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Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007

Xachariah posted:

I like Lift so you're wrong. :colbert:

No you are, she's bad and you should feel bad for liking her. :colbert:

On a serious note, I do think he does seriously need to tone it down when he tries to be funny/witty because he's really, really not.

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Tunicate
May 15, 2012

I figure that with ten years of extra writing experience Lift will be considerably more appealing.

Hopeford
Oct 15, 2010

Eh, why not?
I like Lightsong in Warbreaker. I think it helps that Lightsong doesn't try to be witty so much as just flat out doesn't give a drat about anything. He was pretty amusing to me. But in general, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Sanderson's humor.

The Puppy Bowl
Jan 31, 2013

A dog, in the house.

*woof*
Lightsong works because he is more a cool snarky in that kind of Han Solo way. His brand of humor isn't funny so much as it is a character affectation of not giving a gently caress. His success is compounded by the fact that no one around Lightsong is constantly talking about his uproariously funny wit. Wit and Shallan do not have that benefit. They aren't funny, they're just intentionally obtuse. Every Shallan joke is just a variation of "You're hungry? I thought your name was so and so!"

Xachariah
Jul 26, 2004

The Puppy Bowl posted:

Lightsong works because he is more a cool snarky in that kind of Han Solo way. His brand of humor isn't funny so much as it is a character affectation of not giving a gently caress. His success is compounded by the fact that no one around Lightsong is constantly talking about his uproariously funny wit. Wit and Shallan do not have that benefit. They aren't funny, they're just intentionally obtuse. Every Shallan joke is just a variation of "You're hungry? I thought your name was so and so!"

Wit's not supposed to be witty/funny but more a professional troll. I personally subscribe to the idea that everyone is just humouring Shallan 'cause she's lighteyed. People like Jasnah and Kaladin don't take her poo poo and say how witty she is. They just tell her to stop trying to be a smart arse.

I find Sanderson funny enough, mostly with stuff like bridge four interactions and Kaladin/Adolins budding bromosexual tryst. In Mistborn it was the camaraderie between the heist team.

Xachariah fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Mar 28, 2014

SageSepthAtWork
Dec 11, 2013

Shakugan posted:

Has he ever been asked in an interview if he understands that no-one finds his humourous characters humourous, or thinks his witty characters are witty?

Well, I for one don't find him unfunny, Wit is great and so is Pattern, Shallan is hit or Miss, but Lopen was also funny. I think that is my main issue with the Mistborn books thus far is that there's a distinct lack of humor. Everything is so dire and sad and tired etc, that it's just depressing. At least WoR and WoK are broken up with humorous sections to go with all the horrible things happening.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

SageSepthAtWork posted:

Well, I for one don't find him unfunny, Wit is great and so is Pattern, Shallan is hit or Miss, but Lopen was also funny. I think that is my main issue with the Mistborn books thus far is that there's a distinct lack of humor. Everything is so dire and sad and tired etc, that it's just depressing. At least WoR and WoK are broken up with humorous sections to go with all the horrible things happening.

I really enjoyed Pattern in WoR and thought he had some good deadpan humor or something along those lines. Shallan was also much better, but that's also because she had a lot more going on to obscure her witty jokes.

Dravs
Mar 8, 2011

You've done well, kiddo.
Hey, some of us are Dads and think Dad humour is just fine thankyouverymuch :colbert:

ArchetypeBlue
Jul 9, 2012

ASSHOLE.
Speaking of dad humour, did you hear about the time Shallan gave her father a necklace for his birthday?

He was all choked up about it!

SerSpook
Feb 13, 2012




Xachariah posted:

Wit's not supposed to be witty/funny but more a professional troll. I personally subscribe to the idea that everyone is just humouring Shallan 'cause she's lighteyed. People like Jasnah and Kaladin don't take her poo poo and say how witty she is. They just tell her to stop trying to be a smart arse.

I find Sanderson funny enough, mostly with stuff like bridge four interactions and Kaladin/Adolins budding bromosexual tryst. In Mistborn it was the camaraderie between the heist team.

For Shallan, that is literally the case. The joke is that she's terribly unfunny but tries really hard. Or that's how I've always interpreted her.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
My take on Shallan isn't that she's objectively funny but rather that she's spouting off stuff that, for a lighteyed woman of rank, is horribly inappropriate and uncouth. She's more of an oddity that people find refreshing (especially lower classes) rather than a comedian

SerSpook
Feb 13, 2012




Another point to consider is that her attempts at humor are probably a coping mechanism. She seems to have started it shortly after stuff went to poo poo in her life. I don't think she's meant to actually be something the reader finds funny.

Not A Hydroxyl Ion
Oct 10, 2007

Adventure!
I can appreciate a lot of Sanderson's humor. From my perspective, a lot of Shallan's jokes are flat-out terrible, both inside and outside the context of the universe, but I think that's part of the point. On the other hand, I found Lightsong to be hilarious, probably because I love dad humor.

On another note, who else would love to see an HBO-quality series based on something by Sanderson? When I was reading White Sand a few years ago I thought it could be an excellent work to adapt since it's unpublished and, therefore, highly malleable without upsetting fans. Of course, there wouldn't be any sex unless HBO shoe-horned a bunch of it in, so who knows how that would go.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Not A Hydroxyl Ion posted:

On another note, who else would love to see an HBO-quality series based on something by Sanderson? When I was reading White Sand a few years ago I thought it could be an excellent work to adapt since it's unpublished and, therefore, highly malleable without upsetting fans. Of course, there wouldn't be any sex unless HBO shoe-horned a bunch of it in, so who knows how that would go.

Well, White Sand's getting graphic novelled, so that'll be interesting.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

Not A Hydroxyl Ion posted:

I can appreciate a lot of Sanderson's humor. From my perspective, a lot of Shallan's jokes are flat-out terrible, both inside and outside the context of the universe, but I think that's part of the point. On the other hand, I found Lightsong to be hilarious, probably because I love dad humor.

On another note, who else would love to see an HBO-quality series based on something by Sanderson? When I was reading White Sand a few years ago I thought it could be an excellent work to adapt since it's unpublished and, therefore, highly malleable without upsetting fans. Of course, there wouldn't be any sex unless HBO shoe-horned a bunch of it in, so who knows how that would go.

ive long said Sanderson's work deserves a TV series to properly encompass its scope and characters.

Also i definitely don't mind his humor and more often than not find it honestly funny. Maybe its a mormon thing.

Piell
Sep 3, 2006

Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer


Young Orc
IIRC, Legion is still theoretically becoming a TV show.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

I think Legion would be great for a tv show. It'd have the lowest special effects budget due to no outright magic going on. You get solid actors for the main character and the 3-5 main hallucinations and you end up with a good detective/action drama.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Democratic Pirate posted:

I think Legion would be great for a tv show. It'd have the lowest special effects budget due to no outright magic going on. You get solid actors for the main character and the 3-5 main hallucinations and you end up with a good detective/action drama.

Yeah, seems like something that'd be on USA, especially with Burn Notice and Psych now over.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

nucleicmaxid posted:

Except she's not like Vin at all. Vin didn't sound like an after school. Cartoon character. :colbert:

Young, female thief, fish out of water, has cool powers with little idea of their sources which she calls by an unusual name, gets in SERIOUS hot water when she uses them for an audacious heist.

I know you can pick and choose bits, but I was reading her chapter and just thinking 'god drat he's writing Vin again'.

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007
Vin's response to growing up on the street: NEVER TRUST ANYONE. BE SCARED AND DISTRUSTFUL. Slowly come into your own and find confidence and friendship. Use your power to just barely survive and get by.

Life's response to growing up ok the street: IMMA STEAL ALL DA RICH GUYS LUNCH WIF MAH AWESOME. SLIDE UP THE TOWER WITHOUT FRICTION AND YAKKIRY SAX MY WAY THROUGH THE TOWER LIKE A 90's KIDS MOVIE.

I mean I know we saw a lot more of Vin so growth hasn't happened but there's a huge difference in tone.

Iunnrais
Jul 25, 2007

It's gaelic.
Vin was a main character, there to experience personal growth and have a character arc. Lift was a side story, providing a (to me) much needed tension break and moment of levity in the middle of a grander situation. I'm sure when Lift is a main character, she'll have character growth too. But as an interlude? Not needed.

Wasting
Apr 25, 2013

The next to go
I really wanted to like Sanderson, since a few people to me have been bugging me to read him, so I picked up The Way of Kings.

I'm not sure if it's me, since it's been a while since I've read epic fantasy, but I just can't get past the cliches or even his prose, which feels like a laundry list of descriptions. The story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either.

I really don't mean to offend, here, by the way.

I'm only a couple hundred pages in. Will things pick up? Is there another book of his you'd recommend?

.... Phone formatting

Wasting fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Mar 28, 2014

LASER BEAM DREAM
Nov 3, 2005

Oh, what? So now I suppose you're just going to sit there and pout?
Things do pick up, but Sanderson might not be for you, and that's OK. His prose has never been what people have loved about him. It's more about how he develops his worlds and magic systems.

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

Wasting posted:

I really wanted to like Sanderson, since a few people to me have been bugging me to read him, so I picked up The Way of Kings.

I'm not sure if it's me, since it's been a while since I've read epic fantasy, but I just can't get past the cliches or even his prose, which feels like a laundry list of descriptions. The story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either.

I really don't mean to offend, here, by the way.

I'm only a couple hundred pages in. Will things pick up? Is there another book of his you'd recommend?

.... Phone formatting

The story picks up, the endings of Sanderson's novels are pretty renowned. The prose doesn't improve.

If you don't think you'll survive that long, read one of his recent short stories like Legion and/or Emperor's Soul instead. They're among his best works (emperor's soul actually won a Hugo award IIRC), edit: but so is TWoK so don't expect them to be way better. Keep in mind though that his style polarizes quite a bit, in the sense that people either really like his work or can't enjoy any of them at all.

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007
His endings are about as intense as Malazan endings if you've read that series. And he suffers from the same issue that a few of the Malazan books do where they are SUPEREMELY backloaded when it comes to resolution.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug
WoK and WoR have both felt like the writing is way worse for the first 100 pages or so, and I can't put my finger on why, exactly.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Ugly In The Morning posted:

WoK and WoR have both felt like the writing is way worse for the first 100 pages or so, and I can't put my finger on why, exactly.

Szeth's tutorial levels.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

Tunicate posted:

Szeth's tutorial levels.

It's a love it or hate it style to some extent. I love that he just gets it over with in the prologue and them you never have to worry about what a lashing is since he got all the exposition done in the first three chapters, it can make it a little dry at times though.

I've learned to love not what he tells you, but the knowledge that there's fifty times more stuff he's not telling you but providing enough info to almost figure it all out.

Arcanen
Dec 19, 2005

treeboy posted:

It's a love it or hate it style to some extent. I love that he just gets it over with in the prologue and them you never have to worry about what a lashing is since he got all the exposition done in the first three chapters, it can make it a little dry at times though.

I've learned to love not what he tells you, but the knowledge that there's fifty times more stuff he's not telling you but providing enough info to almost figure it all out.

I think the thing that makes it so awkward is that we get all this lashing explanation that really isn't at all necessary for WoK, since Kaladin doesn't even really use lashing until a book and a half later. While I'm someone who absolutely loves Sanderson's "hard magic", it really wasn't necessary to give us such a precise tutorial of exactly how lashing works, at the cost of narrative flow and turning away a lot of readers, when Kaladin isn't going to do any serious lashing for 1500 freaking pages.

Kruller
Feb 20, 2004

It's time to restore dignity to the Farnsworth name!

I think you guys keep forgetting that Shallan got called out by the only two people who weren't trying to kiss her rear end for being a lighteyes. Kaladin and Jasnah both told her, in different ways, that her jokes aren't clever. Jasnah flat out said that all she was doing was firing off the first quip that came to mind, without considering if it had merit.

Based on her flashbacks, she didn't really do that at all until right before she killed her father. She quipped a little with her brothers, but her brothers were all seriously damaged emotionally, and she was doing anything to help them, and laughter was the only thing she could do reliably. Her brothers didn't seem especially smart, either, so any joke would do. I got the impression that house saw no levity at all outside of her, so any joke worked.

Once she got out in to the real world, her coping mechanism no longer worked because the people she used it on weren't as broken as her brothers.

Her joking stopped being so constant after Jasnah called her out in WoK, was almost completely absent until she was with the con artist I can't recall the name of, and came back in a more thought out way when she was with Adolin, because she actually wanted to impress him and knew she couldn't just crap out whatever turd joke she thought of. Except for the actual turd jokes, which were funny.


Remember that Sanderson isn't writing a comedy, but he is writing a character who uses humor as a shield.

Lightsong worked because, as a character, he didn't give a poo poo about anything, because nothing he saw mattered. No one did anything worth anything, so he didn't feel the need to make an effort. He wasn't rewarded for cleverness, he was rewarded for existing.

The Gardenator
May 4, 2007


Yams Fan

nucleicmaxid posted:

Except she's not like Vin at all. Vin didn't sound like an after school. Cartoon character. :colbert:

In mistborn book 2 Vin did get close to twilight level angst with Zane. That's one thing I hope doesn't happen in the stormlight books.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

The Gardenator posted:

In mistborn book 2 Vin did get close to twilight level angst with Zane. That's one thing I hope doesn't happen in the stormlight books.

This actually makes me curious if there's something more consistent going on with the spiritual/cognitive realms across different magic systems to grant people powers. Mistborn are physically broken in order to snap and Knights Radiant are emotionally broken in order to bond with spren

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

The Gardenator posted:

In mistborn book 2 Vin did get close to twilight level angst with Zane. That's one thing I hope doesn't happen in the stormlight books.

According to the annotations, zane is near-constantly using the emotional metals on vin.

As for snapping, it's physical or emotional extremes. Apparently its possible to be so happy you snap, just drat rare.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug

Tunicate posted:

Szeth's tutorial levels.

It lasts way longer than that, though. The prose just feels off for a while, and it's not like it's Sanderson's strength in the first place.

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007

The Gardenator posted:

In mistborn book 2 Vin did get close to twilight level angst with Zane. That's one thing I hope doesn't happen in the stormlight books.

Well, the fact that Zane is screwing with her emotions with both soothing and rioting and the fact that I believe Ruin is loving with her emotions 24/7 every time she's wearing the earring means I can forgive a little bit of angst.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Wasting posted:

I really wanted to like Sanderson, since a few people to me have been bugging me to read him, so I picked up The Way of Kings.

I'm not sure if it's me, since it's been a while since I've read epic fantasy, but I just can't get past the cliches or even his prose, which feels like a laundry list of descriptions. The story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either.

I really don't mean to offend, here, by the way.

I'm only a couple hundred pages in. Will things pick up? Is there another book of his you'd recommend?

.... Phone formatting

Honestly, Way of Kings is really not where I'd start with Sanderson. Mistborn is a much better introduction to his style.

I have to say, I think if I'd started with Way of Kings, I might not have carried on. It's good, but it's super slow to get going. As in, pretty much the whole of book one felt like a prelude to book two, to me. Book two picked up nicely.

Of course, it didn't help that it was published in 2 volumes in the UK, and I read the first one 6 months or so before picking them both up. Ugh.

bobthenameless
Jun 20, 2005

I actually started with way of kings; followed by the mistborn trilogy and most every other cosmere book afterwords. Since then I've reread WoK right before WoR was released and I noticed that the interludes were far more interesting on the re-read, I'm guessing because I only realized the cosmere deal after i finished the mistborn series and checking out this thread and various cosmere theories.

Even Szeth's tutorial wasn't too bad for me; Kaladin's flash backs were the roughest bits I thought the first time, but I think i just wanted to read more bridgeteam anyways at the time.

But I agree, mistborn as a whole is still probably the way to go for a Sanderson introduction and is what I tell people to go for first.

also, having recently reread alloy of law i'm really looking forward to the next set of mistborn books. Are they supposed to take place in the same time frame and is Wax the main dude? I recall (perhaps erroneously) that it was a side story but I'm not sure how it fits into the mistborn middle age books; it seemed to be leading towards the books dealing with the misting breeding going on and I assume Wax will be around for that going down.

also i enjoyed how the different religions sprung up and how marsh is the steel grim reaper, and how Harmony's prayer rites involved an earring :3:

Jorenko
Jun 6, 2004

I think you're just mad 'cause you're single.

bobthenameless posted:

also, having recently reread alloy of law i'm really looking forward to the next set of mistborn books. Are they supposed to take place in the same time frame and is Wax the main dude? I recall (perhaps erroneously) that it was a side story but I'm not sure how it fits into the mistborn middle age books; it seemed to be leading towards the books dealing with the misting breeding going on and I assume Wax will be around for that going down.

The Wax books are not part of the original Mistborn plan, which is:
1. medieval fantasy trilogy
2. modern fantasy trilogy
3. space fantasy trilogy

The Wax and Wayne books are 1.5: westerns!

Xemloth
Mar 27, 2011

Wait, what?



I'm sure I saw somewhere that the second mistborn trilogy was going to start with a misting SWAT team against a mistborn serial killer

I need that in my life.

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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice
The thing about the Kaladin flashbacks is that they are tedious. We already knew what was going on, there weren't any surprises except in the details, and everything was dour as gently caress. And there was no regard to pacing.

Shallan's flashbacks, on the other hand, were handled expertly, and is a clear mark of improvement.

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