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When did this thread become the modern day Hitler vs. Stalin? 
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Apr 18, 2016 18:36
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jivjov posted:No, I am offended by people who decide that their own personal experience is representative of everyone else's. I am offended by people that take their interpretations and put the forth a objective truth. I would respect you a whole lot more if you stopped doing that poo poo. Actually, that is being offended by someone claiming to tell the truth. Turdis McWordis posted:When did this thread become the modern day Hitler vs. Stalin? I always thought I was more Duvalier, to be honest. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 18:36
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Actually, that is being offended by someone claiming to tell the truth. Are you deluded or just an actual simpleton? Your personal and subjective experiences are not """""truth""""".
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Apr 18, 2016 18:41
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BravestoftheLamps is right though. Rothfuss may have wanted to present Kvothe in a certain way but he failed to do so and instead managed to make a bratty little jerk that no one likes.
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Apr 18, 2016 18:46
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jivjov posted:Are you deluded or just an actual simpleton? Your personal and subjective experiences are not """""truth""""". If you're doing a critical analysis of the book, it's a bit of a faux pas to write in first person. e: not just a book - if you've ever taken an english class, you know it's bad form to write arguments in first-person (essays, etc)
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Apr 18, 2016 18:47
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jivjov posted:Are you deluded or just an actual simpleton? Your personal and subjective experiences are not """""truth""""". People can know and tell the truth. You are too angry with someone for claiming to tell the truth to consider if they're actually telling the truth (which is that the book presents Kvothe as a self-aggrandizing, omnicompetent rogue).
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Apr 18, 2016 18:50
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ChickenWing posted:If you're doing a critical analysis of the book, it's a bit of a faux pas to write in first person. My english classes never had me submit formal essays on a comedy webforum. BravestOfTheLamps posted:You are too angry with someone for claiming to tell the truth to consider if they're actually telling the truth. I am angry with your elitist, stuck-up attitude. I am angry with you telling me that my personal experience reading the books, which differed from yours, is somehow invalid or wrong. Present your thoughts as YOUR THOUGHTS. Not objective truth.
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Apr 18, 2016 18:52
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jivjov posted:My english classes never had me submit formal essays on a comedy webforum. And that lessens the relevance of the form because ________________ If you're arguing a point, you say "the reader is made to believe" because that is the point you are arguing He's not writing a first grade "I liked the book because the main character Kvothe was nice and cool" book review, he's writing an analysis where he argues a point (that NotW is a bad book and Rothfuss is a bad author). It's his job to convince you of his point of view.
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Apr 18, 2016 18:56
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like, poo poo, I don't like his opinions just as much as you, but attack the argument not the method of delivery
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Apr 18, 2016 18:56
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ChickenWing posted:And that lessens the relevance of the form because ________________ Because it has never been my experience that a webform is an appropriate venue for scholarly writing. The tone around here is much more conversational. I myself have a film review thread over in CineD, and I try to always make it very clear that what I am stating it my own opinion, I am not trying to "convince" anyone, I am trying to share my thoughts.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:00
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jivjov posted:Because it has never been my experience that a webform is an appropriate venue for scholarly writing. The tone around here is much more conversational. He probably isn't going to change any time soon, why keep coming back if Lamp's reviews just make you angry?
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Apr 18, 2016 19:04
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jivjov posted:Are you deluded or just an actual simpleton? Your personal and subjective experiences are not """""truth""""". jivjov you still haven't given me any positive examples of passages you liked despite me politely asking for them so I need to level with you here. It's cool that you like the books. They are, by most metrics, badly written books, but that doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you should like them. I grew up on Stephen King and R.A. Salvatore novels, I'm not going to go to the barricades for internal curation of one's media consumption. It's also okay that you're arguing for their quality, even though you're not doing a good job of it. That's not the problem. The problem is that you're stupid. You're really, really unbelievably goddamn stupid, to the point where I have trouble picturing you successfully opening your front door every one try out of three, and even though Lamps is a pompous dickweed your flailing against him as some self-appointed guardian of Rothfuss' work isn't doing you or Rothfuss any favors. Howling about subjectivity of arguments doesn't work on videogame forums and it's not convincing anybody here. Personally the quality of the quoted passages alone convinces me pretty well that this guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing - there's a very stilted, freshman feel to the prose where he's just staidly linking one idea to the next and then moving on without any real ideological or thematic throughline to give the greater passages coherence or energy. There's not a whole lot of innovation in the ideas themselves either, which hurts them further. I haven't read much fantasy outside of Pratchett and Mieville but Pratchett's got strength of concept that does more than enough to elevate his prose even without the constant wordplay (the idea of class conflict is relentless and uncompromising in pretty much all of the Watch books, for example), and while what I read of Mieville was kind of messy he won my heart forever when he described New Crobuzon entirely in bodily-secretion metaphors. This stuff doesn't measure up.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:06
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jivjov posted:I am angry with your elitist, stuck-up attitude. I am angry with you telling me that my personal experience reading the books, which differed from yours, is somehow invalid or wrong. Just think of me as Dr. House...Caustic yet truthful...I should add ellipses in every sentence...
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Apr 18, 2016 19:07
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jivjov posted:I am angry with your elitist, stuck-up attitude. I am angry with you telling me that my personal experience reading the books, which differed from yours, is somehow invalid or wrong. Your opinions are wrong though, the best you can muster is a 'nuh uh!' and appeal to plurality. In The Name of the Wing, Kvothe is a 'self-aggrandizing, omnicompetent rogue' as Lamps puts it, that's just a basic description of the behavior of the character. If you think that's wrong actually put up a counter argument rather than this 'Uh, you think the sky is blue, but that's just your subjective personal opinion!' crap
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Apr 18, 2016 19:09
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Oxxidation posted:jivjov you still haven't given me any positive examples of passages you liked despite me politely asking for them so I need to level with you here. I've not posted any direct quotations from the books (I don't feel like typing it all out, and I don't have the ebooks, just dead-tree versions), but if you go back through my post history in this thread, I've brought up many aspects of the series as a whole as well as specific sequences that I personally enjoy. multijoe posted:Your opinions are wrong though, the best you can muster is a 'nuh uh!' and appeal to plurality. In The Name of the Wing, Kvothe is a 'self-aggrandizing, omnicompetent rogue' as Lamps puts it, that's just a basic description of the behavior of the character. If you think that's wrong actually put up a counter argument rather than this 'Uh, you think the sky is blue, but that's just your subjective personal opinion!' crap Kvothe is not "omnicompetent". He struggles with several school subjects, he has a serious problem with leaping before looking, he loses at tak to Bredon, he gets his rear end kicked by a little girl in Ademre. He lets one of the Chandrian get away at the bandit camp.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:14
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jivjov posted:I've not posted any direct quotations from the books (I don't feel like typing it all out, and I don't have the ebooks, just dead-tree versions), but if you go back through my post history in this thread, I've brought up many aspects of the series as a whole as well as specific sequences that I personally enjoy. I don't care about "aspects" or "sequences," I want prose. This is writing, it's not a TV series or an RPG. Conceptual strength doesn't amount to a wet poo poo in a high wind if the writing isn't strong enough to support it. So far what I've seen hasn't been very strong, and that includes the "positive" examples Lamps has put up.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:18
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This thread just keeps on giving.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:21
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jivjov posted:Kvothe is not "omnicompetent". He struggles with several school subjects, he has a serious problem with leaping before looking, he loses at tak to Bredon, he gets his rear end kicked by a little girl in Ademre. He lets one of the Chandrian get away at the bandit camp. You're confusing "competence" with "succeeding in everything".
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Apr 18, 2016 19:22
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jivjov, please. I sympathize, man, I really do. I don't necessarily agree with everything he's posting about the book, even if it seems otherwise. I'm just interested in hearing a full, critical reading of it. I'm also looking forward to ChickenWing doing the same from another perspective. But you really need to pick a better hill to die on, here. BotL isn't really wrong. Underprivileged isn't the same as poor, even if they're incredibly similar. He's constantly broke, and functionally homeless, sure. But he's also good enough with the lute to pay for his housing, good enough a performer to worm his way out of any social situation, and good enough at sympathy (by merit of one-on-one sessions with a guy good enough to know the name of the wind) that the university pays him to attend. He has a bunch of things at his disposal, including attending a prestigious magic academy that basically has every amenity he could ever need, he's just very bad at making use of them. He's only smart when there's no real consequence to him being wrong. He's only strong-willed and driven when there's no obvious way to weasel a way around a problem. He's very rarely actually clever, usually just using false bravado or preying on people's emotions and such. His decision making shows this pretty much constantly, sort of coming to a head with the whole thing where someone has his blood. He get by almost entirely by being a good magician with a fake personality, and when his real personality comes through (see dealing with Ambrose, fighting Devi), it ends up that he's a stupid dick that thinks the world is out to get him. Rothfuss tries very hard to present him as the underprivileged but clever hero, but he doesn't do a great job of it. It can be interpreted that way, sure, but there's not much in the text itself to use to support that. An important thing to remember is that this book is presented as having been dictated from him to the chronicler. This could mean pretty easily that a lot of things are fabricated in a way, like Hemme's reactions to him, or the way Ambrose spoke to him, or even how actually good at sympathy he actually is. He thinks he's clever and smart, but he might not be. It's like when you hear someone talk about the time they totally owned some idiot at the grocery store. Also, please keep in mind that just because a book is popular doesn't mean that it will hold up to critical literary analysis. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but that's honestly the case.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:30
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I should probably know better than to do this.BravestOfTheLamps posted:Readers aren't convinced that Kvothe is underprivileged but formidably intelligent because that's not what the boos shows 90% of the time. The book mostly presents Kvothe as a roguish, self-aggrandizing brat, and thus convinces the reader of that. He lacks money, but is an extremely well-educated and of many talents, so he's not deprived. He's skilled and quick-thinking, but that's not the same thing as intelligence and determination. I kind of see where jivjov's restatement is coming from. BravestOfTheLamps, you examine this text and (probably correctly) say: The book tries to tell you Kvothe is underprivileged. Let me give you some examples of where the book isn't very successful in doing that. And that would be fine. But instead, you say things like: the reader isn't convinced. That's a judgment on the reader instead of simply what the book says. In this case, despite what a more thorough reading of the book might tell you, jivjov felt the book did a good enough job of casting Kvothe as underprivileged. Maybe it's just the way you're saying some things. I don't know. I'm clearly not as talented with words as you are, but hopefully you get the gist of this post and it makes some sense. I don't agree with all of the analysis so far, but it's been really fun to actually dive into the books more deeply. EDIT: holy balls, lots of posting between when I started and when I finished this post. This whole thing is probably not as relevant now. crestfallen fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 19:36
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crestfallen posted:I kind of see where jivjov's restatement is coming from. BravestOfTheLamps, you examine this text and (probably correctly) say: The book tries to tell you Kvothe is underprivileged. Let me give you some examples of where the book isn't very successful in doing that. This basically sums up Kvothe's relation to privilege: quote:It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:39
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EDIT: thank you for clarifying your post.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:42
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Wait, are we back to arguing that Kvothe is not a spoiled brat? I thought that was something nearly everyone agreed with?
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Apr 18, 2016 19:43
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No. That part seems true to me. The book tries to say otherwise but isn't very good at actually showing it. I was trying to give BoTL a little feedback on the messaging of his analysis and probably failed miserably. Like this book does with a lot of things. Haha!
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Apr 18, 2016 19:47
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crestfallen posted:No. That part seems true to me. The book tries to say otherwise but isn't very good at actually showing it. His criticism of the works is solid but it's safe to assume that he's also being deliberately inflammatory wherever he thinks he can get away with it. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 19:50
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jivjov posted:Kvothe is not "omnicompetent". He struggles with several school subjects, he has a serious problem with leaping before looking, he loses at tak to Bredon, he gets his rear end kicked by a little girl in Ademre. He lets one of the Chandrian get away at the bandit camp. SpacePig posted:jivjov, please. I sympathize, man, I really do. I don't necessarily agree with everything he's posting about the book, even if it seems otherwise. I'm just interested in hearing a full, critical reading of it. I'm also looking forward to ChickenWing doing the same from another perspective. But you really need to pick a better hill to die on, here. Yeah, SpacePig summed it up pretty well, but he's freakishly good at a ton of things and is only really poor by contrivance and because the upper crust can't appreciate his obvious greatness. In every way that is relevant to the plot he is omnicompetent.
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Apr 18, 2016 19:56
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crestfallen posted:I was trying to give BoTL a little feedback on the messaging of his analysis and probably failed miserably. Don't worry, your point is solid. When I say that the "reader" isn't convinced, I am basing it on every reader having access to the same text, and observing the same elements. Of course readers will have different reactions to it, but they share the core experience of reading it. An average reader is not necessarily worse at understanding the text than a critical reader; a critical reader is simply more broadly equipped to articulate what a text does. Like a wise man once said, "You may not have noticed it... but your brain did". The entire field of literary criticism is perhaps nothing but sorting out what your brain noticed. If an average reaader gives a text a chance, they will usually "get" it, even if they may not be able to articulate all the subtleties of what a text does. But it's easy for a reader's reaction to conflict with what the book (or any piece of media) presents, which is how you get misreadings. Sometimes this is because a reader isn't attentive, or isn't thinking of a text critically. Like if somebody claimed that Kvothe was a people's hero striking out against the moneyed classes (nobody has really argued this, it's hypothetical), that would be a misreading. If a reader pays attention, they'll notice that despite his shaky financial status, Kvothe never really abandons his educated middle-class mindset. It's only ever suppressed, and his concern is reintegrating with his class. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 20:11
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:
I am now unable to stop hearing Plinkett when I read your criticism posts. It's even easy to re-purpose whole chunks of "Anakin" passages to Kvothe.
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Apr 19, 2016 01:38
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It's OK to like a thing, but this remains one of the few books that I have given away before I finished it because I just couldn't bring myself to read any more of it. It's awful. If you want to read a book that is an account of events where you don't know if the "author" is presenting things as they "really" happened, where you can sympathize with the main character despite his perhaps being too good at what he does based on his own version of events, then go read "The Shadow of the Torturer". As was said above, for someone who claims to "love words", Rothfuss isn't particularly good at putting them together, and the story isn't compelling enough in its own right to ignore that. If you compare basically any passage written by Gene Wolfe to something by Rothfuss, this becomes immediately apparent. And given how long-winded Rothfuss is, I just don't have time for it. So, thank you Lamps for putting yourself through this and writing up your thoughts as you continuously subject yourself to some kind of post-modern torture.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:39
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SpacePig posted:including attending a prestigious magic academy that basically has every amenity he could ever need, he's just very bad at making use of them. Would the story have been improved if Kvothe was denied entry to the Academy, still had to pawn all his stuff for whatever reason he had to, and ended up a street busker in the outlying town instead of a student on scholarship? Instead of attending classes he would be stealing into the school to pilfer reading materials and eavesdrop on lectures. He would be using what he learns to increase his pilfering. You could still even have Ambrose as a primary antagonist since im sure hed be a dick to a street urchin. You'd also get Kvothe having to come to terms with the racism surrounding the fantasy gypsies being accused of thievery while he is forced by his circumstances to actually engage in thievery. Obviously we scrap most of the second book and come up with something else, but I always thought this while reading the first time. Being a 2-bit harry potter kind of sucks and is lame and maybe sompoorething a little more on edge would have let the endless money trouble actually mean something instead of being an annoyance.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:43
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Except we already have the first chunk of the book with him as a street urchin and it's super loving boring. Maybe if you dropped that altogether or significantly reduced it or better yet, made it all happen in the same city and it progresses directly from him being a poor street urchin just trying to survive to him applying the tricks of his trade to sneak into the academy. Basically it would have to be an entirely different book.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:56
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Atlas Hugged posted:Except we already have the first chunk of the book with him as a street urchin and it's super loving boring. Maybe if you dropped that altogether or significantly reduced it or better yet, made it all happen in the same city and it progresses directly from him being a poor street urchin just trying to survive to him applying the tricks of his trade to sneak into the academy. Basically it would have to be an entirely different book. yea thats what im saying it should be an entirely different book B)
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Apr 19, 2016 05:27
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Atlas Hugged posted:Except we already have the first chunk of the book with him as a street urchin and it's super loving boring. Maybe if you dropped that altogether or significantly reduced it or better yet, made it all happen in the same city and it progresses directly from him being a poor street urchin just trying to survive to him applying the tricks of his trade to sneak into the academy. Basically it would have to be an entirely different book. So yeah, a hypothetical story where magical urchin Kvothe sneaks into the University to learn stuff secretly might be a very different story from the Tarbean chapters.
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Apr 19, 2016 06:09
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Ravenfood posted:When we had chapters of him as a street urchin, Rothfuss appears to have entirely forgotten that Kvothe knows sympathy. For all that Tarbean supposedly taught him cold practicality and the dangers of being poor, we are instead given the story of a poor urchin who succeeds beyond any possible expectations, despite being magical and refusing to use it. Not only that, but the only explanation is that he was so traumatized by the Chandrian attack, and get, he never, ever seems to have any further wariness. He just snaps out of a PTSD-induced fugue state because he decides to and then never has any residual issues nor does he ever think about the fact that he could have been doing sympathy his entire time in Tarbean and just forgot to. But he's ~~so practical ~~ I know I've posted this in this thread before - but Kvothe's apparent lack of ability to carry-over his experience from map to map (yup) has to do with the fact that Rothfuss is connecting up an untidy stack of disconnected vignettes, snippets, written at different times in his overlong collegiate career. He fessed up to the False Ruh event at the end of WMF, being a short story written early on, before the publication of NOTW, IIRC. That's why it stars a Kvothe with no particular skill in naming or even sympathy, and (even more) wooden prose. It's kind of hard to have an arc or personal growth when your plot is a bunch of stitched-together "cool ideas" that you didn't iron out or discard the ones that didn't work. They can't even keep his skill set consistent and coherent on the timeline, because it wasn't written that way the first time. It's also why Denna is introduced redundantly, enough that there's a conspiracy among fans that Wagon-train Denna isn't the same girl as Eolian Denna. They figure there must be a reason why Rothfuss re-describes (slightly differently) and re-introduces a character we've supposedly already met, in hopes that they've found a hint that she was fae-altered or a seeming copy of the girl Kvothe met before. The truth is, Rothfuss just didn't throw out any redundant sentences from the first time he dragged her onto the screen to introduce her, or the second time. Aquarium Gravel fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 06:52
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It's just struck me that Ambrose should have been separated into several different characters. This way Kvothe's hardships aren't entirely the result of personal grudges, as in Rothfuss's completely idiotic view.
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Apr 19, 2016 09:26
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It's just struck me that Ambrose should have been separated into several different characters. Ha, there isn't even enough there for one character.
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Apr 19, 2016 13:06
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Solice Kirsk posted:Ha, there isn't even enough there for one character. They don't need to even be complex characters. A series of snide bigots would serve the exact same purpose. That way you don't need something as stupid as Ambrose buying out inns so that Kvothe can't perform there.
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Apr 19, 2016 14:27
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Jerkface posted:Would the story have been improved if Kvothe was denied entry to the Academy, still had to pawn all his stuff for whatever reason he had to, and ended up a street busker in the outlying town instead of a student on scholarship? I don't think so. Others have already said it, but the Tarbean stuff is already enough street urchin story, and even that much wasn't handled well. Combining the two might be interesting, though. He applies, and is denied, but then, instead of listening in on a single day's admissions, he listens in for years, learning not only the answers to the questions, but the personality of each master. He'd learn how to deal with each of them, and how to impress each individually. It'd make his eventual attempt at enrollment even more of a cakewalk than it was. This could also be inter-woven with meeting Auri, where she shows him not only how to survive there, but also how to hide there without ever being caught. Get him to live reasonably as a vagrant, and then have that influence his time as a student, making him view different aspects of the education in earnest differently. Hell, this could even have him interact with Elodin before ever attending the place, since we know he cares for her in some capacity. There's a way to make it interesting, but not so long as the Tarbean section exists. Besides, him being at University in the first place isn't the problem. It's basically that he never appreciates this fact, and doesn't change or grow as a result. He gets in with a net gain in funds, and is elated for basically the amount of time it took him to buy a shirt and a lute. He always acts as if he inherently deserves to be there, rather than it being something that he worked to earn. He commits malfeasance on a teacher because he he's above the class, and makes it through without being expelled somehow. He sneaks into the library after he's been banned because he deserves to be there, and is never caught or punished for sneaking in. He works with materials beyond his rank because he deserves it, and is only briefly banned from the workshop. He gets punished occasionally, but never to the level that he should. There is a scene where he tries to boil a woman's blood inside her body, and is back in her good graces within a few chapters. Everything but money comes easy to him, but he still feels the world is out to get him because he doesn't have two coins to rub together. It make him difficult to get invested in. Ravenfood posted:He just snaps out of a PTSD-induced fugue state because he decides to and then never has any residual issues nor does he ever think about the fact that he could have been doing sympathy his entire time in Tarbean and just forgot to. But he's ~~so practical ~~ Yeah, I never really realized how sort of jarring this was. I remember thinking at the time that it was weird that he never did any sort of sympathy there, but it's waved away by the PTSD thing. Then there's no arc of anything, just a switch going off. I'm slowly realizing that I might not like this book as much as I think I do, just sections of it.
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Apr 19, 2016 14:47
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SpacePig posted:Yeah, I never really realized how sort of jarring this was. I remember thinking at the time that it was weird that he never did any sort of sympathy there, but it's waved away by the PTSD thing. Then there's no arc of anything, just a switch going off. Well like I said, Kvothe's life in Tarbean has now the exact same narrative weight as his red hair. LET’S READ THE KINGKILLER CHRONICLE CRITICALLY Part 19: “He shrugged.” Now I’ve mentioned repeatedly about how Rothfuss never has ideas behind his narratives. Some may be wondering what this exactly means. I’ll use this chapter to illustrate what I mean. In Chapter 42, “Bloodless,” Kvothe is being treated in the “Medica,” the University’s teaching hospital of sorts, by Arwyl, one of the University’s Masters. He’s the chief physician, or “physicker,” since Rothfuss suffers from that disease common to fantasy authors. This disease makes them substitute archaisms, neologisms, or even just made up words where a common noun would do. Arwyl spoke in Kvothe’s favour earlier, which means that he is a good teacher. He’s cheery at first, but quickly deduces what herb Kvothe took to numb pain. Kvothe confesses his fear of looking weak to Arwyl, who sympathises (that is to say, he is being sympathetic, not casting magic). There are also comments about Kvothe’s exceptional physique and how handsome his scars will look (no, really). A female student stitches Kvothe’s wounds, and makes an inappropriate comment, in medical interest. Arwyl and Kvothe are on good terms now. Arwyl suggests that Kvothe study under him, which Kvothe agrees to happily. I said earlier that this was the best chapter in The Name of the Wind. I was being overenthusiastic. It was certainly never a good chapter. But just by the standards of Kingkiller, it’s passable. It is mostly tolerable because Rothfuss sublimates Kvothe’s self-aggrandizement completely into dialogue instead of narration. But it’s also one of the worst examples of Rothfuss incessant need to visualise every gesture or change of expression during a dialogue. So when the reader gets smacked right in the face with  something resembling decent writing , even that meagre joy is deflated. This is Arwyl questioning Kvothe’s actions during his whipping:quote:Arwyl was silent for a while as he looked at me. After a moment he removed his spectacles and rubbed them fiercely against his cuff. Replacing them, he looked straight at me, “It is no surprise that a boy might fear a whipping enough to drug himself for it.” He looked sharply at me. “But why, if he was so afraid, would he remove his shirt beforehand?” He frowned again. “You will explain all of this to me. If you’ve lied to me before, admit it and all will be well. I know boys tell foolish stories sometimes.” It’s almost passable after all that’s come before, isn’t it? This is what it means to have an idea behind your narrative: Arwyl’s wisdom against Kvothe’s gutter determination, a master’s privilege against a student’s desperation. This is authentic. For this moment, Kvothe really is someone who clawed his way out of poverty, but never lost the iron-hard practicality that life on the streets taught him. This one of the few moments where Rothfuss does justice to the themes he’s nominally exploring. Other such moments, incidentally, usually include Kvothe being called an idiot. But it’s still not good. It can be improved. Let’s repeat an exercise from earlier and cut out all the superfluous description: quote:Arwyl was silent for a while as he looked at me. “It is no surprise that a boy might fear a whipping enough to drug himself for it. But why, if he was so afraid, would he remove his shirt beforehand? You will explain all of this to me. If you’ve lied to me before, admit it and all will be well. I know boys tell foolish stories sometimes. But if you lie to me now, neither I nor any of mine will stitch you. I will not be lied to. So. Explain. I do not understand what is going on here. That, more than anything else, I do not like.” One can imagine that this comes from a functionally competent young adult fantasy novel. There are some parts that rise above this: there is almost the Vancian exchange of dialogue in Chapter 7, Elodin calling Kvothe an idiot, and Lorren calling Kvothe an idiot. This is what amounts to an exceptional passage in Kingkiller. It’s still not very good. If you’re not in a forgiving mood as I am, you won’t judge it even decent. You might notice that Arwyl is essentially the same character as Abenthy and Elodin, just more restrained and less prominent. They’re all jokey and slightly irreverent mentors who approach most things with an undertone of amusement. The moment of authenticity is just that: a moment. Most damningly, Rothfuss never describes one gesture or expression when he can describe a dozen. quote:She was making her final knots behind me when I felt a vague, feather-like touch on my shoulder, almost insensible through the nahlrout that numbed me. “He has lovely skin.” I heard her muse, presumably to Arwyl. That was a short chapter. But I'm going to still address something: EVERY DESCRIPTION OF ARWYL’S TONE OF VOICE IN CHAPTER 42 quote:You will provide excellent practice for one of my Re’lar,” Arwyl said cheerfully. quote:“Sloppy,” he pronounced with a mild distaste. quote:“And do you enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked dubiously. quote:“Look up,” he said perfunctorily. quote:“I suppose if I were older,” he said, quietly enough to be speaking to himself... quote:“Ah, Re’lar Mola,” Arwyl enthused... quote:Then you have wasted your time and effort,” he said sternly. quote:Arwyl’s tone was serious, but I could detect a hint of amusement hiding underneath. quote:“Re’lar!” Arwyl said severely. Is this not off-putting? It doesn’t seem Rothfuss has the confidence to let dialogue do the talking (har har). But it’s really just an appetizer for this: EVERY DESCRIPTION OF ARWYL'S EYES, ARWYL'S GLASSES OR ARWYL LOOKING AT SOMETHING IN CHAPTER 42 quote:He stopped in front of me and raised his white eyebrows enthusiastically behind the round rings of his spectacles, “Eh?” quote:He paused with one arm deep into the cabinet, and had to withdraw it to turn and look at me. quote:He looked up at me skeptically. quote:Arwyl looked at it closely, holding his glasses with one hand. quote:Arwyl was silent for a while, stroking his upper lip with a finger as he watched me through half-lidded eyes. quote:He continued looking at me, still stroking his lower lip. quote:Frowning at whatever he saw, Arwyl picked up one of my hands, pressed the tip of my fingernail firmly, and watched intently for a second or two. quote:He gave me a serious look. quote:Arwyl was silent for a while as he looked at me. After a moment he removed his spectacles and rubbed them fiercely against his cuff. Replacing them, he looked straight at me… quote:His eyes glittered behind the glass of his spectacles. quote:There was a long silence as Arwyl looked at me, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his spectacles, as if he were trying to see something inside me. quote:Then his eyes crinkled upward around the edges as he smiled at me. quote:His eyes twinkled. If you’ll apologise for something as petty as counting words, this is all-together about 204 words spent on just Arwyl’s general eye area, when the whole chapter is about 2144 words long. I could’ve done a section on gestures alone, too, but I think you’ve all gotten the point. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Apr 22, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 15:14
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:EVERY DESCRIPTION OF ARWYL’S TONE OF VOICE IN CHAPTER 42 This hurts.
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Apr 19, 2016 15:31
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