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*no one posts for weeks* "Oh my god when are you going to shut up about Rothfuss?"
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Sep 7, 2016 16:44
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vintagepurple posted:This thread is literally the worst thread I've ever read. At least the grrm bad thread is about something popular and common'y talked about, that's reasonable. You can't escape Westeros. These books are niche to fantasy geeks and no one you talk to irl will have heard of rothfuss unless they're even bigger a geek than you. Jesus at least focus your undying hate on sentator orrin hatch or kim iong un or someone doing, you know, actual harm. Hmm yes and what does it say about you as a person that you actually read through the entire thread?
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Sep 7, 2016 16:49
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vintagepurple posted:And damaged war poster, I wish the iraqi bullet that took my cousin took you instead, at least he brought good poo poo to the world instead of thousands and thousands of words about paddy rothfuss being fat and lame Who knew a rapier wit could be this edgy!
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Sep 7, 2016 17:43
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CerealCrunch posted:Did you learn about death today in your day program, dipshit? Ogmius815 posted:What a startling insight. I was going for a bit of humor. Sorry it seemed to go over your guys' heads.
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Sep 7, 2016 18:58
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At least the thread got a bit of traffic out of this. Giving more people the chance to see why Rothfuss is pretty bad.
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Sep 7, 2016 19:39
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The third part of the silence was the sound of a book unwritten.
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Sep 7, 2016 20:40
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Near the end of Wise Man's Fear, Kvothe kills a bunch of child sex slavers. You'd think it would be hard to gently caress up writing this. Nobody is going to shed a tear for child sex slavers. But instead it's one of the most infuriating sections in the book. But whenever I mention it in this thread nobody else seems to remember how bad it was. Since this thread is active again and BotL is unlikely to ever reach this section, I'd like to go back through that segment and see exactly what went wrong. Departing Ademre, Kvothe comes across some people playing music in the woods: quote:Troupers. What’s better, I recognized familiar markings on the side of one of the wagons. To me they stood out more brightly than the fire. Those signs meant these were true troupers. My family, the Edema Ruh. Is this meant to spark Kvothe's suspicions that these aren't real Ruh? His own troupe seemed nonviolent and gentrified. But this troupe is in woods that were recently filled by a literal army of bandits lead by an immortal murderwraith, adjacent to a nation full of incredibly powerful killers-for-hire. Reacting with suspicion to someone sneaking up on their camp (and Kvothe was sneaking) is hardly unreasonable. How did Kvothe's troupe react when they encountered bandits on the road? The situation is resolved immediately: quote:I had no need to talk, and instead turned so everyone by the fire could see the lute case slung across my back. quote:Alleg put his arm around my shoulders. “Might I offer you a drink?” The situation defuses the moment Kvothe shows an instrument, and they immediately show that they know the Ruh's secret rituals used to discern Ruh from non-Ruh. I don't think Kvothe is meant to be suspicious at this point that they're not real Ruh. Kvothe is introduced to the troupers, including the only old woman to have appeared in this series after 1600 pages. Notably, he is not introduced to the kidnapped child sex slaves yet, nor does he see any hint of their existence. Here's what he does see: quote:I nodded, and he fetched me a mug. A moment later, Kvothe goes to get an early taste of the stew, and drops this pointed remark: quote:“Anyone who does not enjoy this fine stew is hardly one of the Ruh in my opinion.” Again, there hasn't been the slightest hint of the child sex slaves yet. Kvothe has already concluded that these are fake Ruh based solely on Alleg's comment that he stole an ale. The stew later turns out to have been poisoned by Kvothe, and this seems to be his one opportunity to do it -- so based on one instance of shoplifting, Kvothe has already resolved to at least poison everyone in this camp. It is likely that he has also resolved to kill them, since it's not clear what the point of poisoning them would be other than to soften them up for the kill. If you liked that pointed remark, by the way, expect more where that came from: quote:His brow furrowed. “I don’t recognize that one.” quote:I left off the last two verses where the townsfolk kill Piper. Maybe if this song is truly universally known among the Ruh, this is a bit more evidence that these are fake Ruh -- but again, this is after Kvothe has already poisoned the stew. He's not attacking them based on this evidence, he's attacking them and then being handed this evidence by the author to justify his actions after the fact. quote:“Honestly, Anne,” Alleg asked after his second bowl. “Did you lift a little pepper back in Levinshir?” quote:“Oh certainly,” he said between mouthfuls. “Three days ago Levinshir was especially good to us.” He winked. “You’ll see how good later.” This is the first reference to the kidnapped girls, though of course it's too vague to identify as being able child sex slaves except in hindsight. The stew has already been poisoned. How does Kvothe know that no Ruh has ever stolen anything? How does Kvothe know that every Ruh in the world knows a certain song? As far as we know, he's never met a single Ruh outside of his own troupe. I defy you to find a real-life ethnic group of which no members have ever committed even the pettiest of crimes; real groups of people aren't pure good or pure evil like that. And yet, despite knowing all the secret Ruh signs, these troupers will be revealed to be fake Ruh, and rapists to boot. Kvothe plots mass murder on the flimsiest of suspicions, and the hand of the author intervenes to ensure that he happens to be right. quote:He gave a hesitant nod. “I suppose it does. And how long would you travel with us?” If we're being charitable, maybe Kvothe's plan when he said this was to poison them and then reveal he poisoned them, and then leave when they unanimously told him to gently caress off. But I don't believe that. quote:“Hush, it’s good for them. Makes them feel useful. Speaking of which . . .” He made another gesture at Tim. “Bring them out, would you?” We're not privy to Kvothe's internal thought process throughout this chapter. The intent seems to be to pull a bait and switch where it looks like Kvothe is on board with this whole child sex slave operation, only to reveal next chapter that he was plotting to kill the kidnappers all along. The bait and switch doesn't really work because we've spent 1600 pages with Kvothe already, we know there's no risk of him joining a bunch of child sex slavers, it would be out of character. But hiding Kvothe's intentions in this chapter makes most readers not notice that the reason Kvothe attacks the fake Ruh isn't because they're kidnapping rapists. Here, one of the troupers has already become sick from Kvothe's poison just as the girls are being introduced. They were sentenced to death, and proven to be fake Ruh, not for kidnapping but for shoplifting. Kvothe is still in the presence of the bandits, so he needs to play along until he retreats to his tent, which includes asking to have both of the child sex slaves tonight so he can isolate them safely in his tent. That being said, quote:Kete returned a minute later, leading a pair of lovely young girls. One had a lean body and face, with straight, black hair cut short like a boy’s. The other was more generously rounded, with curling golden hair. Both wore hopeless expressions and looked to be about sixteen. quote:I felt an almost physical shock at her resemblance to Denna. quote:By this time the girls were sitting on either side of me, facing the fire. Closer, I saw things I had missed before. There was a dark bruise on the back of Krin’s neck. The blonde girl’s wrists were merely chafed from being tied, but Krin’s were raw and scabbed. For all that, they smelled clean. Their hair was brushed and their clothes had been washed recently. Kete had been tending to them. quote:Then I led both lovely girls, one golden and one dark, toward my tent. In a chapter where we're not otherwise privy to Kvothe's thoughts, Kvothe seems very eager to tell us just how lovely he finds the rape victims. The fake Ruh can't read Kvothe's mind, so this isn't an act Kvothe is putting on to fool them, he's actually getting a boner from these hopeless young sex slaves. In the following chapter, Kvothe is alone in his tent with the kidnapped girls. There are no fake Ruh around. He has no need to put on an act to fool them. He is openly discussing his plan to kill the other caraveners. He gives the girls an antidote to the poison that will also put them to sleep, and then: quote:I covered the two of them with a blanket and watched their faces. In sleep they were even more beautiful than before. I reached out to brush a strand of hair from Krin’s cheek. To my surprise, she opened her eyes and stared at me. Not the marble stare she had given me before, she looked at me with the dark eyes of a young Denna. NO BAD TOUCH DON'T GENTLY CARESS THE RAPE VICTIMS DON'T GENTLY CARESS THE RAPE VICTIMS WHILE THINKING ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY LOOK LIKE YOUR SEXY WAIFU DON'T GENTLY CARESS THE RAPE VICTIMS WHILE THEY ARE UNABLE TO RESIST BECAUSE OF "THEIR WILL SURRENDERING" TO THE DRUGS YOU GAVE THEM WHAT THE gently caress The fact that Kvothe poisons the stew before finding out about the kidnapped girls is easy to overlook on first read. But this part made me angry as soon as I read it. Holy poo poo. Anyhow once he's done feeling up the helpless sexy rape victims Kvothe kills the fake Ruh. quote:“We have laws. Rules we follow. When one of us does a thing that cannot be forgiven or mended, if he jeopardizes the safety or the honor of the Edema Ruh, he is killed and branded with the broken circle to show he is no longer one of us. It is rarely done. There is rarely a need.” So the Ruh are too pure and perfect to ever nick an ale, but their policy is to respond to nicking an ale with mass murder? Bullshit. Speaking of which, Kvothe never shuts up about how he's a Ruh through and through. But he's also a thief. When Denna asks him to define himself in a single word, he chooses "Thief." When distributing some of the Maer's tax money among his unit, Kvothe takes four times as much for himself, despite having no real need for it due to his wealthy employer -- effectively robbing not only the Maer but also his good friend Tempi, whom he stuffed on his fair share of the spoils by giving him a smaller fraction of the money than the equal shares agreed to. If the proper sentence for any Ruh who steals is death, what does Kvothe deserve? quote:Krin stared at the bodies, then back at me. “So you killed them for pretending to be Edema Ruh?” Bullshit. quote:“Does anyone object to my leaving the troupe?” I asked. gently caress you. I'm not an expert on literature. When BotL criticizes the series for switching between low and high register, I either can't see what he's talking about at all or can't see why it's a problem. I'm just a simple country shitposter. But I know enough to know that in terms of tone this is woefully out of place. Kvothe just murdered a dozen people in cold blood, and in the next chapter has fantasy PTSD flashback dreams in horror about what he did, yet here he's spouting one-line quips like he's Bond or Spiderman? That just doesn't fit. I've heard it proposed that the section we've just covered was originally a short story, and that not following Kvothe's thoughts in the first chapter of it made sense when it was about an unknown stranger to us who might actually join a group of kidnapping rapists, rather than someone we've been following for 1600 pages and who we know never would. And I can easily believe that. Wise Man's Fear as a whole seems like it's made of patchwork, awkwardly cobbled together with visible seams. None of the settings have any overlap in their cast, even when it would make sense for them to do so: the bandit-hunting forest expedition contains nobody we've met in Severen despite having met several guards; Tempi vanishes abruptly the moment we reach Ademre. Kvothe leaves the Fae because the Cthaeh tells him Denna is in imminent peril... and then immediately forgets what he was going to do, and wanders off to level grind with the Adem for several months. On his way to Severen for the first time Kvothe loses most of his possessions in a hand-waved manner, like he just booted up a new Metroid game and in the first five minutes was stripped of all his powerups from the previous game. The book has no climax, no purpose, no direction, a sequence of minor quests with no main plot running through them, and in the end dumps Kvothe, with nothing better to do, right back where he began. If that theory is true, this is probably the "clever" line that ended the original short story. Maybe it would have worked in that context, but it's out of place here. And unfortunately, Wise Man's Fear just keeps going. quote:“I hate them!” Ell spat, surprising me with her sudden rage. “I hate men!” Her knuckles were white as she gripped Greytail’s reins. Her face twisted into a mask of anger. Krin put her arms around Ell, but when she looked at me I saw the sentiment reflected quietly in her dark eyes. NOT ALL MEN Kvothe feels guilty that he just killed a dozen people, including two women. It's been giving him bad dreams. Luckily, an old wise woman (that's two women over the age of forty now!) appears to use her womanly wisdom of womanhood to explain why he was totally right. quote:“There were women too,” I said, the words catching in my throat. I'm skeptical that the two women alone in the woods with ten male rapists who kept making advances at them are more to blame than, you know, the male rapists who vastly outnumbered them. Trying to fight them 2-on-10 would not have worked, and would have just added them to the list of rape victims. But hey, what do I know? A woman says they had it coming, and being a woman, she'd know. Of course, since Rothfuss is the one writing her dialogue, it's really a man saying it and putting his words in a woman's mouth to give them credibility. Regardless, Kvothe is absolved and never has guilt or bad dreams again, because PTSD is apparently solved by logic. Gran is just another device Rothfuss introduces to make sure that Kvothe was retroactively justified in his actions. Is it sheer chance, that the people the hero decides to murder for no reason happened to have it coming? Or is Kvothe right that literally all Ruh are perfect angels? (Which of those two options would be worse writing?) The latter is very troubling. On a surface level the Edema Ruh are intended to be a Romani or Traveller sort of people, and it is true that these ethnic groups face unjust discrimination in real life (as in, the government will literally bulldoze their homes). But the reason this discrimination is unjust isn't that the Romani and Travellers have literally not a single thief among them. That's obviously not true, just as it's not true of any ethnic group, and it's also entirely irrelevant. An entire race doesn't need to be literally flawless to deserve basic rights, and the view that they do is a serious problem today. Look at every black person in the U.S. shot by the police who is immediately branded in the media as "No Angel". They don't need to be an angel to deserve to not be killed; that's a very dangerous line of thinking. The waters are muddied further by the fact that the Ruh are uniformly well-to-do and well-educated with wealthy patrons and liberal sensibilities, whereas real-life nomadic people are not universally upper-middle class. Rothfuss wants to present these ethnic groups in a good light, and he does so by... making them more like himself. When he argues for the purity of the Ruh race, it is only after making sure they look exactly like himself -- he's actually arguing for the purity of his own race. Rothfuss's views on race are just like his feminism: he wants to be on the right side, but doesn't really understand anything and so ends up being lovely while trying to be an ally. In real life, butchering a group of an ethnic minority because one of them was suspected or guilty of theft would make you a genocidal monster. The former would fit with Kvothe-as-Amyr, but in that case, why does the story contort itself to justify Kvothe's killings after he's already committed himself to them? If the intent is to show Kvothe willing to kill a dozen people for shoplifting, why not just show him doing exactly that? Why also make the shoplifters rapists who had it coming, and why structure the narrative in a way that makes it look like Kvothe knew they were rapists when he first resolved to kill them? If the intent is to show Kvothe doing something that most people would describe as wrong, why does Rothfuss work so hard to make sure he was actually right? If we're being extremely generous, we could say that Kvothe is an unreliable narrator, deliberately telling this part of the story in an order that makes him appear more justified on first read than he really was, and in theory there's room for the third book to reveal that that's the case -- but I don't buy it. Rothfuss wants to be seen as having an unreliable narrator, but with no other sources for anything and no hints to unreliability in two thousand pages beyond Bast mentioning that Kvothe thinks his waifu is even more beautiful than most people do, and that still wouldn't account for how lucky Kvothe was to have been proven right. How could this segment have been better? Well, you could just cut it, because it doesn't connect to anything and doesn't go anywhere. But there are a lot of options. You could reveal the kidnapped girls earlier and have Kvothe resolve to kill the fake Ruh only after finding out they were rapists. You could have the troupers turn out to be a real group of Ruh, and force Kvothe to confront the gap between his idealized vision of his people and the variance they actually exhibit. Hell, you could at least have left the question of whether they were real Ruh open and left Kvothe to convince himself they must have been fakes, instead of having one survive long enough to say "Yeah we're fakes, gently caress you filthy Ruh". You could have no kidnapped girls at all and show Kvothe killing them only for the crimes he had seen or suspected when he poisoned the stew like he originally planned, instead of chickening out and making them rapists at the last minute. You could have Kvothe ask for their wagons with his three wishes, poison them nonlethally, and then smugly leave with their wagons when they tell him to gently caress off (you'd even get to keep the "no one objects" bon mot in a less abhorrent context). Almost anything would have been better than what Rothfuss actually went with. Oh and you could have the hero NOT FEEL UP THE DRUGGED SEX SLAVES GO gently caress YOURSELF ROTHFUSS Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Sep 7, 2016 |
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Sep 7, 2016 23:52
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jivjov posted:I was going for a bit of humor. Sorry it seemed to go over your guys' heads. Your Down syndrome rantings are on another level, to be sure.
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Sep 8, 2016 01:30
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Did you ever figure out what "critical" means or are you gonna just write some dreadful fannish nonsense? Cause I have this sinking feeling that's what you imagine a "counter reading" to be in this context. x2 damage modifier (x3 on axes)
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Sep 8, 2016 02:20
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Hughlander posted:I'm not going to defend the content, but number one on NY Times best seller list is probably not the most obscure thing ever and only underground people know about. You'd be lucky if one out of twenty people could name a NYT best seller that wasn't a cultural phenomenon like ASOIAF/Harry Potter/Twilight/50 Shades of Domestic Abuse.
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Sep 8, 2016 07:15
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I just want to say I though this was a good and thoughtful post and I agree with its contents. I would be shocked if the explanation for this scene being a grafted short story he wrote about his D&D bard(I can't emphasize enough how much sense the problems with the story start to make when you keep this in mind) was not true, because regardless of what anyone in this thread thinks of Rothfuss as a writer, he seems to have coherent enough thought processes that he wouldn't suddenly shift gears in such a jarring way if he had written the scene in a linear fashion with the stuff that surrounds it. And to answer all your "why didn't he just tweak this in a variety of different ways to make the scene matter in some way" the answer is that it's probably a random encounter from a D&D game that he was proud of solving
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Sep 8, 2016 20:55
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I believe it's the story he submitted to Writers of the Future, iirc. Since I think he either won or placed highly in whatever year it was, it's probably simple enough to track down.
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Sep 8, 2016 21:20
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neongrey posted:I believe it's the story he submitted to Writers of the Future, iirc. Since I think he either won or placed highly in whatever year it was, it's probably simple enough to track down. Yeah think it's called the road to levinshire. Still don't understand why he copy pasta'd it into the book though. And why do I even know that 
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Sep 9, 2016 01:53
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Flattened Spoon posted:Yeah think it's called the road to levinshire. Still don't understand why he copy pasta'd it into the book though. And why do I even know that Well, Rothfuss's MO is to stitch together old bits and pieces of writing and hope it comes out coherent, right?
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Sep 9, 2016 01:58
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He'd have more luck trying to squeeze a talent out of a jot than to piece together something coherent!
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Sep 9, 2016 04:14
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vintagepurple posted:
It was friendly fire.
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Sep 9, 2016 04:48
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TheIncredulousHulk posted:I would be shocked if the explanation for this scene being a grafted short story he wrote about his D&D bard(I can't emphasize enough how much sense the problems with the story start to make when you keep this in mind) was not true, because regardless of what anyone in this thread thinks of Rothfuss as a writer, he seems to have coherent enough thought processes that he wouldn't suddenly shift gears in such a jarring way if he had written the scene in a linear fashion with the stuff that surrounds it. It's telling that after endless chapters of Kvothe making Flowing Wax followed by Leopard's Paw after lowering his mind into Bashful Autumn to perform Virgin Prowess, the fake Ruh segment has him use neither any Capital Techniques nor any form of sympathy or magic at all. After having heard this theory I can't believe it's not true, it explains way too much of WMF. What frustrates me is that if he had actually done it on purpose, the way he structures the chapter in a way that makes it seem like Kvothe kills the fake Ruh for rape when he's actually killing them for petty theft would honestly be really clever. It lets you have a completely fair unreliable narrator who says exactly the events that happened, in exactly the order they happened, without any lies or omissions, in a way that gives the audience an inaccurately positive impression of the narrator but that lets the audience spot what's really going on if they reread and/or read carefully. If that were actually his intention, it would be the high water mark for Rothfuss's writing, and it's so frustrating that after everything else we've read it's obviously not what he was going for at all. The part where he feels up the rape victim while she's too drugged to resist is, of course, loving awful garbage and can't even be explained by Patchwork Theory (move 517 of the Ketan). Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Sep 9, 2016 |
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Sep 9, 2016 05:18
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Lottery of Babylon posted:It's telling that after endless chapters of Kvothe making Flowing Wax followed by Leopard's Paw after lowering his mind into Bashful Autumn to perform Virgin Prowess, the fake Ruh segment has him use neither any Capital Techniques nor any form of sympathy or magic at all. After having heard this theory I can't believe it's not true, it explains way too much of WMF. Not really exclusive to WMF, Kvothe goes about 20 chapters without using magic early in The Name of the Wind (the whole Chandrian-Tarbean-road to Imre sequence).
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Sep 9, 2016 08:55
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Not really exclusive to WMF, Kvothe goes about 20 chapters without using magic early in The Name of the Wind (the whole Chandrian-Tarbean-road to Imre sequence). This is also true, and it made the Tarbean segment feel awkwardly pasted in too. In Tarbean's case Rothfuss tries to handwave it away as part of Kvothe's mind being asleep or some bullshit, which isn't very convincing and doesn't make any sense but shows that Rothfuss was aware that something didn't fit (but didn't care enough to write Tarbean in a way that would fit). In the fake Ruh segment it seems like the author just forgot that Kvothe knows sympathy and Wordpair Techniques (or wrote the segment before those were established and then never revised).
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Sep 9, 2016 09:42
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It's good to see that his writting has not improved as time went on. He hit the lottery with an OK book that nerds instantly fell in love with and now will never grow as an artist or a writer. Oh well, he's rich so has accomplished more than I have so far.
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Sep 9, 2016 20:22
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IIRC he's also got a movie deal with Lionsgate or some other studio for Kingkiller so if that every actually turns in to something he could get even more attention. Pretty sure the rights were bought up a few years back when the GoT frenzy was at its peak so I'm guessing it'll be a case of the movie studio looking everything over and realizing the story and setting are generic and bland (and unfinished).
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Sep 10, 2016 12:02
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Interesting, just popped into this thread because I was in the book barn looking for some book recommendations before heading off to vacation. About... a year ago?, I saw this was a pretty popular fantasy book (the Name of the Wind I mean) and according to my kindle I got about 75% of the way through and just couldn't do that to myself anymore. I heard quite a few people later mention it as one of their favorite series later and it always slightly triggered something in me because I just couldn't see it. The writing just felt amateurish the entire time I was reading the book - doesn't help that I had probably finished reading some Sanderson before that and he's masterful at prose. Was wondering if I should attempt to push through and finish the book and skimming the last page here it seems like I could probably just follow my gut and skip out. Clocks fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 13:09
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Clocks posted:Interesting, just popped into this thread because I was in the book barn looking for some book recommendations before heading off to vacation. About... a year ago?, I saw this was a pretty popular fantasy book (the Name of the Wind I mean) and according to my kindle I got about 75% of the way through and just couldn't do that to myself anymore. I heard quite a few people later mention it as one of their favorite series later and it always slightly triggered something in me because I just couldn't see it. Are you me? I grabbed it at an airport bookstore and just couldn't finish it. quote:The writing just felt amateurish the entire time I was reading the book - doesn't help that I had probably finished reading some Sanderson before that and he's masterful at prose. Sanderson is a lot of things but masterful at prose is not one. His major talent is in plotting and wrapping up a story. His writing is adequate to accomplish that goal and nothing more. quote:Was wondering if I should attempt to push through and finish the book and skimming the last page here it seems like I could probably just follow my gut and skip out. No.
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Sep 10, 2016 14:42
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Atlas Hugged posted:Are you me? I grabbed it at an airport bookstore and just couldn't finish it. Yeah, I realized after writing that, that it wasn't exactly what I meant. But yeah, Sanderson has very engaging stories and I like his world building. And at least none of his writing ever struck me as bad or unedited and I couldn't say the same about Rothfuss, if that makes any sense. I swear there must've been comma splices or something because that always drives me up the wall. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who didn't see the appeal of these books.
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Sep 10, 2016 15:33
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Clocks posted:Yeah, I realized after writing that, that it wasn't exactly what I meant. But yeah, Sanderson has very engaging stories and I like his world building. And at least none of his writing ever struck me as bad or unedited and I couldn't say the same about Rothfuss, if that makes any sense. I swear there must've been comma splices or something because that always drives me up the wall. The thing with Sanderson is that if you've read one of his books you've read all of them. They more or less follow the same structure, recycle the same characters, and have different takes on the same gimmick. His world building wore on me since it's basically just elaborate RPG mechanics and that approach to magic in fiction is really boring. Robert Jordan is about as formalized as I like and GRRM handles magic fairly well since you're never quite sure how it works or what it's doing.
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Sep 11, 2016 07:39
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Atlas Hugged posted:The thing with Sanderson is that if you've read one of his books you've read all of them. They more or less follow the same structure, recycle the same characters, and have different takes on the same gimmick. His world building wore on me since it's basically just elaborate RPG mechanics and that approach to magic in fiction is really boring. Robert Jordan is about as formalized as I like and GRRM handles magic fairly well since you're never quite sure how it works or what it's doing. Which I regard as a major disadvantage. Magic that can just do anything without any rules isn't what I like. But I'm more a science-fiction reader, and really dislike technobabble to solve problems. So maybe I'm just treating magic as a form of fantasy technology that needs to follow established rules like sci-fi technology needs to do. Anyway, is there a possibility that you could to a review-lite of the chapter where Bast visits the Chronicler in his room at night? I actually liked this scene, and I'm curious if there are any obvious literary failings I'm missing.
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Sep 11, 2016 09:30
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Torrannor posted:Which I regard as a major disadvantage. Magic that can just do anything without any rules isn't what I like. But I'm more a science-fiction reader, and really dislike technobabble to solve problems. So maybe I'm just treating magic as a form of fantasy technology that needs to follow established rules like sci-fi technology needs to do. The mistake you're making, and it's an easy one to make given the general quality of writing in fantasy in general, is that how defined the magic system is and how it's used are on the same spectrum. They absolutely are not. A magic system can be well defined and used poorly, and it can be left vague but used minimally or appropriately. Sanderson hyper defines his magic systems to the point that you need charts and reference sections to keep track of all the interactions. But he also has tightly conceived plots where even his bullshit endings like the earring in Mistborn appear clever because he never actually broke the rules of his world. But that's not necessarily good or interesting writing. It's mechanical, literally. On the opposite end of this spectrum you have Tolkien who at best attributes magic to a deeper understanding of nature than humans are capable of and at worst it's just "a wizard did it". But this has no negative impact on the story because magic is always on the edge of the action and the characters win not because they figured out a loophole to the system but because their characters overcame adversity.
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Sep 11, 2016 13:12
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Not to defend Rothfuss because his books are trash, but I thought Kvothe killed the fake Ruh because he figured they had killed real Ruh to get their Ruh gear. Still not a lot of hard evidence going on but it makes more sense than murdering people for shoplifting.
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Sep 11, 2016 16:22
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Iucounu posted:Not to defend Rothfuss because his books are trash, but I thought Kvothe killed the fake Ruh because he figured they had killed real Ruh to get their Ruh gear. Still not a lot of hard evidence going on but it makes more sense than murdering people for shoplifting. Is there anything in the text to support this or are you doing the author's work for him?
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Sep 11, 2016 16:49
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It's not an unreasonable assumption, but most people don't commit murder because of that narrow possibility. It's something that could easily be worked in to provide sufficient evidence that the bandits aren't just passing as Ruh but actually possess stuff that only Ruh would have/make and would never give up under any circumstances. Still doesn't get around the absurdity of "Ruh never do crimes ever man" but it would lead better into his hint-dropping inquiries. When you get down to it the scene just makes it seem like he kills them for cultural appropriation, which as someone already pointed out would be great as an unreliable narrator moment ("Oh no, I didn't murder them for insulting my culture that I barely remember anymore, they were totally asking for it as long as you don't notice my narration only brings up the evidence for that after I resolved to kill them"). The main structural problem with the scene is him poisoning them way too early. You can kind of fix it by just moving that part to later, giving him a lot more evidence to go on. Though I sort of question any "hero" who poisons people, but at least we're supposed to think of Kvothe as a trickster type (however well that actually plays out).
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Sep 11, 2016 18:10
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The problem is that is not only not alluded to anywhere in the story until the end, they give the correct countersign as introduced way earlier in the story, which actively undermines the idea that they are fake Ruh. Even excusing that poison much less murder is not an appropriate way to respond to people pretending to be Ruh even if you find it distasteful/racist/whatever. "But that's just clever, he's playing with our expectations!" No doofus, that's not how foreshadowing works.
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Sep 11, 2016 18:52
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Iucounu posted:Not to defend Rothfuss because his books are trash, but I thought Kvothe killed the fake Ruh because he figured they had killed real Ruh to get their Ruh gear. Still not a lot of hard evidence going on but it makes more sense than murdering people for shoplifting. Let's have a look at the text. Kvothe makes no mention of any suspicion that they killed real Ruh while he is explaining his plans to the girls, and when explaining himself to Krin the next day he initially speaks as if they were real Ruh who had merely broken their internal rules: quote:She simply looked at the broken circle and repeated, “What are you doing?” If Kvothe is to be believed here, then the penalty in Ruh society for shoplifting is death. In Kvothe's mind, according to his memory of the Edema Ruh society that he barely remembers except through fading rose-tinted memories of a single troupe in his preteen years, he would be perfectly justified in killing them even if they were real Ruh. quote:I pulled the iron from the fire and walked to the next body. Otto. I pressed it to the back of his hand and listened to it hiss. “These were not Edema Ruh. But they made themselves out to be. They did things no Edema would do, so I am making sure the world knows they were not part of our family. The Ruh do not do the sort of things that these men did.” And even if they were not real Ruh but still hadn't killed any Ruh, he would still have felt justified. But Kvothe does believe they killed a real troupe, specifically because they have the correct wagon paints: quote:“They probably weren’t even real troupers, just a group of thieves who killed a band of Ruh and tried to take their place.” Here's the problem: when they were first introduced, the fake Ruh immediately showed that they knew the Ruh's "water and wine" rite, which only the true Ruh know. (The true Ruh and, uh, Kvothe's bros at school.) Was Kvothe's theory that the fake Ruh killed some real Ruh and stole that information from their corpse? Whoever told them the secret shibboleth could just as easily have shown them how to paint Ruh markings. Or they could have just had a particularly artistic member copy down the markings from a Ruh caravan that came to town. You can buy paint. The conclusion that they must have killed the real Ruh doesn't make any sense at all when they clearly know the Ruh's secrets, which can hardly be obtained by just murdering a bunch of Ruh. quote:“Ruh bastard,” he cursed at me with blurry defiance. If anything, this all suggests that Kvothe didn't just get lucky by killing shoplifters who happened to also be rapist murderers -- he believed that there was a chain of logic to say "If shoplifter, then murderer", which doesn't really make sense but the narrative supports him as totally correct. It suggests that Kvothe is right about his people being literally perfect angels, that his own affluent liberal gentrified race could never commit even the pettiest of crimes, and that any theft must automatically be ascribed to one of the inferior thuggish races and punished by summary execution whoops that sounded more progressive in my head. Of course, Kvothe spends entire paragraphs explaining that he would still have been right to kill them even if they had just been Ruh who stole an ale, and then the narrative contorts itself to make sure that they had it coming way worse and Kvothe happened to be as retroactively justified as possible. Reading this section is like watching Kvothe sing Dayenu in praise of how generous Rothfuss has been in making sure Kvothe could never be seen as wrong here: If they had stolen an ale, but had been real Ruh instead of imposters -- it would have been sufficient! If they had been fake Ruh, but had not killed any real Ruh -- it would have been sufficient! If they had killed real Ruh, but had not been racist against them -- it would have been sufficient! If they had been racist against the Ruh, but had not kidnapped some girls -- it would have been sufficient! If they had kidnapped some girls, but had not raped them -- it would have been sufficient! If they had raped the kidnapped girls, but the wise woman had not absolved Kvothe of his guilt -- it would have been sufficient! It's a cowardly approach to writing. If the main character resolves to kill some people when he sees them shoplifting, and is willing to say that they deserved death even if shoplifting were their only crime, then let their only crime be shoplifting and be done with it. Let the protagonist's choices stand and let us agree or disagree with them, instead of twisting reality to ensure that whichever choice the protagonist made happened to work out. If Kvothe comes across the Trolley Problem and makes a choice one way or another, don't then reveal that whichever people he let the train run over were all rapist hitlers. It reeks of Rothfuss trying to have his cake and eat it too -- he wants Kvothe to make a morally dubious choice, but isn't willing to let it be morally dubious. Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 21:09
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Ruh-roh, Rvothe
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Sep 12, 2016 14:20
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I get the impression that a lot of fantasy writers like to offhandedly say that something in their setting is ‘punishable by death’ because it makes things sound more dramatic and medieval, but then don’t really think through how ridiculous a society that executes people for jaywalking would actually be. Or at least realize that they should probably only apply that ridiculousness to the evil societies ruled by demonic overlords and not just casually mention that the nation of designated Good Guys has a brutally heavy-handed justice system. The same thing applies to magic/ninja training schools where every activity is deadly and most of the students die, and gladiatorial arenas where there are constant death matches every day and people fight hulking monsters all the time. It sounds dramatic, but if you take a step back it’s kind of ridiculous, and definitely something that should only be going on in a brutally evil and unsustainable society and not just Any Regular Nation, Fantasy Land.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:58
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Blastedhellscape posted:The same thing applies to magic/ninja training schools where every activity is deadly and most of the students die, and gladiatorial arenas where there are constant death matches every day and people fight hulking monsters all the time. It sounds dramatic, but if you take a step back it’s kind of ridiculous, and definitely something that should only be going on in a brutally evil and unsustainable society and not just Any Regular Nation, Fantasy Land. Brust's Dragaera books bother me a lot with this. "We are a species with 2,000 year lifespans and (non-Teckla) lowish birthrates. Let's engage in duels (Paarfi books) or mob warfare and assassination (Vlad Taltos) that seem to kill approximately 5% of the adult population in the described population every year."
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Sep 12, 2016 19:45
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Number Ten Cocks posted:Brust's Dragaera books bother me a lot with this. "We are a species with 2,000 year lifespans and (non-Teckla) lowish birthrates. Let's engage in duels (Paarfi books) or mob warfare and assassination (Vlad Taltos) that seem to kill approximately 5% of the adult population in the described population every year." Except revivification is a thing, at least in the Taltos books, so most of those people are brought back to life. Even Vlad was assassinated at one point in an earlier book.
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Sep 12, 2016 20:05
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A better question is why the Ruh, a supposedly progressive-minded and educated liberal culture, have the death penalty at all. Particularly when they already have an exile/shunning ritual to kick people out of the group, which would be far worse than death if the Ruh really are a superior elite. You'd figure that a guy like Kvothe would smugly lord that kind of moral high ground over non-Ruh or something (before doing something far worse to them).
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Sep 12, 2016 20:36
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Ornamented Death posted:Except revivification is a thing, at least in the Taltos books, so most of those people are brought back to life. Even Vlad was assassinated at one point in an earlier book.
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Sep 12, 2016 20:41
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Ornamented Death posted:Except revivification is a thing, at least in the Taltos books, so most of those people are brought back to life. Even Vlad was assassinated at one point in an earlier book. Ahh, Yendi. I always loved the tagline for that one: "In Which Vlad and His Jhereg Learn How the Love of a Good Woman Can Turn a Cold-Blooded Killer Into a Real Mean S.O.B."
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Sep 12, 2016 21:08
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Again, credit to Robert Jordan for having a fantasy world that mostly makes sense. The desert ninjas have raised non-lethal combat to the highest art form. The magic system can potentially kill new trainees, but only a very small percentage of them and most of the time if something goes wrong they just lose their magic abilities. The one society that practices political intrigue as a sport has been in a constant state of civil war for the two decades leading up to the story.
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Sep 13, 2016 05:40
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