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HIJK
Nov 25, 2012
in the room where you sleep

Earwicker posted:

I couldn't disagree more. If you spend all your time reading crap genre fiction - even if you are conscious that it's bad - then that's what is going to be influencing you the most. I can't think of any actual good writers who indicated in any way that they got where they are by spending a bunch of time studying some garbage fantasy series. People learn good writing from good writers, not by taking apart reams of bad writing and doing the opposite.

In general: Rothfuss is just one of many genre authors at a similar level of quality and their books are fine for light entertainment but I don't really see the point in spending a whole lot of time digging into them beyond that. If someone wants to add yet another "deep dive" into yet another mediocre fantasy series to a forum that already contains 90% that exact same thing, it is of course your God Given Right to do so, but I fail to understand the point... or how it would even be any different from this thread, for that matter.

But I don't read just crap fiction. I also read a lot of genuine literature. It's like when you're assigned a math problem and have to find the mistake and then do the equation right. Finding the mistakes and then contrasting it with the correct equation is illuminating.

If you don't understand the point of sporking in general though then I imagine you didn't like MST3K and don't watch bad movies for entertainment with friends. But it all takes all sorts in this world.

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Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

HIJK posted:

If you don't understand the point of sporking in general though then I imagine you didn't like MST3K and don't watch bad movies for entertainment with friends. But it all takes all sorts in this world.

You are right, I dislike MST3k because I would always rather watch a good movie than watch a bad movie with people talking over it, I find that irritating both on the show and in real life. So yes maybe it's just a personality type thing.

I have never heard it called "sporking" though.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the meandering darkness as he sporked over the dusty tomes.

Benson Cunningham
Dec 9, 2006

Chief of J.U.N.K.E.R. H.Q.
Being able to deconstruct why something is bad gives you a powerful position in discussing (arguing) about it. The better you are able to put the nebulous concept of 'I liked it' or 'I didn't like it' into words, the more you will find yourself capable of speaking coherently and intelligently on a topic.

Obviously writing isn't entirely objective- you can write a terrible book that's semantically and syntactically correct. You can write a great book that breaks all the rules. But the process of analyzing a work, good or bad, is important to forming well conceived opinions.

Hate Fibration
Apr 8, 2013

FLÄSHYN!

Solice Kirsk posted:

His eyes slowly adjusted to the meandering darkness as he sporked over the dusty tomes.

Hello yes, it is me, the darkness. I am just going for a nice little ramble through the park. Where I end up, nobody knows, but by golly is it sure a nice day.

HIJK
Nov 25, 2012
in the room where you sleep

Earwicker posted:

You are right, I dislike MST3k because I would always rather watch a good movie than watch a bad movie with people talking over it, I find that irritating both on the show and in real life. So yes maybe it's just a personality type thing.

I have never heard it called "sporking" though.

You're probably saving yourself a lot of money in blood pressure medication in the future so having good taste isn't all bad. :coffee:

Hate Fibration
Apr 8, 2013

FLÄSHYN!

HIJK posted:

You're probably saving yourself a lot of money in blood pressure medication in the future so having good taste isn't all bad. :coffee:

If you were hell bent on making things educational and going the extra mile, you could look at what Rothfuss is attempting to do in a particular section or passage. Say with prose, dialogue, etc, and compare it to a novel or piece of writing that pulls it off really well. And show how he fails while the other succeeds.

But that's like...a heinous amount of work.

Chaotic Flame
Jun 1, 2009

So...


Benson Cunningham posted:

I stopped playing Pillars of Eternity almost immediately due to lazy writing. The very first paragraph of dialog is:

Five wagons grope blindly for the path on a starless night, their master glancing ever upwards for assurance he is on the right course, a dim lantern his only protection against the encroaching darkness.

Where do I even begin?

Wagons can't grope blindly. They have a fixed axle. Any movement you can imagine for 'groping blindly' would look nothing like what the wagons were doing, which is likely just moving slowly. Even if the front wagon was somehow 'groping blindy,' man I hope the rest of the wagons are just calmly following him in a line. And this guy is looking upwards for assurance he is on the right course? The first part of this overwrought sentence points out its a starless night. The gently caress is he looking at?

Lazy writing is the worst.


In other news, I think I am going to do a Let's Read of Name of the Wind. First post to follow later this week. Time to get to the bottom of this poo poo.

Let's Reads are a thing?

Benson Cunningham
Dec 9, 2006

Chief of J.U.N.K.E.R. H.Q.

Chaotic Flame posted:

Let's Reads are a thing?

I was going to do Wizards First Rule but someone beat me to it. God that would have been fun.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Earwicker posted:

I couldn't disagree more. If you spend all your time reading crap genre fiction - even if you are conscious that it's bad - then that's what is going to be influencing you the most. I can't think of any actual good writers who indicated in any way that they got where they are by spending a bunch of time studying some garbage fantasy series. People learn good writing from good writers, not by taking apart reams of bad writing and doing the opposite.

In general: Rothfuss is just one of many genre authors at a similar level of quality and their books are fine for light entertainment but I don't really see the point in spending a whole lot of time digging into them beyond that. If someone wants to add yet another "deep dive" into yet another mediocre fantasy series to a forum that already contains 90% that exact same thing, it is of course your God Given Right to do so, but I fail to understand the point... or how it would even be any different from this thread, for that matter.

I spent one summer working at a Fireworks stand, which meant that for 10 hours a day for 9-10 days all I did was sit and read. After pouring through some Ringworld books, Bernard Cornwall, Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, etc. I started reading A Tale of Two Cities and it was like seeing color for the first time. Those weren't necessarily bad examples of crap genre fiction, just pretty entertaining reads with compelling plots and characters that interested me. AToTC was that, plus some loving amazing prose that never turned purple.

The problem with "amazing prose" is that people let very poetic and flowery language take precedent when praising a book because its not a typical feature of the genre. I will say that compared to tons of other fantasy series Rothfuss' uses more vivid language but doesn't employ it as a device to enhance his storytelling because he's still bogged down by tiresome cliches and some terrible plot choices.

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

I just finished reading The Last Unicorn (Rothfuss's #1 favorite book), and found it very interesting. But beyond that, I think the style of prose, narrative, and world manifests itself in Rothfuss's writing. For example, the unicorn was "no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night." You can see how that style of description and figurative language inspired Rothfuss in Name of the Wind, and how he takes that style of figurative language and runs wild with it in The Slow Regard of Silent Things. The themes have a lot of similarity too. The Last Unicorn is very much a story about human nature and the stories we tell, and as I was reading it I couldn't help but think of it as a seed for the Kingkiller Chronicles. The high, mysterious magic (versus petty tricks with an explanation), the aspects of tragedy, the importance of stories within the story, the manifestation of evil creatures, and parts of characters (much of Auri seems inspired by Lady Amalthea) are all there--of course, in very different ways.

They're very different books, but it's interesting to read them both through that lens. Obviously, some of the parallels are because of how both books (and the genre in general) have drawn on the traditions of older stories and legends (and more directly than the more rigidly Tolkien-inspired books that a lot of fantasy descends from). Anyways, if you haven't read The Last Unicorn, I'd recommend it.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
The difference is that Rothfuss florid language never makes sense, and he mixes up poetic and realistic modes for no real value. Just looking at an excerpt, Beagle uses different modes for comic effect:

quote:

“My great-grandmother was afraid of large animals,” said the first hunter. “She didn’t ride it, but she sat very still, and the unicorn put its head in her lap and fell asleep. My great-grandmother never moved till it woke.”

“What did it look like? Pliny describes the unicorn as being very ferocious, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a bear; a deep, bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length. And the Chinese—“

But doesn't try mixing up fairy-tale poesy with realistic, objective prose. Rothfuss does just that, influenced by D&D fiction. And the anachronisms are just weird. The Name of the Wind actually uses the phrase "sexual innuendo".

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Jan 27, 2016

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


Earwicker posted:

You are right, I dislike MST3k because I would always rather watch a good movie than watch a bad movie with people talking over it, I find that irritating both on the show and in real life. So yes maybe it's just a personality type thing.

I have never heard it called "sporking" though.

the only justification for the star wars prequels is the existence of the lengthy redlettermedia reviews.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

pentyne posted:

I will say that compared to tons of other fantasy series Rothfuss' uses more vivid language but doesn't employ it as a device to enhance his storytelling because he's still bogged down by tiresome cliches and some terrible plot choices.

The sex ninja part of WMF, the fighting especially, is such awful word salad that it was amazing.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
He doesn't seem to be very good at describing fighting scenes at all. Even the one in the forest which I enjoyed was pretty pedestrian.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Good thing he's started skipping them because they apparently aren't interesting for anyone but piracy enthusiasts.

Lottery of Babylon
Apr 25, 2012

STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Evil Fluffy posted:

The Spiraling Cloud part of WMF, the Trundling Fist especially, is such awful Lipstick Souffle that it lowered my mind into the.Miller's Draught.

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

The difference is that Rothfuss florid language never makes sense, and he mixes up poetic and realistic modes for no real value.

I guess I never got the sense that the florid language never makes sense. To take a concrete example:

Solice Kirsk posted:

I never understood the "cut-flower sound" thing. It sounds like he just picked something random and applied it to something it has no business expounding on. Like if I were to say, "He had the swiftly sewn hunger of generations in his starless night eyes." Sounds super profound, but try to explain what the gently caress I just said.
and Hate Fibration's comparison:

F. Scott Fitzgerald posted:

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

Patrick Rothfuss posted:

This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, holding the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great riversmooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
Blue gardens? How can you have blue gardens? Plants are green, moron. Also, have you seen how moths fly? They flutter madly and jerkily, zooming around light sources at high speed. Is Benny Hill supposed to be playing in the background of this scene? Also, there's no specifics of location here, so how can I follow the action?

...Okay, that criticism is completely unfounded and you'd have to be pretty dense to genuinely try and pick apart Fitzgerald's prose like that. And yet, I think people are doing a similar thing to Rothfuss. Take "cut flower." To me, that immediately evokes a flower that has been cut at the stem. What happens to that flower? Well, it seems to be alive, but it is dying. It will inevitably wilt and die (the rest of the sentence makes sure you make that connection. Kvothe is waiting to die). Using a strong visual like that to compare a sound is exactly why figurative language exists, especially when it would be very difficult to describe something like "silence" otherwise. We need to know more than just that it is silence, we need to understand why that silence is important--and the language does just that. Calling silence "heavy" seems fine too (it evokes to me the kind of mourning silence you get at a funeral). Saying it is a "greater" silence is appropriate because whatever this "third" silence is is the reason for the other two, implying a cause-and-effect relationship. The figurative language does a lot of heavy lifting without the tedious explanation I just gave of it. But it's very easy to explain if you try--I guess I'm puzzled as to what flowery prose exactly in Name of the Wind or Wise Man's Fear "doesn't make sense."

To compare that to Solice Kirk's example, the deliberate contradiction between "swiftly sewn hunger" and "hunger of generations" does indeed make no sense, as intended. I just don't see that parallel in Rothfuss's writing.

Another concrete example might be the fight scenes, especially the martial arts in Wise Man's Fear. I believe Rothfuss is on record saying he tried to leave the descriptions vague enough that the reader could use their own imagination to create what was bad-rear end or cool to them, while detailed enough to get an idea of what was happening and how. How well he succeeded it up to debate, but I sort of like the vagueness, since accurately describing weapon fighting a) often requires technical language, b) can become tedious, and c) leaves the author open to a criticism that he doesn't know how weapon martial art fights actually should go (and to be fair, most people don't, just like how Hollywood has no idea how swords or guns works). Whereas the named forms, like what Robert Jordan did with his heron sword masters, builds not only how you imagine the fight, but gives figurative hints at the personality of the characters fighting. Just as Fitzgerald compares men and girls to moths, the sword forms can also give you a sense of style and motion in short form. To contrast that, Brandon Sanderson has a much more technical, play-by-play approach to describing his fight scenes, which can work really well in some instances, and get drawn out and tiresome in others.

It seems to me people who have decided they really hate Rothfuss are succumbing to the Halo Effect. It's not enough that one part of the book is bad, or that you hate his blog posts, that has to spread into every other aspect--he is creepy, he is a terrible person, his charity is stupid, his prose is trash, his story is trash, everything is awful--which I think is not true. Obviously there's legitimate criticisms of his stories, but there's no nuance in really any of the discussion here. Having lurked in this thread for some time, I'm really baffled by how the entire thread seems to be just making GBS threads on Rothfuss while simultaneously whining that book three isn't out. I haven't looked at very many threads in Book Barn, but is every thread this toxic toward the author it covers?

Since, as another poster pointed out, looking at good examples of writing is more useful (to a writer, at least) than bad, I'd find this thread far more interesting if people talked about the parts they did like, too, or the speculations and curiosities they have that make them want Doors of Stone so badly. I'm not saying "don't criticize", I'd just like to see this thread be more than bashing Rothfuss, since that got really uninteresting a few dozen pages ago.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
I don't remember where that bit of Fitzgerald fits in, but blue gardens probably mean it's taking place at night and comparing the party goers' movements to moths invokes both the self-destructive aimlessness he generally associates with that age and the image of a flame, which makes for a wonderfully contrasting picture with the blue plants...
The main difference, the way I see it, is that definitely conjures certain images and associations while I still have absolutely no loving idea what a cut-flower sound is supposed to be like.

So yeah, dissection or not, that Fitzgerald bit is still genius. And I'm still convinced that whole sex ninja section in WMF is some kind of a martial/marital arts joke he just forgot to actually include.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jan 27, 2016

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum

anilEhilated posted:

I still have absolutely no loving idea what a cut-flower sound is supposed to be like.

It's silence. A cut-flower doesn't make sound, but there's a certain quality of expectation and futility. You cut a flower, it dies. It might take a while to stop looking like it is alive, but it will soon be dead.

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

anilEhilated posted:

I don't remember where that bit of Fitzgerald fits in, but blue gardens probably mean it's taking place at night and comparing the party goers' movements to moths invokes both the self-destructive aimlessness he generally associates with that age and the image of a flame, which makes for a wonderfully contrasting picture with the blue plants...
The main difference, the way I see it, is that definitely conjures certain images and associations while I still have absolutely no loving idea what a cut-flower sound is supposed to be like.

So yeah, dissection or not, that Fitzgerald bit is still genius. And I'm still convinced that whole sex ninja section in WMF is some kind of a martial/marital arts joke he just forgot to actually include.

I guess I must not have been clear with why I was "criticizing" Fitzgerald's writing. The follow-up, "Okay, that criticism is completely unfounded and you'd have to be pretty dense to genuinely try and pick apart Fitzgerald's prose like that" is important; I don't actually believe Fitzgerald's writing is bad here. Yes, the blue gardens, moths, and starlight all obviously allude to it being night, and his description is excellent. To be clear, my point with my tongue-in-cheek "criticism" of Fitzgerald is that I think people are doing that exact thing to Rothfuss's writing. I dissected Rothfuss's language precisely to describe why his figurative language makes sense to me, and is good.

Edit: Kvothe is a person who thrives on discovery, conflict, and music--noisy activities. The silence (e.g. fact he won't/can't play music or do all the things he loves) is killing him, like cutting a flower is slowly going to kill it. It's a really great description because it compares the absence of something (which is a difficult kind of thing to describe) to a powerful, clear visual (the cut flower, which will slowly wilt and die).

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 27, 2016

The Hanged Man
Oct 30, 2010

Uranium Phoenix posted:

(the rest of the sentence makes sure you make that connection. Kvothe is waiting to die)
No, we got the "connection" from Rothfuss telling us, in plain text, that Kvothe is waiting to die. All this silence bullshit from before is completely pointless.

jivjov posted:

It's silence. A cut-flower doesn't make sound, but there's a certain quality of expectation and futility. You cut a flower, it dies. It might take a while to stop looking like it is alive, but it will soon be dead.
As opposed to an un-cut flower, I guess, that makes sounds and never dies.

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

The Hanged Man posted:

No, we got the "connection" from Rothfuss telling us, in plain text, that Kvothe is waiting to die. All this silence bullshit from before is completely pointless.

As opposed to an un-cut flower, I guess, that makes sounds and never dies.

Sure thing! Whatever makes sure that hate-boner of yours stays rigid, I guess.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.

Is that you, Patrick? :psypop:

Hate Fibration
Apr 8, 2013

FLÄSHYN!

Uranium Phoenix posted:

...Okay, that criticism is completely unfounded and you'd have to be pretty dense to genuinely try and pick apart Fitzgerald's prose like that. And yet, I think people are doing a similar thing to Rothfuss. Take "cut flower." To me, that immediately evokes a flower that has been cut at the stem. What happens to that flower? Well, it seems to be alive, but it is dying. It will inevitably wilt and die

If it evoked the image of a cut-flower in that way, that would imply that the sound/silence itself is slowly dying. So the Inn has a constant background noise that's just getting quieter and quieter. Which contradicts the earlier mentioned silences. The other problem is, that sentence is also very very easy to parse as "The sound that a flower being cut makes" which is actually a very big problem. Because the act of cutting flowers does make a sound, and that will be many reader's first impression on reading that sentence.

quote:

What happens to that flower? Well, it seems to be alive, but it is dying. It will inevitably wilt and die (the rest of the sentence makes sure you make that connection. Kvothe is waiting to die). Using a strong visual like that to compare a sound is exactly why figurative language exists, especially when it would be very difficult to describe something like "silence" otherwise.

The fact that Kvothe is waiting to die is directly stated. So what is happening is that the silence is being compared to the tension of a man waiting to die, which is...very weird and doesn't describe the silence at all. The goal of the sentence is not to describe a silence, but to create an atmosphere. And I also disagree that the visual is strong. A cut flower is not a particularly strong visual. Especially when aiming for a sort of dire tension. It's an ornament that goes on your coffee table. Possibly in a nice vase. A greater problem though is that the nature of the visual "a flower slowly dying" is a step removed from the actual description. This would be fine if the book was mostly written like that, but it erratically alternates between workmanlike and that style. So what happens is first the reader is like "What? Cut flower? Oh, oh! It's slowly dying!" But once again, this descriptor is also being applied to the silence. So this means the silence is slowly dying? This reading of the sentence just engenders more confusion.

quote:

We need to know more than just that it is silence, we need to understand why that silence is important--and the language does just that.

The hilarious thing is, the sentence would establish the atmosphere more effectively if it had simply described it as "the heavy silence of a man waiting to die." It gets the point across directly, without the confusion caused by the strained and bizarre metaphors. Alternatively, the inn could be described as a vase, holding a cut flower. Which would very nicely circumvent the need to describe a silence. And that's actually the big problem with this phrase. It's not describing the atmosphere in the inn, it's describing a silence. Something concrete, and with definite characteristics, so the metaphors should be appropriate to the object at hand.

quote:

Calling silence "heavy" seems fine too (it evokes to me the kind of mourning silence you get at a funeral).

Oh, that particular bit is fine, out of context. But it's actually an example of the sentence alternating between workmanlike prose and ornate language that I mentioned earlier. Forcing the reader to parse the intended meaning in an erratic and inconsistent way. Calling a silence heavy/leaden is very common.

Also, the cut flower thing is not the most egregious part of the sentence, this is:

quote:

It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending.

Seriously, what?

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

it was as deep and wide as the ending of Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Wies and Tracy Hickman

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

jivjov posted:

It's silence. A cut-flower doesn't make sound, but there's a certain quality of expectation and futility. You cut a flower, it dies. It might take a while to stop looking like it is alive, but it will soon be dead.

Also when the dead flower head hits the ground it makes a really pathetic "whump" sound that you can't hear.

crestfallen
Aug 2, 2009

Hi.
I won't get into a crazy amount of detail here because it's late, but I'm enjoying the actual critique with examples and comparisons. It's a nice change of pace.

The cut flower sound thing. I agree it's not a great metaphor, but it still sorta made sense after I thought about it for a second. Like, yes, you cut the flower and that's that. I imagined a quiet florist or flower shop. The single snip of a scissors. The quiet and silence that follows. It had some finality to it. It could be considered weighty.

And then I moved on. It wasn't great to me but I felt I understood well enough what was trying to be conveyed there.

ManlyGrunting
May 29, 2014
I don't think that the whole "let your imagination soar" thing with the martial arts moves works though, because there's so little to work with. It's all "I struck with fainting maiden, and she blocked and countered with crescent moon", at best it's unnecessary fluff (I attacked, she blocked and counterattacked) and at worst it reads like a sentence without nouns or verbs in it, I felt my eyes glaze off the page every time a sex scene or fight scene happened. He may as well have written the move names in cuneiform or wingdings for all they added; as a bit of fluff they were fine but they were the sole focus of the sentance, often several at a time over what felt like an entire paragraph. It read more like Kvothe being smug and rattling off all of this arcane knowledge that of course you don't know, mister can't throw a punch. :smug:

The sole exception to this was THE THOUSAND HANDS, because I just imagined the hundred crack fists of the north star, followed by Kvothe smugly proclaiming "you have already orgasmed" and counting to ten

I will say though that I really do like the cutflower metaphore. It's short, it's visceral and aids the sentence, you get what it means to say immediately. Rothfuss can often let his metaphors get wordy and awkward but cutflower was crisp and to the point and I appreciated it, though I kind of wish it was a one-off for the first book, it sort of loses its impact appearing twice more in book 2.

e: I should clarify that this was more of a problem with the Adem; I actually liked the fae realm stuff that wasn't the dumb impenetrable sex scenes because it was such a neat, alien and dangerous realm. The Adem on the other hand are 200 pages of the same poo poo over and over and I think the book would have been overall better if the whole thing was scrapped.

ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jan 28, 2016

Earwicker
Jan 6, 2003

crestfallen posted:

The cut flower sound thing. I agree it's not a great metaphor, but it still sorta made sense after I thought about it for a second. Like, yes, you cut the flower and that's that. I imagined a quiet florist or flower shop. The single snip of a scissors. The quiet and silence that follows. It had some finality to it. It could be considered weighty.

I think the main reason the metaphor doesn't work for me is that flowers are just as silent before you cut them, so any silence that comes after doesn't really carry any weight at all.. it's the same.

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum

Earwicker posted:

I think the main reason the metaphor doesn't work for me is that flowers are just as silent before you cut them, so any silence that comes after doesn't really carry any weight at all.. it's the same.

It's a metaphor though. There are different types of silence. A healthy, living, content silence can "feel" different than a dying, resigned one.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
After hearing some your takes on the "cut-flower" metaphor I'm actually a little better for it. I was looking at it more of a "winding snake of a road" sort of way instead of a "heart of gold" kinda thing. I was trying to think of a physical property of the sound/look a cut flower makes to apply to the silence and just wasn't getting anything. Disregarding that all together and looking at it from a hopelessness or finality sort of thing is a lot better. Still not a huge fan of it, but it at least makes a bit more sense. Ugh, the Rothfuss thread taught me something. It's only 7am, but I need a drink.

The Hanged Man
Oct 30, 2010

Solice Kirsk posted:

Ugh, the Rothfuss thread taught me something.
Good for you, because I think that this thread gave me irreparable brain damage. Goddamn silences "feeling" different from other silences. Just put some semi-logical sentences together, who gives a gently caress.

Or maybe I'm just a shallow idiot that doesn't get metaphors or something. Hurr hate-boner

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum

The Hanged Man posted:

Good for you, because I think that this thread gave me irreparable brain damage. Goddamn silences "feeling" different from other silences. Just put some semi-logical sentences together, who gives a gently caress.

Or maybe I'm just a shallow idiot that doesn't get metaphors or something. Hurr hate-boner

Let's look at some real-world silences that I personally have experienced. Hopefully they will parallel events in your life and help you understand different types of silences.

1) my wife and I sitting on the couch together, both reading a book or magazine. We're not speaking, we're not watching TV, so other than the occasional page turn, it is silent. But it's a content and happy sort of silence.

2) sitting in the waiting room at the emergency room, waiting for news about my mom. Dad and I are both there. Not speaking, staring at the floor. The door is closed so we can't hear the sounds from the rest of the hospital. Tense and uncomfortable silence, apprehension.

3) high school history class, the teacher asks a question, nobody raises a hand. We're all looking at each other waiting for someone to volunteer so the teacher doesn't select someone at random. An entirely different kind of apprehension, with much less on the line. Still silence.

4) I'm the first one home from work, nobody else is home. The house is neutrally silent. No real emotional connotation.


All different silences, all silent.

SpacePig
Apr 4, 2007

Hold that pose.
I've gotta get something.

The Hanged Man posted:

Good for you, because I think that this thread gave me irreparable brain damage. Goddamn silences "feeling" different from other silences. Just put some semi-logical sentences together, who gives a gently caress.

Or maybe I'm just a shallow idiot that doesn't get metaphors or something. Hurr hate-boner

I can't believe I'm about to agree with jivjov again, but silence absolutely have different emotional connotations. Silence in a previously bustling room. Silence between friends after a tragic event. Reverent silence, nervous silence, ominous silence.

He still isn't great at describing them, and is overly wordy at doing it, but the basic idea of separate and different silence isn't completely unreasonable.

The Slithery D
Jul 19, 2012

jivjov posted:

Let's look at some real-world silences that I personally have experienced. Hopefully they will parallel events in your life and help you understand different types of silences.

1) my wife and I sitting on the couch together, both reading a book or magazine. We're not speaking, we're not watching TV, so other than the occasional page turn, it is silent. But it's a content and happy sort of silence.

2) sitting in the waiting room at the emergency room, waiting for news about my mom. Dad and I are both there. Not speaking, staring at the floor. The door is closed so we can't hear the sounds from the rest of the hospital. Tense and uncomfortable silence, apprehension.

3) high school history class, the teacher asks a question, nobody raises a hand. We're all looking at each other waiting for someone to volunteer so the teacher doesn't select someone at random. An entirely different kind of apprehension, with much less on the line. Still silence.

4) I'm the first one home from work, nobody else is home. The house is neutrally silent. No real emotional connotation.


All different silences, all silent.

5) Jivjov posts some Rothfuss nob slurping post - the dumbfounded silence before the disgusted goons all pile on.

The Hanged Man
Oct 30, 2010

jivjov posted:

Let's look at some real-world silences that I personally have experienced. Hopefully they will parallel events in your life and help you understand different types of silences.

1) my wife and I sitting on the couch together, both reading a book or magazine. We're not speaking, we're not watching TV, so other than the occasional page turn, it is silent. But it's a content and happy sort of silence.

2) sitting in the waiting room at the emergency room, waiting for news about my mom. Dad and I are both there. Not speaking, staring at the floor. The door is closed so we can't hear the sounds from the rest of the hospital. Tense and uncomfortable silence, apprehension.

3) high school history class, the teacher asks a question, nobody raises a hand. We're all looking at each other waiting for someone to volunteer so the teacher doesn't select someone at random. An entirely different kind of apprehension, with much less on the line. Still silence.

4) I'm the first one home from work, nobody else is home. The house is neutrally silent. No real emotional connotation.


All different silences, all silent.
Those are not different silences. You just described different events that had involved silence in them at some point. Also, real cool how you use personal moments from your life to prove something to somebody in the Internet (hope your Mom's ok, though).

Simply connecting words together does not create proper sentences with real meaning. I'm not buying that some crappy cut flower is in any way comparable to a grown man, who has given up on life. A room filled with three silences as heavy as stone and deep as whatever doesn't tell me that it contains a severely depressed man, I get that from the author telling me directly that the man is waiting to die (although, the way he describes the whole thing, you'd think that Kvothe has terminal cancer or something).

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum

The Hanged Man posted:

Those are not different silences. You just described different events that had involved silence in them at some point. Also, real cool how you use personal moments from your life to prove something to somebody in the Internet (hope your Mom's ok, though).

Simply connecting words together does not create proper sentences with real meaning. I'm not buying that some crappy cut flower is in any way comparable to a grown man, who has given up on life. A room filled with three silences as heavy as stone and deep as whatever doesn't tell me that it contains a severely depressed man, I get that from the author telling me directly that the man is waiting to die (although, the way he describes the whole thing, you'd think that Kvothe has terminal cancer or something).

You've missed the entire point of what I was trying to describe. Yes, the silence itself is the same; but the silence can carry an emotional connotation based on the events surrounding them.

If you don't like the metaphor that's fine; but silences absolutely can "feel" different from one another. And for all we know, Kvothe does have some manner of terminal illness (although I think that would be a bit of a cheat, given what we know so far).

Edit: the events are what gives the silence it's connotation. But the book opens with a description of silence. We haven't gotten events yet, so a metaphor imparts the emotion.

jivjov fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jan 28, 2016

Benson Cunningham
Dec 9, 2006

Chief of J.U.N.K.E.R. H.Q.
JivJov is right about silence being used to invoke different emotions.

That doesn't mean the specific metaphor Rothfuss used about silence is good.

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SpacePig
Apr 4, 2007

Hold that pose.
I've gotta get something.

The Hanged Man posted:

Those are not different silences. You just described different events that had involved silence in them at some point. Also, real cool how you use personal moments from your life to prove something to somebody in the Internet (hope your Mom's ok, though).

Simply connecting words together does not create proper sentences with real meaning. I'm not buying that some crappy cut flower is in any way comparable to a grown man, who has given up on life. A room filled with three silences as heavy as stone and deep as whatever doesn't tell me that it contains a severely depressed man, I get that from the author telling me directly that the man is waiting to die (although, the way he describes the whole thing, you'd think that Kvothe has terminal cancer or something).

I mean, there's a difference between individual silence and ambient silence. It could be two people sitting silently on a bench in an otherwise busy airport. It could be that the entire area immediately surrounding them is silent, but you can still hear things going on in the distance. Or it could be that somehow the entire airport is silent. Even if the reason that they themselves are silent for the same reason, the impact of the moment changes due to their surroundings.

Again, Rothfuss doesn't do it well. But it's not like it's so weird of a concept.

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