Hey guys, I just wanted to let yall know about a site that a friend and I are starting centered around Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. Its brand new we literally set it up yesterday at the time of this post. There didn't seem to be any similar fansite to Dragonmount or 17thshard, so we decided there should be a place for that community to meet as well.

 

I contributed to the Structured section of this site under the account Padraic_Seebrr back in the "glory days" when the last three books had yet to come out. What I hope to accomplish with this site (www.thecrockery.org) is to recapture the essence of that time with a series that has not yet finished.

 

Thanks for hearing me out, and hope I see you at The Crockery if you have read the Kingkiller Chronicles series by Patrick Rothfuss.

 

FYI, Pat is a good dude and an unofficial-official Friend of Dragonmount, since we brought him in to host an author's Q&A in the Illuminator's way back when (during the run-up to the release of Name of the Wind).  So I'm very supportive of anything that brings him publicity and fans.  Which is one way of saying if you haven't read these books yet ... go do it

 

As if I needed another reason to like either of you.

I didn't know much about any of this, but I have found the Hugos to be increasingly irrelevant of late.  I agree with what Wert said about message and quality both being important.  Ideally, the books that should be winning awards should combine the pure enjoyment found in more pulpy SFF works with something more meaningful like the social commentary that turned SF into a serious literary genre.  Personally, I don't care about an author's politics as long as they don't infest his/her work too much and he/she knows how to write a novel.  I disagree with a lot of Orson Scott Card's political views, but love his books.  Terry Goodkind on the other hand, makes me want to vomit.

A wild Wombat appears!

Boston is shutting down the subway and the trains tonight/tomorrow >.<

I'm going to remain conspicuously silent on what the weather is like here . . .   . . . in the interest of my safety, of course. 

80s and humid?

Snowing here again today, my office is closed. 

We broke a 10 day snow record btw.

Way too harsh imo.  People should be able to give their children dumb names if they want.  It's stupid and might cause trouble for the kid, but so are plenty of other parenting decisions that the state has no interest interfering in.  And this one wasn't even that bad.  Not only is Nutella delicious, but odds are she would've ended up adopting Ella as a nickname anyways.  No need for the state to step in there imo.

Tested my shovel out yesterday.  Works fine.

That point of Dom's about the 3-way split is a good one, although I don't know why it's an indictment of Brandon so much as TOR.  The structural issues severely lessened the potential for eucatastrophe, which is a very important part of epic fantasy.

I know you do, mb :)

 

No-one else was.

 

Story of mb's life?  <3 mb.

Yeah, BS just didn't get Mat.  I also didn't like how daft and un-Aiel Aviendha seemed when he wrote her.  In Brandon's defense, though, I think he got much better at writing Mat by AMoL.  Regardless, there is no question that Harriet made the right decision wrt the outriggers.  It is what RJ would have wanted.

Personally, I would love to see a woman make it in the MLB.  She might have to be a knuckleball pitcher or something, but even that would be awesome.

I think I'd just like for my gender to not be classed as an insult.

Watch Mo'ne pitch.  She strikes out the side to complete a two-hitter :)

Also, as for the ASUS ad, it's definitely playing on sexist stereotypes, but it's pretty mild compared to some of the stuff I've seen in gaming.  The doxxing of prominent women on the scene for instance.

Also, another thing to look at regarding feminism and sports would be the somewhat recent controversy over NFL policy with respect to violence against women.  Baltimore Ravens RB, Ray Rice was caught on camera punching out his then fiancée.  The NFL initially only suspended him for two weeks, which resulted in public outcry.  Subsequent arrests of other NFL athletes for violence against women and children escalated the situation.  People have called for the commissioner to resign.  He has vowed to make changes after the Super Bowl, but that seems to be too far off to many.  Unfortunately, people seem to have been distracted by Ebola and midterm elections lately.  Personally, I'm considering not watching the Super Bowl unless my team makes it.

Good article about the physical obstacles to women in pro baseball:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-physical-obstacle-for-women-in-baseball/

Throwing like a girl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRPEEXi3_C0

Resisting compulsion is about strength of will, not military acumen.  I also don't think it's a coincidence that the Great Captain who resisted Hessalam's compulsion the most effectively was the one fighting in Shayol Ghul, nearest to the Dragon Reborn.

Gitara's foretelling was spoken in the present sense and with a great degree of urgency.  She actually dropped dead the moment she had finished uttering it.  That suggests to me that Rand's birth was, at the very least, extremely imminent.  Also, given Tam's account from his feverish ramblings in EotW we know that Rand's birth took place very shortly after the end of the fighting in the Aiel War.  As others have pointed out, it's rather immaterial whether or not the foretelling actually took place before the birth or during it.  It was still knowledge that Gitara couldn't have known by any normal means and is therefore a "foretelling" as that is what spontaneous, spoken prophecies made by Aes Sedai are called in the Wheel of Time.

TSR is probably my favorite book in the series :)

Mat is really the only one I find overly one-dimensional early on and he starts to come into his own about book 3 and is probably my favorite character by book 5.  As for continuing or not, it's a lot of volume, but anyone considering reading a series like the Wheel of Time already knows that.  It's up to you to decide whether or not it will be worth it, but I'd say that if you don't like the series by the time you've finished book 5, you probably never will.  That's a long time to wait though, so idk.  Personally, I often have trouble getting through series that I often end up enjoying later on.  I'm currently struggling through The Malazan Book of the Fallen.  It took me forever to get through Gardens of the Moon, but for all the tediousness, I liked it a lot in the end.

Also, I wouldn't say the Wheel of Time is the best fantasy series of all time.

 

Eventually the negative sentiments will start to destroy the reputation of this series. I shudder to think what will happen with any adaptations if this happens.

 

Using GoT as an example: old fans (1996-2000) - they hate (and most of them don't watch!) the tv series, new 'fans' (2011-2014) - the tv series is superior in every way (and only idiots read the books). Interesting aspects.

Terrible generalization.  I started reading A Song of Ice and Fire in 2007 or 2008, so apparently I don't exist according to your categories.  As for my opinion, I like the TV show, but I recognize that like any adaptation of a novel, it's an adaptation and isn't going to be 100% faithful.  For instance, combining or paring away a lot of the characters was pretty important for putting it on TV.  I think the show's creators took a few too many liberties at points and got some things wrong, but overall, they did a lot more right than they did wrong, and the show is a faithful representation of the spirit of GRRM's work.

@ Suttree

Wow to the bolded. I don't even know where to go with that. Rowling...superior...material. *cough*

 

From his own site:

 

http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/reviews.asp

 

"Harry Potter fans craving a new mind-blowing series should look no further than THE NAME OF THE WIND--the first book in a trilogy about an orphan boy who becomes a legend.

 

His debut novel combines the intricate stories-within-stories structure of The Arabian Nights with the academic setting of the Harry Potter series,

 

a Harry Potter for grownups.

 

Rowling was/is not an original author, but she was better handling that theme than Rothfuss.

 

That's a quote taken from an Amazon review.  That's not even close to evidence that Rothfuss' work is derivative.  There are definitely similarities between Harry Potter and Kvothe, but Kvothe is 8 million times more interesting.  Also, Rothfuss lampshades and inverts a lot of common fantasy tropes while Rowling plays them straight.  And his prose is much, much better.