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pentyne posted:I would say the whole Tarbean poverty adventure feels like the only out of place section of Name of the Wind. Woah woah woah. He doesn't have sex with the trafficked rape victims! He just creepily acts like he is going to for the benefit of the reader, because in the original short story that was your first introduction to him so Rothfuss wanted to make it seem like he was a bad guy so he had to act like he was going to rape them for tension and stuff. Of course in WMF you already know he literally is incapable of raping someone even when on a drug that takes away all of his morals and inhibitions because he is Just That Nice A Guy, so that doesn't work out. And that was the short story that won him awards and made a publishing company jump at publishing the actual books. Also the fan can stay but hopefully he grows out of believing that any criticism of something he likes is exactly the same as whatever this 'cinema sins' stuff is.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:53
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Kchama posted:Woah woah woah. He doesn't have sex with the trafficked rape victims! He also creepily caresses the cheek of one of the trafficked rape victims while thinking about how she looks just like the hot sex worker he has an incel crush on and notes that she tries to resist his touch but can't because she's too weak from him drugging her.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:20
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Cassius Belli posted:Does the 55 years between To Kill A Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman count? Harper Lee while they were of sound mind also seemed to think it was better off left unpublished. I was going to submit 25 years between Twin Peaks Season 2 and 3 as a good starting point.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:44
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Shivers posted:Is there some sort of record for biggest gap between releases in a series? Doesn't even matter if it's books, comics ,TV or other media. Rothfuss has gotta be approaching the all-time record right? 1961 - 1994 Catch 22 and Closing Time, Joseph Heller is a big one
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Mar 14, 2024 21:01
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The Bible (~100 CE) -> The golden plates from which The Book of Mormon was translated (~400 CE)
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Mar 14, 2024 21:07
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Lottery of Babylon posted:He also creepily caresses the cheek of one of the trafficked rape victims while thinking about how she looks just like the hot sex worker he has an incel crush on and notes that she tries to resist his touch but can't because she's too weak from him drugging her. Sureee as gently caress does. And none of that scene really makes sense before or after the big reveal and especially not in the greater context of the Kingkiller Chronicles books. The fact that he had to have fatally poisoned everyone before they confessed to being fake Edema Ruh and sex traffickers and instead just admitted to being thieves (while pretending to be Edema Ruh) both makes him definitely a psychopath but also doesn't make sense with his character as presented in the rest of the books. The whole thing comes out of nowhere. I also hate the whole Edema Ruh stuff because it feels like it is trying to score points piggybacking off of Romani oppression without having the Edema Ruh suffer any of that, since they're fairly rich and respected by most everyone but the worthless scum poors.
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Mar 14, 2024 21:10
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I distinctly remember Kvothe having sex with someone post Felurian and making a terrible analogy how some women are like a master work sonnet and some are a 2 note ditty but both are equally enjoyable. It wasn't a random rumination either it was something he said to a woman he was having sex with when he revealed he had slept with a sex goddess prior.
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Mar 14, 2024 23:44
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"Edema ruh" reminds me of that movie gag where Dave Foley gives the fake name "Enemabag Jones" when he wakes up in a hospital. Not helping things is naming a clan of people after a medical condition where your body retains water in all the wrong places.
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Mar 14, 2024 23:53
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Isn't that sort of the point? What he does to the troupe is a pretty direct mirror of his own family being massacred. After committing malfeasance by using his power to murder the bandit camp in a rather horrific style, the next part of his descent into becoming Chandrian adjacent? He's Anakin murdering the sand people at that point in the book. I would have thought *that's an intentional part of the story* the "unreliable narrator" telling the story from his perspective at the time, that he's doing bad things for the "right" reasons. Kvothe's glorified edmah ruh fantasy is a foundational pillar that he clings to, basically the only thing he carried with him from his past. This shapes him as a character, but in reality his own troupe was made up of prostitutes, beggars and thieves, the ruh being noble performers is a child's fantasy that his father told him. The young Kvothe character is pretty explicitly blind to this, as it's so core to his identity, and if he ran into a group like his own he'd reject them as false edmah ruh as well. Like, the main driving narrative of the books is "How did a promising young talent end up a bitter washed up bartender at 25, who is waiting to die?", and "let me tell you how the great Kvothe hosed everything up, by doing things without fully considering the outcomes of his actions". It's pretty obvious he regrets most of his life decisions, he's got "folly" splashed on a sign above the bar. Every moment he is alone he's moping around, crying, defeated. He knows he hosed up.
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Mar 14, 2024 23:55
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pentyne posted:I distinctly remember Kvothe having sex with someone post Felurian and making a terrible analogy how some women are like a master work sonnet and some are a 2 note ditty but both are equally enjoyable. It wasn't a random rumination either it was something he said to a woman he was having sex with when he revealed he had slept with a sex goddess prior. That was the barmaid who was like "When I saw you before you left, you were not a sexhaver. But now I can confirm, you have had sexhad many times!" and then had sex with him because of how hot the 16 year old boy was now. Goffer posted:Isn't that sort of the point? What he does to the troupe is a pretty direct mirror of his own family being massacred. After committing malfeasance by using his power to murder the bandit camp in a rather horrific style, the next part of his descent into becoming Chandrian adjacent? He's Anakin murdering the sand people at that point in the book. I would have thought *that's an intentional part of the story* the "unreliable narrator" telling the story from his perspective at the time, that he's doing bad things for the "right" reasons. You seem to be getting a lot from the text that isn't there. Can you point to me anything backing up the whole idea that the Edema Ruh was made up of prostitutes, beggars, and thieves and there was no nobility to them and everything was just a lie? Like you seem to be just crafting this all out wholecloth just from the idea that Kvothe is an unreliable narrator. We really do not have anything to say that he was lying or being particularly unreliable. Like even the Chronicler and Bast, who knows more about Kvothe's life story and Kvothe in general do not actually call him out for any of that. It's not like they wouldn't have a clue. Bast points out that Denna was only 99% as hot as Kvothe claims, which seems to set the level of Kvothe's unreliably. Small, unimportant details. Furthermore, the Fake Edema Ruh scene was undeniably suppose to show how badass and awesome and dark-hero he is. That's the context of the original short story. He is SUPPOSED to be that legendarily awesome. It's not suppose to contrast him with the Chandrian, who murdered his family for inscrutable demon reasons (it's never confirmed that it was for writing a story about them), and he who killed people for making his people look bad.
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Mar 15, 2024 00:46
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Kchama posted:That was the barmaid who was like "When I saw you before you left, you were not a sexhaver. But now I can confirm, you have had sexhad many times!" and then had sex with him because of how hot the 16 year old boy was now. His childhood is story is full of sugar-coated / rose tinted activities that are pretty dodgy, it's just told in a whimsical way. *Our troop never did anything really bad* is pretty much a thing a child would think, especially if they were all killed when he was 12. If you've got a charismatic front man as a father telling you all the stories, who dies suddenly while you're still at a formative age, you might buy into the myth. And hold onto it since it's all you have left. I don't think the Fake Edema Ruh scene is meant to be heroic at all, it's a slaughter, he kills all of them, the women and the children. They're not warriors, it's not noble combat, they're just no-one ex-bandits trying to make a buck. There's not much awesome about it at all. In that moment he became what he hated. He sells it as a noble thing because he rescues the girls, but it doesn't fit that narrative at all. "It's supposed to be legendary awesome" is a narrative you've created in your own mind, Kvothe vomits afterwards.
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Mar 15, 2024 02:23
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Goffer posted:His childhood is story is full of sugar-coated / rose tinted activities that are pretty dodgy, it's just told in a whimsical way. *Our troop never did anything really bad* is pretty much a thing a child would think, especially if they were all killed when he was 12. If you've got a charismatic front man as a father telling you all the stories, who dies suddenly while you're still at a formative age, you might buy into the myth. And hold onto it since it's all you have left. "Our troupe never did anything really bad" seems to be proven true when Kvothe assumes this other troupe is fake because they shoplifted a beer and he turns out to be 100% right. Or is that an unreliable narrator thing too? Did Kvothe invent the fake Ruh's confession out of whole cloth? What about the wise old lady afterward who absolves him of his guilt and tells him he did the right thing and the women among the fake Ruh deserved to be murdered extra hard; maybe she's a figment of the unreliable narrator's imagination too? You're right that 12 is pretty young, though. After all, it's younger than the Wise Man's Fear.
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Mar 15, 2024 02:34
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Lottery of Babylon posted:"Our troupe never did anything really bad" seems to be proven true when Kvothe assumes this other troupe is fake because they shoplifted a beer and he turns out to be 100% right. Or is that an unreliable narrator thing too? Did Kvothe invent the fake Ruh's confession out of whole cloth? What about the wise old lady afterward who absolves him of his guilt and tells him he did the right thing and the women among the fake Ruh deserved to be murdered extra hard; maybe she's a figment of the unreliable narrator's imagination too? How is "Our troupe never did anything really bad" proven true because some other troupe did something? There are examples at the start of the book where his troupe "acquired" a bunch of stuff. The unreliable narrator maybe isn't the best term. Biased narrator maybe. He tells the story from his perspective at the time, which by it's nature is told in a way that makes his own actions seem justified. The whole book is full of "I did this thing and it was great" followed by "the repercussions of the thing I did sucked". That's one of the consistent narrative threads of the book. Goffer fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 02:48
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Goffer posted:How is "Our troupe never did anything really bad" proven true because some other troupe did something? Kvothe's position isn't just "Our troupe never did anything really bad", it's stronger: "No Edema Ruh troupe ever commits any crimes, ever, ever." He decides to poison the fake Ruh because he realizes they can't be real true Ruh because, despite knowing all the secret shibboleths and appearing indistinguishable from real Ruh, one of them said he "nicked an ale", which is a crime, which no true Ruh would ever do, proving that they're all impostors. This absurd deduction is somehow proven correct, with one of the dying fake Ruh admitting "you figured it out, we're fake Ruh, we're bandits who killed the real Ruh and stole their wagon paints and learned their shibboleths from a quisling or something." Goffer posted:The whole book is full of "I did this thing and it was great" followed by "the repercussions of the thing I did sucked". That's one of the consistent narrative threads of the book. I really don't think that tracks with what's in the books? Yes, he's moping in the present and has a sword named Folly, but Kvothe's actions rarely have negative consequences for him. He commits malfeasance and totally owns Professor Snape in front of the class, and the other professors laugh and go "oh, you scallywag, you got Professor Snape good!" He's punished to some pain he doesn't even feel, which just makes everyone thing he's more badass. He gets expelled, which doesn't actually expel him and has no consequences whatsoever. He attacks his moneylender when he falsely believes she's betrayed him, but she doesn't hold a grudge; thirty seconds later, she goes "Oh, the guy you're mad at is also someone I hate for unspecified backstory reasons, therefore I will help you on your next zany scheme and won't hold it against you that you literally just tried to murder me." He gets politely suggested to take a semester's leave of absence, which is fine because the richest and most well-connected man on the planet has just posted an opening for the job of "person who can use magic", and this opening somehow has zero applicants other than Kvothe even though it takes him offscreen months to get there. He returns from his semester abroad better than ever. He fucks the Sex Elf Who Kills Whomever She Fucks, which leads to him not being killed, and also loving, a lot. He learns some of the Forbidden Secret Arts of the Sex Ninjas, which leads to him being taught All the Other Forbidden Secret Arts of the Sex Ninjas, and also loving, a lot. Obviously the framing device implies some poo poo goes down later, but lol if you still think "later" is ever going to happen.
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Mar 15, 2024 04:01
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Lottery of Babylon posted:I really don't think that tracks with what's in the books? Yes, he's moping in the present and has a sword named Folly, but Kvothe's actions rarely have negative consequences for him. I don't know if you missed the plot point where the (somewhat tangential) repercussion of setting his teacher on fire was being banned from the library for 1.5 books, with the added promised repercussion from that teacher becoming head of the university. The only thing he really wanted from going to the university in the first place. The feud with Ambrose means that he can't get a patron and so he is struggling with money, broken lutes, and escalates to assassination attempts, pirates, and hints that much worse things are in the works, ie killing Dena or his other friends, starting a war, etc. Those two repercussions drive the entirely of the struggles he has in the university portion of the book, I'm surprised you missed them. While he does get some positives out of his trip to Vint, his outbursts mean that the actually important things he is searching for (lochless box, the king's help with research) is now out of reach again. He learns sex and swordfighting, great, and what does he do with it? Goes and uses that power without thinking, which doesn't land well with his girlfriend. The more power he gains, the more he can and does misuse it, eg killing everyone in the troupe as opposed to thinking of a more creative solution that may not involve murder. Goffer fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 05:31
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Kvothe was banned from the library for bringing a candle in there, not for setting his teacher on fire. The constant praise for the Edema Ruh would be a traumatized child clinging to happy memories, in a well-written book. There's really no need to think Kvothe's perspective is skewed, because nothing in the Kingkiller Chronicle ever contradicts what he believes about "his people" - except Kvothe himself. Kvothe lies, cheats, steals, does pretty much everything the Ruh are accused of by the greater society. None of it ever matters, because no one can tell that Kvothe is a Ruh. His father's troupe had a noble patron that he used to threaten a village into letting them perform. Either a lord is perfectly willing to side with a bunch of prostitutes, thieves and murderers over the people who pay him taxes, or Kvothe's father lied but people are perfectly willing to believe that the minority everybody hates has a patron who would get mad if his pet performers wouldn't play in a random village. This is how we're introduced to the prejudice the Ruh face: Kvothe says, "people hate us because we're better than them", and there's nothing to contradict that. The plays he learned in the few years he lived with this troupe back this up: Kvothe uses the role he learned to escape from poverty by scamming some passersby out of their clothes. He learned to play a young lord when he was a little Ruh, and this role translates perfectly to real life. There is no disconnect between his memories and reality, it's not that the role he used to think was true to life was actually just a broad farce that makes people laugh at him. It's not a play so well-known that people recognize it and think he's doing a one-man act, or an insulting caricature of a local nobleman that gets him into trouble with the law. It's not something that would fly in the countryside but fall flat in the big city, or something that's a few decades out of date. There is no room for interpretation here, despite that fact that we're dealing with a performance. It is exactly what it is, because the Ruh got it right. The bandits pretending to be Ruh have to put on a whole performance with secret code phrases in order to pass and they still get it wrong. Kvothe kills them for it, he doesn't find out about the girls until after he's already decided to poison the group. If they actually were Ruh, Kvothe might have had to think about whether his people really were as he remembered them. But they're not, so he doesn't. When he returns to the girls' village, he breaks the arm of a boy who calls them "Ruh whores" and suffers no consequences for it. These people just had what they think are Ruh kidnap two of their children, but when a real Ruh attacks a child in front of them, nothing bad happens because conveniently enough, no one can tell he's a Ruh. An old woman does come up to him to soothe his conscience by telling him it was good of him to kill the women who claimed they only helped the bandits under duress. The purpose of Anakin killing the Sand People, was to show how much darkness he had inside him. Padme's dismissal of these murders is there to show how the Republic is both poorly equipped to deal with problems like this, but also how they barely see it as a problem in the first place. The Fake Ruh subplot is just there to make Kvothe look like a righteous sufferer, like most other scenes in these books.
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Mar 15, 2024 06:27
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Kvothe sucks and even if the hook is he's a bald face liar because there are literally no objective witnesses for any of it, the whole presentation is weird and annoying. The biggest sin for writing fantasy is giving your author insert modern morality for issues of sex and gender, especially when you make a big deal out of it by having him narrate how simple minded the villagers are for labeling the rape victims as forever tarnished.
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Mar 15, 2024 06:33
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Kvothe is 25 probably because Pat came up with the idea at like 16 or 17 when anyone past college age seems seriously ancient. For this same reason he picked a badass name like the King Killer Chronicles even though the actual story doesn't have a single king anywhere in it, and for similar reasons his main character spends most of the story moping about unrequited crushes and scrounging for beer money. You don't need Kvothe looking 25 but secretly being 47 in fairy years to explain that, and anyway I'm not sure how that would work within the story we've been given so far, unless I forgot a chapter where Kvothe is like wow I was in fairy world loving non stop for six weeks but it's still st Patrick's day weekend, or I missed chronicler saying oh you're Kvothe that guy from forty years ago
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Mar 15, 2024 07:46
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cheat at solitaire posted:Kvothe was banned from the library for bringing a candle in there, not for setting his teacher on fire. That's right, he was got whipped as a consequence of setting his teacher on fire. So he took some fantasy opium to look cool, and as a consequence of that, combined with the consequence of being rude to Ambrose earlier to impress Fela, was tricked into taking a candle into the library and getting banned for that. What a great example of the... consequence free existence Kvothe leads(?) quote:The constant praise for the Edema Ruh would be a traumatized child clinging to happy memories, in a well-written book. There's really no need to think Kvothe's perspective is skewed, because nothing in the Kingkiller Chronicle ever contradicts what he believes about "his people" - except Kvothe himself. Kvothe lies, cheats, steals, does pretty much everything the Ruh are accused of by the greater society. None of it ever matters, because no one can tell that Kvothe is a Ruh. Kvothe is telling the story, are you expecting Bast or Scribe to just butt in and say "actually Kvothe, the ruh aren't as great as you think they are?" I'm not sure where you'd put something like that in? quote:The Fake Ruh subplot is just there to make Kvothe look like a righteous sufferer, like most other scenes in these books. Kvothe isn't a innocent sufferer beyond Tarbean, his suffering is directly tied to and caused by his ego, the choices he makes and plots he instigates. His worst enemy is himself, not the Chandrian or Ambrose or anyone else. That you see his story as righteous suffering is quite odd.
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Mar 15, 2024 10:52
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If you think Bast will contradict Kvothe then you missed the end of the first book where Bast loses his poo poo on Chronicler in his room because the point of tricking Chronicler into coming was to convince Kvothe to stop being a sad old man. That's the point, the only goal, and telling the story is incidental to that.
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Mar 15, 2024 11:24
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I call Kvothe a righteous sufferer because that's what the books are about; his righteous suffering. Every single thing that happens to him grows his legend, he is The Most Interesting Man InThe World. This always comes at the expense of other people's stories, because Kvothe can't bear to share the spotlight. Bast is a fanboy, I expect nothing but fawning from him. Chronicler should absolutely have questions and comments, otherwise what's the point of that character? He shows up to get things going, then Kvothe takes control of the narrative by decyphering Chronicler's short-hand and then... Chronicler's notes are such bland nothings I don't know why Rothfuss bothered writing him. He adds nothing to the story, expect more opportunities for Kvothe to grandstand. I'll type up more when I get home from work and get the book; on my first readthrough I made a whole bunch of notes about how the veracity of Kvothe's legends doesn't matter because no one should be talking about Kvothe in the first place.
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Mar 15, 2024 12:12
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If Kvothe had killed the "fake" Ruh because he believed they were fake because of his childhood beliefs that they never committed crimes (because his troupe was killed as a child and he idolized that period of his life) only to find out that they were real Ruh, that might have been interesting. But no, instead Kvothe just murders a bunch of people because they stole an ale and no Ruh would ever do that. But it's OK, he throws up afterwards so you know he felt consequences or something. And yes, Kvothe gets banned from the library but it does exactly gently caress-all. He's still the best smartest most successful student in the history of students studenting. It's like his being poor: it doesn't actually do anything. We're told he is poor often, but just like Tarbean when he decides to just stop being poor one day and does, he can always do what he wants or needs. As for the fantasy painkiller: that's another stupid point. The Name of the Wind at least starts to try to tell a story about a larger-than-life figure who actually isn't that larger than life. One of the first examples is how he got the epithet Bloodless, which sounds all cool and badass but the real story is that he took a fantasy plant drug. You're telling me that in a university full of wizard pupils only two people happens to know what it look like when someone under it's influence gets whipped? And that this plant is also somehow available easily and readily enough that our "poor" protagonist can buy it easily and on short notice? The theme of the first book is ostensibly all about puncturing the legend and the second book just turns around and says "yeah, the legend where I spent the night with Felurian and lived is actually way cooler than it first sounds". Consequences actually have to matter. The biggest one he suffers is that he acts incredibly incel at someone and she rightfully calls him out on it and he is sad for awhile. E: why are we even talking about Kvothe suffering? He doesn't. He skips blithely through consequences like a rich white man through the legal system and then moans about how hard it is that he only born with one silver spoon in his mouth. E2: yes he clearly has suffered some kind of consequence by the time he becomes a bartender. How sad for him. If he is responsible for a bunch of horrible poo poo like is occasionally implied, I somehow feel that becoming a bartender with a fae prince thing as your friend isn't actually a consequence. Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 13:05
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I'm in Chapter 53 of WMF and it's obvious that Rothfuss is afraid to write anything but poverty-stricken Kvothe, but simultaneously has no experience with poverty, so it means nothing. Every stime he talks about money it's "very little" or "a lot" (but not for long) with numbers meaninglessly substituting for those words, and every time he gets money he throws it away ASAP on nice things he doesn't need or loses it or has it stolen so we can get back to Poor Kvothe. This is the behavior of a deeply depressed person engaging in self-destruction, but the narrative never acknowledges that, much less addresses and corrects it. Kvothe boards a ship with ~18 Talents in his pocket, a minor fortune by his own explicit description, then ends his journey a couple span later with no money and nothing he had packed save for his lute and its priceless case, which he immediately pawned. None of this is for any benefit, we don't even get to hear how it happened, just that it happened. It seems like Rothfuss couldn't deal with the Gram or the Cloak Of Holding in a good, creative way so these end up at the bottom of the ocean and cut to bandages respectively because Kvothe must return to poverty and helplessness or Rothfuss won't be able to write him anymore. He also clearly doesn't understand professional musicians, despite choosing to make that Kvothe's occupation (at least that's what he says). Outside of the inns he works at and specifically the Eolian he doesn't perform professionally, which is why he's in poverty constantly, he just emphatically refuses to do his job for money like a professional musician would do. It's the solution to all his problems and he cold clock never does it. He also pawns his lute, a mere half-dozen chapters after his lute going missing after a night of debauchery puts him in a cold panic. Pawning his lute is my hard out, it's foolish to give up your only way of earning money and part of your identity as a musician, especially when you haven't even tried to get your feet under you in a new place yet. As someone who has known musicians my whole life, no professional musician would handle that situation the way Kvothe did, it's ridiculous. Shit Fuckasaurus fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 16:29
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I think it's been established pretty strongly that Rothfuss doesn't understand music in the slightest.
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Mar 15, 2024 16:32
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When Chronicler and Kvothe are properly introduced to each other, Kvothe says, "How about that? The great debunker himself." Chronicler is literally introduced as someone who would be skeptical about everything he's told, but two pages later he's already a believer: quote:I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel. Chronicler spends these pages apologizing, unable to finish his sentences, and coddling Kvothe's ego in an attempt to get him to tell Chronicler the truth behind his myth. The only thing he pushes back on is Kvothe's claim that his story would take three whole days to tell and the narrative immediately punishes Chronicler by labeling him "self-important". A little while later, Kvothe deciphers the shorthand Chronicler uses and basically threatens him into writing down only what Kvothe wants. Kvothe is 100% in control of the narrative. The narrative paints him as an insufferable, pathological liar. Unfortunately, he's not a particularly interesting liar, which is where the whole thing falls apart for me. Nobody should be telling any stories about Kvothe, because none of the stories about him are relevant to anyone but Kvothe. Everything that happens to Kvothe, good or bad, is there to grow his legend. He's "The Bloodless" instead of "The Witch Freak We Should Report To The Inquisition". He's so good at getting under people's skin that even Master Elodin got mad enough to throw him from the roof, instead of just another student who couldn't handle the pressure of the university so hard it has its own asylum. He bravely stands up to a nobleman's son, instead of being an arrogant commoner who doesn't know his place. Generally speaking, people spread rumors about other people to tear them down or dismiss them, but everything that's said about Kvothe just elevates him to a person worthy of note. Why does his legend grow, though? Why does every character he meet line up to tell rumors about him, spread his deeds, talk about him as if he's some singularly important individual, long before he's done anything that should make these people take note of him? Why do people in this universe talk about Kvothe at all, rather than dismiss him as a blowhard or an attention monger the way so many readers do? A kingkiller would be worth talking about, but he hasn't done that yet. Of course, it's because Kvothe is telling the story. The problem is, the story doesn't exist outside of Kvothe's telling. This isn't a deconstruction of a genre or a trope, it's mostly just some incoherent ranting about whatever Kvothe decided is supposed to make him the most important character in that particular chapter. Kvothe says, "I spent the night with Felurian and lived to tell the tale." Kvothe says, "I had a cool adventure with pirates, but you don't get to hear it." Kvothe says, "Women are like instruments, if you disagree you just don't understand women." Who is he talking to? The audience isn't disputing any of this; for most of the story the audience doesn't even know what stories exist. Kvothe is the one who brings them up, then whines about how they're wrong, or they're right but he can't possibly explain why. It's a story by Kvothe, about Kvothe, and for Kvothe only. For what purpose? Yeah, he's an unreliable narrator, but so what? What does it matter that people say he fought an angel, or that the stones where he killed "him" can't be repaired? What purpose does it serve other than to make Kvothe look cool, and why should I care if Kvothe is really as cool as the stories say he is? Is bragging such a novel concept that it warrants over fifteen hundred pages of one dude rambling about how he attended university and occasionally had sex? Maybe the third book will make it all make sense, but I doubt it. The fundamental problem of this series is that everything is told through Kvothe, from the existence of the stories to their rebuttals.
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Mar 15, 2024 16:45
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anilEhilated posted:I think it's been established pretty strongly that Rothfuss doesn't understand music in the slightest. He knows that there is a chord. A chord that says "sad."
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Mar 15, 2024 17:31
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anilEhilated posted:I think it's been established pretty strongly that Rothfuss doesn't understand music in the slightest. ironically Lin Manual Miranda praising it for the way he writes about music is now more of a negative then a plus Yearly reminder that in this thread or the past version someone mentioned they had business dealings with Rothfuss and he was extremely unprofessional, wastes times, ignores people, forgets names etc. and I always think that's probably why when Hollywood Golden Producer LMM optioned Kingkiller that's why it pretty much died on the vine because Rothfuss never bothered to treat anyone in the process with respect. Also that his charity Worldbuilders is a blatant scam. They do literally nothing but collect money, take a big percentage including paying rent for operating out of a building Rothfuss owns, and then send the money to another actual charity. pentyne fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 17:47
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Goffer posted:I would have thought *that's an intentional part of the story* the "unreliable narrator" telling the story from his perspective at the time, that he's doing bad things for the "right" reasons. A narrator who justifies their actions isn't necessarily unreliable. You have to ask if the rest of the text undermines those justifications. In this case, it does a little with Kvothe feeling bad and vomiting afterwards, but that's a normal reaction to committing great violence even if that violence is justified, and more importantly, it ultimately reinforced Kvothe's judgment by having that other character tell him he was right to do so. Goffer posted:The unreliable narrator maybe isn't the best term. Biased narrator maybe. He tells the story from his perspective at the time, which by it's nature is told in a way that makes his own actions seem justified. The thing is: every character bound narrator is biased. Really, every narrator, even the most disembodied omniscient 3rd person voice that exists to truthfully report events and the interiority of characters, is biased because every story is narrated from a particular point-of-view. And he's not telling his story from the perspective of the time. He's telling his story from the perspective of the narrative now where Chronicler is asking him for the true story. He's telling about his perspective at the time, but it's all part of his retrospective narration of his life to Chronicler.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:48
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pentyne posted:Yearly reminder that in this thread or the past version someone mentioned they had business dealings with Rothfuss and he was extremely unprofessional, wastes times, ignores people, forgets names etc. and I always think that's probably why when Hollywood Golden Producer LMM optioned Kingkiller that's why it pretty much died on the vine because Rothfuss never bothered to treat anyone in the process with respect. Defintely possible, but Joe Abercrombie just had his Best Served Cold adaptation put on hold, even after casting rumors and I can't imagine he was anything other than professional. Hollywood is also just capricious.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:53
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poo poo Fuckasaurus posted:I'm in Chapter 53 of WMF and it's obvious that Rothfuss is afraid to write anything but poverty-stricken Kvothe, but simultaneously has no experience with poverty, so it means nothing. Every stime he talks about money it's "very little" or "a lot" (but not for long) with numbers meaninglessly substituting for those words, and every time he gets money he throws it away ASAP on nice things he doesn't need or loses it or has it stolen so we can get back to Poor Kvothe. This is the behavior of a deeply depressed person engaging in self-destruction, but the narrative never acknowledges that, much less addresses and corrects it. You're a book and 53 chapters in. How has this not sunk in? Goffer fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 21:29
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LASER BEAM DREAM posted:Defintely possible, but Joe Abercrombie just had his Best Served Cold adaptation put on hold, even after casting rumors and I can't imagine he was anything other than professional. Hollywood is also just capricious. While true, it happens a lot less often for stuff that is extremely popular and hot at the moment, like Kingkiller Chronicles was. Especially with a very enthusiastic person in charge. Goffer posted:I don't know if you missed the plot point where the (somewhat tangential) repercussion of setting his teacher on fire was being banned from the library for 1.5 books, with the added promised repercussion from that teacher becoming head of the university. The only thing he really wanted from going to the university in the first place. The thing is, none of those bad things truly hold him back. He always can get money when he needs it, and can pawn and rebuy back his however many times he needs. Even the (actually completely unrelated, it's not hinted that Ambrose sent the pirates to kill Kvothe at all) pirates who cause him to lose everything he owns manages to leave him with his lute and the expensive case (which he uses to make money and thus not truly suffer from the loss of everything else that is replacable). Even losing out on the library for a while doesn't really effect him. He finds out that the library had no good information on the Chandrian anyways so it wasn't a loss to not have access to it, and he's still so good at school despite not being able to study that when he is expelled for malfeasance, he is literally immediately reenrolled with a higher rank and more money-making privileges because he is THAT loving awesome. A literal "And everyone stood up and clapped" moment. Consequences should not be something that can easily be brushed off or worked around. Goffer posted:The narrative never addresses his self destructive nature? The whole book is "Kvothe lacks impulse control", that's one of his key characteristics. Ego driven, vengeance seeking, impulsive, uniquely talented, on the road to self destruction, that's the character. Every page he does something that undermines himself. Kote is the end result, a giant signpost that "this does not end well". What harms this is that his antics are pretty much completely indistinguishable from what you'd find in a, say, Harry Potter book. He feuds constantly with the guy who is just Draco Malfoy if he had been 25 instead of 13. He gets in trouble with teachers because he plays around or gets mad at how he is treated. He worries about pocket money so he can buy nice but unnecessary things. He comes up with clever ways to alleviate punishments. Kvothe is even only 15-16 years old at the start. He's still a child who acts about as a child does. That's why his stuff doesn't seem like anything you said. He's a kid, he's suppose to still be maturing. The only way we have an idea that that might have caused anything in the far future is the framing device, and we still have no clue how they relate. Kchama fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 15, 2024 |
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Mar 15, 2024 21:40
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Honestly with the level of literary critique in this thread I'd love to see someone write about someone like Paul Artradies. How killing off his house and exiling him to the desert hardly set him back, he becomes emporer anyway. Or how implausible it is that he has the Fremen sucking his dick for half the book because he straps his boots the right way one time. I imagine there'd be something about white saviour trope in there too. It feels either pretty disingenuous or just showing a poor level of literacy. Goffer fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 03:21
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Goffer posted:Honestly with that level of literary critique I'd love to see you write about someone like Paul Artradies. How killing off his house and exiling him to the desert hardly set him back, he becomes emporer anyway. Or how implausible it is that he has the Fremen sucking his dick for half the book because he straps his boots the right way one time. I imagine there'd be something about white saviour trope in there too. Listen buddy, Patrick Rothfuss isn't going to gently caress you.
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Mar 16, 2024 04:05
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pentyne posted:Listen buddy, Patrick Rothfuss isn't going to gently caress you. Can you imagine
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Mar 16, 2024 04:09
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Discussing literacy while comparing Rothfuss to Herbert is really funny.
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Mar 16, 2024 04:37
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I guess they both wrote about a matriarchal culture of sex ninjas. >The Honored Matres are able to imprint a man sexually by amplifying his orgasmic response to such an ecstatic height that the victim of an imprinting becomes "addicted" to his imprinter, thereby becoming a willing slave of the Honored Matre who "marks" him. Edit: does Paul gently caress the sex ninjas so well they don't enslave him and instead praise him for his sexual abilities? I didn't get that far into the series. Goffer fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 04:42
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Lol, it's a 47th clone of Duncan Idaho that does the loving. He enslaves the sex slave ninjas by loving them. That's sure something.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:45
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Goffer posted:Honestly with the level of literary critique in this thread I'd love to see someone write about someone like Paul Artradies. How killing off his house and exiling him to the desert hardly set him back, he becomes emporer anyway. Or how implausible it is that he has the Fremen sucking his dick for half the book because he straps his boots the right way one time. I imagine there'd be something about white saviour trope in there too. "artradies" it's weird to bring up dune given that it does a much better job at exploring the gap between history and myth and the man paul and the legend muad'dib, which are all things rothfuss desperately wants to do with kvothe malding this much because people don't like rothfuss lmfao
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Mar 16, 2024 07:45
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How are we supposed to truly understand Paul Artilleries if we don't know exactly how much student loan debt he has outstanding at all times?
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Mar 16, 2024 07:55
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Goffer posted:Honestly with the level of literary critique in this thread I'd love to see someone write about someone like Paul Artradies. How killing off his house and exiling him to the desert hardly set him back, he becomes emporer anyway. Or how implausible it is that he has the Fremen sucking his dick for half the book because he straps his boots the right way one time. I imagine there'd be something about white saviour trope in there too. “Why aren’t you guys criticizing this book instead?!” isn’t the winning argument that you think it is. The thing is, we understood why all that happened as it did by the end of the very first book. Even if I don’t think Dune is particularly good, it at least does that. If Kingkiller Chronicles was complete and explained everything in a compelling, interesting way, then I think people’s opinion would be different. But it’s not, and it hasn’t. That’s the difference. Do you really not have anything better? EDIT: What has Kvothe permanently lost? Pretty much just his family, and he lost them due to no fault of his own. It was the actions of others that took his family, and nothing he did could have changed it. You say he suffered a lot from his impulsive, rash actions. Okay, but he’s also gained just as much, if not more. And he’s either suffered fleeting, temporary pain, but gained permanent fame. He lost replaceable possessions, and gained effectively endless free money. He upset his would-be girlfriend for a bit, but we’ve already been assured that this is not the end for them and things will get better. Maybe not permanently, but it will. He has a feud with a noble, but it’s gotten him respect. He got expelled, but not only was he reinstated as a student, but he was given a promotion and more priviledges so even if he DIDN’T have endless money flowing in, he can make more and grow his prestige as a craftsman. He has respect from the school. He has the favor of a king. He’s lost one, but gained two every time. That’s why people say he hasn’t suffered consequences from his actions. Kchama fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 08:19
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