Doors of Stonewalling: the Patrick Rothfuss Thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Doors of Stonewalling: the Patrick Rothfuss Thread

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

All of Kvothe's legends fading from memory before he's 30 makes sense if you assume Rothfuss is writing from the perspective of all of life being like college, where you can be the Biggest Man On Campus and have so many nicknames and exploits, and they'll all be (completely sensibly) forgotten within a year or two of your graduation. What little I know about Patrick Rothfuss makes it hard not to imagine him as the guy who goes back to college five years after he graduated, is appalled that none of the current students remember the immortal legends of his time there, and then proceeds to write 2.5 novels about how glory fades (and how he had all this no-strings-attached sex with these crazy chicks, maaan, even if that bitch Jenny from East Quad never hosed him).

# ¿ Feb 17, 2019 08:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:00

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

"The cobblestones were eternally damaged" as a symbol of badassery just makes me think of the TVTropes "broke 33 pencils" kid

# ¿ Feb 25, 2019 14:15

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

"This non-neurotypical protagonist is good because she just comes right out and tells you her neurological state makes her subhuman"

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 04:50

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Yeah, there's a strong "writing about something you've never read and didn't even look up a synopsis for, so you're going off the vaguest scraps of osmosed knowledge" feeling there. Whoever said it would get an F as a book report was right on.

# ¿ May 9, 2019 00:43

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

"I've read Nobel winners! Just, y'know, not the boring chapters. Mostly the ones where there are technically dragons."

# ¿ Jun 25, 2019 08:42

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Kchama posted:

"Actually Kvothe then started throwing up from the guilt of the murders!"

The Kingkiller Chronicles by Phillipe, age 5

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 00:44

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Thanks, I hate it

# ¿ Jul 19, 2019 02:27

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I'm not even sure what "Birthday Boyfriend" is supposed to mean, and I think that's for the best

# ¿ Jul 23, 2019 02:27

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Patware posted:

'cold to the touch' (which metal generally is)

Also grey, like steel tools tend to be, and unblemished, like cared-for or unused steel can be. The entire sentence is a waste.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2019 22:00

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

So an Alar is a dick, right

# ¿ Nov 27, 2019 05:35

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Kchama posted:

I'm just now reminded of that scene where he attempted to have a conversation that passes the Bechtdel test or however it's spelled and completely fails because the conversation is both about men and the other woman is not actually in the scene, and their dialogue is never actually shown.

The Bechdel test gets a lot of criticism for being simplistic, and it's true that passing it doesn't actually say much about the quality of a work, but attempting to pass it and somehow failing says so, so much.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2020 06:56

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Solice Kirsk posted:

One of my favorite drunk parent stories was when me and my dad went to a metal bar and I bought him that 20% NYF rootbeer. He drank like three more of them and then told me about how I was conceived.

Literally Your Father's Root Beer

# ¿ May 18, 2020 02:45

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

TheKennedys posted:

That Hobbit post is basically "Centerfold" but twelve minutes long

"Centerfold" at least has a punchline

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 20:36

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Not to distract from Captain Fuckbeard's Aftercare Couch, but what the gently caress happened here? Did homie have a severe Kool-Aid accident?

# ¿ Nov 26, 2020 02:04

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Man, some of those answers are particularly hot garbage. The next book will cover... between a year and a century? The number of surviving characters will not be exactly 2? C'mon, dude, at least try.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2020 04:34

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Sham bam bamina! posted:

D3ad_Ins1d3
0 points 1 day ago

Reading this post made my brain make the cut-flower sound.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 12:37

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

McLovin the Barbarian actually sounds slightly entertaining

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 02:38

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

He remembered her name, guys! The truest act of devotion! He may not have remembered a single other thing about her other than the ones that gave him a boner, but he remembered her name!!

# ¿ May 29, 2021 13:00

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Oh, good, we've hit the "dissect tiny details of the target's appearance" phase of the mock-thread life cycle

C'mon, Pat, give us a new blog post about how, I dunno, some new Star Wars thing is like seeing your ex at the supermarket and knowing her life has gone down the toilet since she dumped you because there's a six-pack of Mike's and a box of snack cakes in her cart

# ¿ Jul 15, 2021 23:28

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Fiasco is a roleplaying game about overconfident idiots and their amazingly stupid plans, so yeah, kinda?

# ¿ Oct 7, 2021 23:03

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Kvothe kills a king
It looks really cool
Cobblestones are irreplaceably shattered by magic
All the women want to do him!!
Except for Denna, the stupid whore (HEY EDITOR: how do I say she's a stupid whore in a sex-positive way??)
gently caress, what else did I say was gonna happen in this one

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 05:51

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

PJOmega posted:

Hell, the person who gushed about WMF to me for 6 hours from the passenger seat was someone who, at 24 years old, was a staunch advocate for how "wonderful and deep" Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series was. That's the sort of person who heaps praise endlessly on Rothfuss' work.

Was he wearing a tooth?

# ¿ Nov 11, 2021 14:38

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Nearby, the bricks of a tiny forge made small, sweet, pinging noises as they cooled. These tiny forgotten noises added a furtive silence to the larger, echoing one. They bound it together, like tiny stitches of bright brass thread, the low drumming counterpoint a tabor beats behind a song.

I love how completely maladroit this guy is at describing anything. All this praise for "beautiful prose," and every passage reads like a confused Martian who's taking in human sensory input for the first time.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2021 06:40

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

ThePopeOfFun posted:

I don’t mind Sham’s quote actually. It’s a nice silent scene, with small sounds happening you would only pick up when the surrounding area is actually quiet. The tabor is dumb, but the rhythm thought is nice and I don’t think it’s a bad paragraph.

The concept is fine -- a soft sound you wouldn't expect to hear, making it more obvious that the environment is unusually quiet -- but the prose is garbage and barely conveys anything. The music references are particularly shoehorned in, since that sort of natural cooling ping isn't going to create a rhythm at all, unless the listener is constructing it. It could work if rewritten, but it absolutely doesn't work here.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2021 04:44

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I think I've said it in this thread before, but the vibe I get from Rothfuss's writing is someone who got praised for their prose style very early in their career (like, possibly "as a kid" early) and whose style ossified on the spot. Dude clearly got complimented on his "lyrical" prose and decided he was perfect, with no need to learn anything like "moderation" or "make sure your metaphors make any loving sense."

# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 00:20

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Come And See posted:

In RP1, everyone fixates on a dead man's favourite passions in the hopes they'll get rich and escape poverty. Meanwhile culture has stagnated for decades; no one makes new art because everyone is so focused on 80s trivia, and not because they like it, not because they understand it, but because it is the only thing worth money.

It is so close to being a damning criticism of nostalgia. The movie should have been directed by Paul Verhoeven.

Yeah, I feel like the book could be a very pointed satire of the modern nostalgia-driven pop culture landscape, where older richer demographics keep the media of their youth in the spotlight and strangle innovation, if only Ernest Cline thought that was a bad thing. This dude wrote a book about a dystopia of widespread poverty and complete desperation, a world where art is dead and fossilized, and thinks it's great because it means teenagers care about Ladyhawke.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2022 00:06

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I know this is the dorkiest complaint to have about it, but the RP1 VRMMO isn't even described as a good game -- every description sounds like Cline, at best, had an MMO described to him once over the phone. There's even loving permadeath! I suppose "lovely jank product gets huge market share because it's a dystopia" is realistic enough, but Cline clearly has no idea he's doing it.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2022 03:09

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Atlas Hugged posted:

It really sums up his oeuvre with vigor.

"He wrote a lot, but it wasn't very good at being the thing he said it was."

It's nearly a perfect example of the archetypal Bad Nerd Joke (overly long, not remotely funny, teller thinks it makes him the smartest boy alive), but ideally it would be a pun, and also he would retweet it five times in an hour to make sure you really appreciate his brilliance

# ¿ Mar 16, 2022 09:15

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Big fan of "Rothfuss uses the same generic simile to describe three different female characters, therefore maybe they're the same person?? Obviously this has deep lore implications and is not just Everyone's Favorite Fantasy Prosesmith being a boring hack."

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 00:16

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I think the funniest outcome would be Rothfuss getting pulled off his own series, Brandon Sanderson coming in and writing an extremely workmanlike 500 pages of pure plot where Kvothe kills a king and doesn't have any sex, and Rothfuss writing an angry blog post about his masterpiece being sullied ~~like that BITCH Linda from high school after she started wearing contacts and going out with Greg from the soccer team~~

# ¿ Oct 21, 2022 23:56

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I was mostly thinking Sanderson because that dude could knock it out in like two months and hit all of the planned plot beats without breaking a sweat

Also, don't give Larry Correia money

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 02:28

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

The beatific smile as he ascends to Heaven, Cheerios boxes floating in his wake

# ¿ Oct 22, 2022 03:09

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I didn't really intend that joke to have much to do with Sanderson in specific; he was just the first guy I thought of as a hired-gun series-finisher who could knock out all the dangling plot threads in a tight package. Replace him with Donald Westlake or another vintage crime-paperback factory if you like.

Bonus comedy option: R.L. Stine

# ¿ Oct 27, 2022 01:47

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I knew a dude in college who brewed his own mead in a garbage can and I think he still applied more scientific thinking to the process

I'm also pretty sure he recognized that not everyone in Scandinavia was Hagar the Horrible

# ¿ Jan 10, 2024 00:56

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Kchama posted:

I think he’s been a professor since The Name of the Wind came out? I do remember that he apparently took 9 years in college and only graduated because the school told him to pick a major already.

I think I posted this about these books before, but I feel like the entire tone of Kvothe achieving all these AMAZING DEEDS and EPIC SEX QUESTS and SCHOOL ADMIN SHENANIGANS, and then he's a forgotten washed-up nobody by 25 or whatever, is completely "guy who peaked, or thought he peaked, in college." It certainly fits with a dude who just hosed around for nine years before being asked to leave.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2024 02:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:00

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

TV Zombie posted:

Maybe someone here could get AI to write that third book?

Still hoping that this somehow ends up in Brandon Sanderson's hands and he bangs out the last book in like a month and a half

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 18:51

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Doors of Stonewalling: the Patrick Rothfuss Thread