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The thing that really pissed me off about this series(and the way others pitched it to me) is that even in the first book, all the legend-building incidents feel like phony authorial contrivances rather than poo poo that would naturally/believably lend itself to exaggeration. Instead it just seems like a bunch of NPCs stand around waiting for him to give them something to talk up. The "Kvothe the Bloodless" bit was probably the worst offender to me but it always felt like Rothfuss went about the whole thing rear end-backwards If that is actually what he was trying for with the story, he should've drawn from Westerns instead of D&D campaigns
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Mar 5, 2016 02:49
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Unless whoever's in charge of adapting it really takes charge and changes a bunch of poo poo, a TV show version is probably just gonna highlight the flaws in the story because there's less poo poo to distract you from how little is happening at any given time
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Mar 18, 2016 21:57
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I checked out Lions of Al-Rassan because of this thread and, while it had its share of narrative/stylistic choices that kept me from whole-heartedly loving it, it was still much better than Rothfuss. The setting was so much better and so much better communicated on the page that I felt some belated secondhand embarrassment for old Pat upon returning to this thread
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Mar 25, 2016 22:20
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The Lethani would've been more interesting and thematically in line with the supposed aims of the rest of the story if it had just turned out to be phony nonsense that all the sex ninjas pretended to understand but wouldn't admit because it's too "complex" and sacred to discuss. Then you could have Kvothe infiltrating the culture by diagnosing this and faking along with them instead of just doing an earnest but half-assed Dances With Wolves bit
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Mar 30, 2016 21:19
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Popularity resulting in a erosion of editorial control is definitely a thing that exists, and one of the most commonly tossed-around complaints directed at Martin. The first three books in Ice and Fire are pretty focused and tightly plotted for what they are, but it feels like he was pretty much allowed to do whatever from 4 onward, with fairly disappointing results That doesn't explain these books though
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Apr 19, 2016 22:53
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3DHouseofBeef posted:Fake edit: I am not saying the books are good or bad; and I’m not saying you should or should not enjoy them. I am merely pointing out that the author does not use the story’s framework device well. It feels like he's doing something smart with the framing story even if he really isn't when you examine it. That's the whole trick of these books, really. He can emulate the texture of good stories even if he isn't actually writing one himself, and apparently texture is enough for a lot of people. See also pretty much every example of his prose brought up in this thread
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Apr 19, 2016 23:03
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It's obvious that BotL's posts are his opinion by the fact that he's posting them
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Apr 22, 2016 03:49
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Also the scene where Kvothe "defends" the librarian girl was the scene where the book finally lost me. loving embarrassing a grown-rear end man wrote that
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Apr 22, 2016 04:50
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If the dude adds in some weasel phrases and caveats every few paragraphs will you dorks shut the gently caress up about him posting his opinion too strongly and hurting your feelings
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Apr 22, 2016 07:24
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Music is such a slut, messing around with those loving jocks when I'm the only one who really loves her
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Apr 29, 2016 02:35
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The music poo poo makes a lot more sense when you keep in mind that Kvothe is Rothfuss's D&D bard and any music he would have played would've been done by announcing "I play a mournful dirge on my pan flute" and rolling a d20 to see just how mournful it is
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Apr 30, 2016 03:34
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Kvothe's attitude toward poetry is the same one that every Intro to Creative Writing student who signed up to get asspats for their bad fiction has when the TA tells them it's part of the curriculum
TheIncredulousHulk fucked around with this message at 19:13 on May 1, 2016 |
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May 1, 2016 19:11
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Yeah my assumption was that salt at this tech level would be used as a preservative rather than a flavoring agent, but I doubt Rothfuss gave it that much thought. Setting aside how laughable Kvothe's theme park account of poverty is in comparison to real world poverty, it doesn't even make sense when compared to Kvothe's own experiences. Dude lived homeless on the streets of brick-smashing and rape, but now suddenly real poverty is bumming drinks off your friends when you go to a restaurant and feeling embarrassed because you can afford to repair your clothes, just not in the specific color you'd want. It's like it's not even the same character talking
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May 5, 2016 21:16
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SpacePig posted:I mean, his whole family was slaughtered that one time. That wasn't great. This(and Tarbean) aren't REALLY part of the plot proper, though. They're just ~tragic backstory~ boxchecking
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May 14, 2016 18:51
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If Rothfuss isn't ignorant of the source of the "ships in the night" bit, I'll be surprised. It doesn't even mean what he thinks it means:Longfellow posted:Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, The ships in the poem specifically notice one another, they just don't get a very good look and keep moving. It's particularly dumb/bad because in context he's jerking off Kvothe and Denna for knowing this obscure piece of writing unlike those other ignorant plebs while Rothfuss himself appears to think it's just some fancy-sounding idiom
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May 24, 2016 21:21
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ChickenWing posted:I mean he's literally the fantasy embodiment of the nerd who posts frantically on the internet about the unfairness of the friendzone Thing is, in the mind of a 15 year old nerd, it's a totally normal thing to think! In the mind of a 20-something adult with broad life experiences recounting being a 15 year old nerd? Not so much. In the mind of a 30-something fantasy author pretending to be a 20-something adult with broad life experiences? 
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Jun 17, 2016 19:33
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Goffer posted:Kvothe the Bloodless I'm amused you keep calling him this in your post when that little story is the best example of how forced and pointless most aspects of Kvothe's legend are
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Jun 20, 2016 18:42
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SpacePig posted:I think it depends on how unreliable of a narrator he is. Obviously, since everything is told from his point of view, we're only getting one part of any story. Fela may never have been attracted to him, he probably wasn't as clever as he thought he was when dealing with Ambrose, he probably didn't gently caress a fairy as good as he thinks he did. A biased detail here and there doesn't change much. In fact, it almost makes it more interesting for if he ever dedicates time to modern-day stuff. Running into old friends or teachers, or even Ambrose himself, and getting their take on things could prove to be somewhat interesting. The issue isn't that there aren't clear elements intended to show he's an unreliable narrator(there are), it's just that there's really nothing special or noteworthy about writing a narrator that way. It's a device that's only as good as what it's being used to convey, and through two huge-rear end books, it doesn't really convey anything specific. It's just a thing that's in there. Like who cares if Felurian didn't really call him the ultimate sex master? What's the narrative payoff if he's exaggerating? There isn't one
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Jun 21, 2016 05:11
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Naerasa posted:So really what you're saying is that it's not that Rothfuss is a lovely story-teller, it's that Kvothe is a lovely story-teller. I suppose there's a difference on paper, but not to anyone who has to endure the story. Yeah well if you think that you know nothing of women nor literature nor me 
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Jul 6, 2016 00:11
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The real unreliable narrator is Rothfuss himself
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Aug 16, 2016 19:33
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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'm shocked and horrified and sick at being given an award for having a huge and amazing penis, because I assure you my huge amazing penis is already recognized well enough. It should go to this person with a much smaller penis than me, or perhaps even a woman
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Sep 19, 2016 03:11
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HIJK posted:Rothfuss's lack of command over made up language matters. Just because someone is uneducated on a subject does not mean that he won't realize the product is poo poo. Rothfuss's made up words are just like everything else he writes - an artificial Christmas tree that is hollow and not even close to a passable imitation of the real thing. It's because it's literally some poo poo he made up for D&D and if you have played a game of it with a lame DM you will recognize the smell at once
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Oct 28, 2016 03:53
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Malpais Legate posted:That's really the problem with the frame story here. It relies on the subversion of the fairy tale version of the story that the audience knows, but the reader doesn't. So we get boring waffling about and playing with his dick (on too many a literal occasion) without any frame of reference as to how this corresponds to the fairy tale. He doesn't even commit to that, he takes the time to explain things in-universe that the audience should be familiar with, so we just get info dumps of poo poo that doesn't matter because he's trying to WORLDBUILD. It's because the function of lines like that aren't to subvert anything or achieve any real narrative or thematic goal. They're there to flatter lazy readers, which I think is probably the real secret to Rothfuss's success
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Nov 1, 2016 23:11
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I like genre fiction as much as the next guy but it's bad for you when you're learning to write because it's too easy to let genre conventions make your story choices for you. The point of creative writing classes is to build your skills, not produce publishable work. When you ask yourself, okay, what should I write here, what direction should I take, what am I trying to get across with this, it doesn't do your development any good to be able to snap-decide because that's just what everyone does in Genre X. It's like lifting with free weights versus using a machine with a rigid track. Rothfuss has a similar problem in that instead of really asking himself what would make for a good story, he recognizes the conventional approach and then makes a big show of doing the opposite even if it's boring and makes no story sense. That said, it would be pretty dope if you could do a creative writing class on genre fiction where you have to use a genre style but you're only allowed to work with genres you're unfamilliar with or actively dislike to force you to break the conventions down and see how they function and then try to harness them to your own ends(assuming students would do it in good faith which seems unlikely)
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Nov 6, 2016 20:11
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:As with the classism and sexism, the lack of entertainment is exactly the draw. The banal and the boring are what attract readers to the books. Nobody actually enjoys the world-building, they want to be bored and distracted. Yeah in that respect the lack of clear throughlines is a feature, not a bug. It's easy for the reader to go from vignette to vignette without getting lost because there's not enough information you're asked to track that you could lose yourself in. Kvothe is there, now he's here. Does there affect here? No, not really. All you need to do is focus on the moment of the scene you're reading. It goes a long way towards explaining how people can burn through two huge books as fast as they often do. You never have to slow down and recall information
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Nov 8, 2016 18:32
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I'm like a page late but it bugs the living poo poo out of me when people talk about "turning your brain off" during an action movie because it's super disrespectful to good action movies. Just because a story doesn't try to make you ruminate on the human condition doesn't make it dumb. Engaging action is just as dependent on intelligent narrative construction as any other piece of storytelling and it doesn't excuse lovely hackwork
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Nov 9, 2016 00:21
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I'll be shocked if Ambrose doesn't end up being a really lazy fakeout
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Nov 19, 2016 23:38
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I too think Scrivener is extra loving dope
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Dec 3, 2016 22:40
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BananaNutkins posted:I read the leaked page and it sucked balls. He's doing the same stuff that drove me crazy in the first two--excessive use of blocking and over-describing mundane actions. It's like giving a play by play of a silent movie to a blind man (stolen from someone's amazon review of SRoST.) It's a pretty standard rookie mistake for new writers who watch movies more than they read books. You hope it's something they grow out of because it usually adds very little other than tedium but Rothfuss's situation isn't exactly the kind that demands him to grow out of his bad habits
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Dec 4, 2016 20:53
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Is the "Bloodless" title something fans of this book actually think is cool or was it just the easiest one to fit on the fake Hamilton logo? Because if it's the former then holy moly
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Dec 8, 2016 23:47
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Btw, there was a link in the SF/Fantasy thread to what is probably the only decent professional review of NOTW. I'd read it years ago but could never find it. It's just too soft because the author doesn't want to be harsh (which it still is). "Cosy" is the most goddamned perfect word for the appeal of this series. Dude nailed it
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Jan 15, 2017 05:53
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The thing that really irritates me about that quote is that he describes his own work as beautiful
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Feb 13, 2017 20:24
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Yeah Quidditch isn't really supposed to be a sport that makes sense, it's an illustration of how hidebound and insular wizard culture as a whole is
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Feb 14, 2017 23:35
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Because I feel safe to be pedantic in this thread, I want to make sure everybody knows that "high-concept" doesn't mean smart or heady even though it's often misused this way. It means that by explaining the premise of a story, you're explaining the story itself. A lot of the time it describes dumb, boring schlock. Thanks for reading my post and God bless
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Mar 2, 2017 01:49
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That was the most embarrassing thing I've ever read in my entire life
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May 12, 2017 02:42
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The cover is great because it's exactly as sloppy and slapped together as the story but since you're forced to consume it in a single image instead of over a million words, there's no friction to blunt the impact
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Jun 28, 2017 20:11
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Nakar posted:Yes but when I finish looking at this cover it is a complete experience, which is more than one can say of what's behind the cover. Hmm, this is a good point. I need to revisit my theory
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Jun 29, 2017 23:45
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Oh by the way, I made this at a suggestion in another thread, and I never posted it here! I can't believe how loving perfect this is, holy poo poo
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Oct 6, 2017 03:21
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