dec 16, 2015 19:24
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Torrannor posted:Being inspired by possibly the greatest work of fantasy literature ever, how dare Robert Jordan! Lord of the Rings is a terrible source of inspiration for a fantasy story.
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Dec 16, 2015 19:31
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Lord of the Rings is a terrible source of inspiration for a fantasy story. Yet the Wheel of Time series turned out fine.
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Dec 16, 2015 19:36
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The thing is taking from Lord of the Rings is ignoring all the meticulous research of mythology and linguistics that went into that. Like, every other fantasy has some made-up language but very few of them make sense; I don't think I've encountered any that was as detailed as Tolkien's. So when all an author takes from LotR is the hero's quest, mythological patterns, orcs and dragons and magical trees, they're missing most of what makes the book so good.
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Dec 16, 2015 19:36
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anilEhilated posted:The thing is taking from Lord of the Rings is ignoring all the meticulous research of mythology and linguistics that went into that. No, that's really not at all the problem. A huge amount of fantasy is very bad and even if it had a made up language with as much research into linguistics as Tolkien had done, it would still be very bad. A huge part of the problem with fantasy (and scifi for that matter) is people putting so much effort into poo poo like world-building, fake languages, magic "systems", etc. and etc. that they forget that a good story needs things like compelling characters and plot. Spending more time researching the fake languages does not address that. Torrannor posted:Yet the Wheel of Time series turned out fine. It really didn't. It's quite bad. It certainly had some potential in the first few books but they quickly became a bloated mess. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 16, 2015 |
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Dec 16, 2015 19:47
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Earwicker posted:A huge part of the problem with fantasy (and scifi for that matter) is people putting so much effort into poo poo like world-building, fake languages, magic "systems", etc. and etc. that they forget that a good story needs things like compelling characters and plot. Spending more time researching the fake languages does not address that. That's one of the biggest problems with Rothfuss as well, I think. I really like the magic system he's made, and it's used pretty well in the story. There are portions of the books where he's just describing how some manner of sympathy works, and others where he's demonstrating those things, and those are some of the most interesting parts to me. He even has a weird amount of fantasy history that everyone seems to know, and variation on every story for every region, and a goddamn currency exchange system built into the world, each described to a point that nobody could possibly care about. And then the story surrounding it is just events happening with no apparent meaning.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:07
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Not that I read a lot of fantasy, but it's honestly been a problem with pretty much every post-Tolkien fantasy I've read with the exception of Book of the New Sun (which is only "sort of" fantasy anyway)
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Dec 16, 2015 20:09
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Torrannor posted:Being inspired by possibly the greatest work of fantasy literature ever, how dare Robert Jordan! lol, I didn't say it made sense. It just means I'm not going to read the series, probably ever, and that's okay.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:33
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:A dignity also borne by luminaries such as John Grisham and Masashi Kishimoto. If medieval fantasy authors appealed to your highly refined, literary tastes, they'd hardly resemble what made them successful in the first place. There is no objective and linear spectrum when it comes to determining the value of literature. It's impressive that your entire argument boils down to goodness equating to tradition.
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Dec 17, 2015 00:48
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I might be misremembering, but doesn't the first book of Wheel of Time basically take a group (4) of close friends growing up in a politically and physically isolated land being escorted from their home by a mysterious tracker/warrior type, a wizard, and some other people I can't remember? They're chased by a group of orc-standins led by tall, mysterious, black-cloaked masked riders who are also undead or something? Wheel of Time might start moving far off, but the first book echoes the opening sequence to Lord of the Rings so much that its completely impossible to ignore.
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Dec 17, 2015 06:10
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Ravenfood posted:I might be misremembering, but doesn't the first book of Wheel of Time basically take a group (4) of close friends growing up in a politically and physically isolated land being escorted from their home by a mysterious tracker/warrior type, a wizard, and some other people I can't remember? They're chased by a group of orc-standins led by tall, mysterious, black-cloaked masked riders who are also undead or something? Wheel of Time might start moving far off, but the first book echoes the opening sequence to Lord of the Rings so much that its completely impossible to ignore. It does resemble a good part of the Fellowship, that's true. But it's different enough to still be interesting (to me), and the following books stop resembling any other part of the Lord of the Rings.
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Dec 17, 2015 07:38
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Thoren posted:If medieval fantasy authors appealed to your highly refined, literary tastes, they'd hardly resemble what made them successful in the first place. There is no objective and linear spectrum when it comes to determining the value of literature. The quality of literature is dependent on two factors: what you learned from those who came before, and what you personally contribute. The latter is obviously the deciding factor, but it's only possible because of the former. Being a good writer involves being a good reader, too. Tolkien's imitators and D&D nerds have had pretty poor influences (that are not necessarily bad in themselves), so they end up writing this strange half-formed literature. They express the fantastic through realistic, "objective" prose pared down from 20th century adventure and pulp fiction. Can you imagine your average medieval fantasy author writing poetry? Or writing good poetry? And consider the oxymoron of "a magic system". That authors can take a force of enchantment and irrationality, and systematize it (and without any sense of irony as with Jack Vance), tells me that fantasy literature is broken. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 08:41
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:And consider the oxymoron of "a magic system". That authors can take a force of enchantment and irrationality, and systematize it (and without any sense of irony as with Jack Vance), tells me that fantasy literature is broken. What a load of bullshit.
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Dec 17, 2015 14:52
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:And consider the oxymoron of "a magic system". That authors can take a force of enchantment and irrationality, and systematize it (and without any sense of irony as with Jack Vance), tells me that fantasy literature is broken. Would you rather magic just work by random bullshit that people just happen to know how to do? If there's no set order of operations to magic, then it's just Calvinball.
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Dec 17, 2015 15:15
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The quality of literature is dependent on two factors: what you learned from those who came before, and what you personally contribute. The latter is obviously the deciding factor, but it's only possible because of the former. Being a good writer involves being a good reader, too. I disagree with everything you're saying.
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Dec 17, 2015 16:16
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No fantasy work has yet surpassed the magic system of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
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Dec 17, 2015 16:17
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'Magic' as emblematic of irrationality is a pretty parochial and contemporary notion that fantasy authors shouldn't feel bound to if it's not relevant to what they're trying to do.
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Dec 17, 2015 16:44
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:No fantasy work has yet surpassed the magic system of the Egyptian Book of the Dead You should read some Zelazny.
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Dec 17, 2015 17:35
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I don't think there is anything wrong with having some sort of a system behind how magic works in a fictional world. But I think it is a problem when that it is a focus. We live in a world where brain surgery exists, and there is a massive amount of information out there about how the brain works and how people can and should perform surgery on it. Only a relatively small number of highly trained people are familiar with this information. You wouldn't expect an average reader to simply know it. However, a good novel in which a major character is a brain surgeon doesn't need to contain the bulk of that information. In fact it's probably going to be much better if it doesn't. Sure, of course, there would be some content about brain surgery in such a novel, but if the author spent a long time explaining the principles of medicine, surgery, the human brain, etc. explaining all of the systems behind it, at some point it starts to take away from the story and become a medical textbook. Which is the problem with fantasy novels when they get too involved with a magic system or other aspects of world-building, and the book resembles a roleplaying game guidebook more than a novel. So while there's nothing wrong with some sort of behind the scenes, underlying logic behind magic or whatever else, a major weakness of the genre is putting it at the forefront at the expense of the things that make a novel, a novel. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Dec 17, 2015 |
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Dec 17, 2015 17:45
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Earwicker posted:I don't think there is anything wrong with having some sort of a system behind how magic works in a fictional world. But I think it is a problem when that it is a focus. Yeah, but when it's a book about a young doctor who doesn't know how to do brain surgery in he beginning, and the climax of the book is them applying what they've learned on a particularly difficult or abnormal surgery, it can be good to have some details about what, exactly, is happening. Kvothe's fight with that dragon is basically a culmination of everything he's learned in University, and not having some sort of explanation of how it works beforehand just makes it seem like he can do cool poo poo just because he can. Whether or not a thoroughly thought out magic system is necessary, and whether and to what degree the reader needs to know about it, really depends on what story is being told.
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Dec 17, 2015 17:56
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