Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: Chaosman on May 15, 2003, 11:04:20 PM
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Anyone else here read Robert Jordan's Wheel of time Series? If so, what are you impressions/ theories/favorite moments?
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HAHAHAH! I GET TO SET THE TONE! (Jordan fans run and hide in fear).
I read the first hundred pages. Got so bored I wanted to cry. I only read that far because i was on a camping trip and woke up at 5 am and that was the ONLY book around and no one was awake. I was too cold to leave the fire and not hungry enough to rifle for food. I disliked many things about the experience, and I probably won't try it again. But I'll leave this little hate letter for Robert Jordan short this time and let someone else talk it up.
And yes, cuz someone will eventually mention it, yes, I am jealous. I'd love to make bank like him off writing whatever slop came out of my pen. But that doesn't mean I can't legitimately dislike his work (I don't like Stephen King either, incidentally).
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You know, Robert Jordan is really lucky to have a wife, who just so happened to be an editor at Tor. You think he would write better women character's then.
I read I think the first six books. I would recommend to someone the first three, but then they should stop. they've become very formulated to the point where it has become unbelievable. Over all I'm dissapointed in Robert Jordan for not stopping the series sooner. He could have made a new series in the same world and probably have made better novels and more money.
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There's a pretty extensive discussion of WoT in the "So, what's everyone reading thread" if you care to take a peek.
For myself, I read the first four books before I got sick of it. The first book was amazing and really had me itching for more, but after that it is all downhill. Long, irrelevant descriptions and the juggling of too many uninteresting characters made me quit reading.
Consequently, King is one of my favorite authors, but that's kinda OT :)
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Eh. I own most, and have read all of, the first 10.
At this moment in time, i cannot be bothered to read any more. I might as well just wait until he does the last one and then read the last 10 pages in the bookstore.
It is a pity because it is a very interesting world, with a good backstory, but the more recent books are very... uninspiring.
Overall, i would recommend you get them from a library. If you must have your fantasy fix, try games workshops "Black Library (http://www.blacklibrary.com/)" division. They have very good stuff, and they are all based against an excellent world with a ongoing metaplot (much better than white wolfs one for a lot of reasons).
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Even I will admit that RJ tends to stretch descriptions out too far, but not nearly as far as so called greats like Dickens or Cather. The last book was sort of disappointing, but I will still read the series. I like the epic expanse of the novels, though many lack the attention span/time required to appreciate them. I also agree that some of the characters could have been cut (I demand a Mat only novel!). All in all, I still find it well worth my time to read.
Is trhere no one hear that agrees with me?
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RJ has the whole epic thing down, he just needs to get rid of a lot of characters or give them their own novels rather than lumping them all together.
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TBH... it should never have got this far. Many of the plotlines too up far too much space, and had little overall effect. He could have wrapped it up around book 8, and made a nice, consise, epic fantasy series. As it is... Im avoiding it for now.
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wow. Compare him to Terry Brooks and he's a hero. Measure him objectively and it looks like everyone thinks he kind of sucks.
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Feel free to bash Willa Cather, Chaosman, but don't mess with Dickens. Some of the "so called greats" are great for a reason.
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er... can *I* bash Dickens? Since I've studied literature and still don't like him? I find him dull, but more exciting than Mellville. My favorite of the realists is Austen, which isn't saying much, as many of you have heard what I have to say about *her*. You'd think with my hostility toward realism I'd like Romanticism. But no dice. Well, that's not entirely true, there are a number of romanticists I quite enjoy. I think I just don't pin myself to a movement, but there are certain movements toward which my philosophy and theory of literature are hostile.
Which is to say I like cervantes and a lot of gothic Spanish stuff and Medieval and Renaissance literature.
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Just FYI Chaos half the people on this site are english/litature/art graduates. So they pretty much hate everything, haveing been subjected to untold amounts of crap in school. I've never read the books (haveing heard more bad things then good about the series), but most people I've talked to basicaly agree with 42.
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lol. I know lots of english majors here who hate the books too. Oddly, thier the only ones I know who have read it and hated it. I'm a writer my self, and thats why I could never be an english major :P
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Hrmph. The resident Comparative Literature major styles himself a writer too (and has some print evidence to back this up). And at least two English majors and an art major feel the same.
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Sorry, in joke. I always jibe my friends that I couldn't be an English major and a writer, because I don't want to hate myself. (They hate everything that was ever written -- Jordan, Tolkien, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Me....)
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I don't hate EVERYTHING. Just anything in the last 350 years or so :D
I kid!
I had a friend in an IRC chatroom point out that everyone he knows who studied creative writing formally now hates to write. ANd I *can* take a joke, really, I'm just pointing things out because it annoys Entropy when I get "too analytical"
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"As a student of the arts, the bitterness inside you must be carefully cultivated and focused so that you may snub any artistic endevour as a mockery to your very essence."
A quote from the National Standards for the Arts. ;D
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I've never considered Dickens a realist. All of his characters are charicatures and all of his stories are melodramas. Maybe he is classed as a realist based on period or some such artificial label, but to that I say Bah!
And Chaos--don't even pretend to class Jordan in the same group as Tolkien, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. I know you didn't mean it, but it still hurts.
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It's not just eras. "Realism" isn't necessarily based on exactly how the characters are portrayed. It's how it looks at the world and the setting. There is actually a lot that is metaphoric and allegorical about realist texts. Dickens is a realist. And despite the allegory and metaphor, I find him icky.
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When I was doing student teaching I had two juniors who would try and convince me that Robert Jordan was light-years better than Tolkien. Major tongue-biting time, I tell you. As teachers, we try and build students up, not lay the smack down, and sometimes that's very hard.
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Even when they have no clue what they're talking about? Shouldn't they have to learn when they're wrong or soemthing? I mean, what could you POSSIBLY base that argument on? That Trollocs are cooler than orcs? Or that an angsty youngster who never makes a decision is cooler than a hobbit?
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To be honest, I was al little angry when they pestered me. Angry because of what they said, or perhaps their ignorance. (Yes, I'm a rabid Tolkien fan.) And what I had to say at the moment wouldn't have been educational. It would have been mean.
Perhaps ignorance is their punishment. (Yes, I'm an awful teacher.) Perhaps they will come to the truth eventually of their own accord and look back with gratitude that I spared them the humilation in front of their peers. Or maybe they'll be mad that I hadn't stopped them sooner, and hunt me down in ten years with an assault rifle.
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which end result do YOU deserve?
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Maybe they can say "thanks" before they shoot me. And then legislation banning assault weapons following the outrageous killing (which of course occurred in the classroom.) They'll call it the "Kije Bill." And Charleton Heston will hate me.
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Ooo. You don't want him hating you. He's got an "in" with God.
Wait... that's Moses... Nevermind...
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You know, we all derive entertainment value differently. From my experience, that is all that high school students look at in book. What sort of hedonistic value do they get out of it. So, yes it is sad they don't recognize value beyond "that's cool", but as a teacher you can't take away that simplistic happiness away from them as that would simply be cruel.
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The problem isn't that they like a book, it's that they endeavored to "prove" to a fan of an inherantly better book that their lesser book was better.
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I vote we lead a punitive strike upon these students to protect a fellow forum goer.
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Hey, we've got pretty strong precedence for pre-emptive action now. Why don't we just nuke a bunch of them for good measure? ;)
42, you make an interesting point. Perhaps in future classes I should precede the study of any work of literature by an "Introduction to Hedonism" lesson. That could be fun. Aside from the getting fired part.
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Yes, but in their view of things it's really just your hedonistic taste versus their hedonistic taste and they believe that their approach to hedonism is better. And often with teenagers, they have their self-esteem wrapped up in this too.
So, first, inherent superiority is not recognized, so that is a null point. Second, it would devolve into a battle of self-esteem which would probably end with the teenagers feeling antagonistic towards the teacher and thus undermining the respect the teacher has earned.
Essentially, for a teacher to argue with his/her students about this kind of stuff is just a bad idea all around. Any other adult probably could, but a teacher really shouldn't.
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Yeah, to be serious, I'd never get into a heated debate with a student about something like that. To be honest, I'd never get into a heated (emotionally-charged) debate with a student period. Keeping your cool is always a good idea. But if I were able to guide the debate along the lines of witty banter/trash talking, with the occassionally dropped good point, it might be fun, and get the students to think about things. You know, spend a minute before class, a minute in the hall during passing time, something like this would strengthen the relationship rather than undermine it. Always keeping it positive, never making personal attacks.
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You guys remove all the fun from destroying the souls of teh young and innocent
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Gah! :o I leave the forum for a little while and I come back to find this topic at three pages!
Okay, I get it, WoT isn't well liked here. I for one do like it. Its not on par with LotR, but what is. There is nothing inherently better about any of these works than any other, just a messure of one enjoyment. As for my comparison of Jordan to Tolkien, Shakespeare and others like them: WoT, LotR, a Middsummer's Nigh dream, and the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe share a shelf in my dormroom :)
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In school, the destruction of young, innocent souls is reserved for the PE teacher. I've subbed for PE classes. It's like peering into the very Heart of Darkness.
**shudder**
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I think being a PE teacher is *BEING* in the very heart of darkness.
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Let me put in a small defense for our esteemed colleague Mr. Rigney, also known as Robert Jordan. Despite criticisms, many of which are valid, he has done several important things.
1) He consistently gets on the best seller lists. This helps fantasy in general sell better.
2) He may not be extremely original, but he provides crossover appeal. I know several people who are not fantasy authors, but who enjoy Robert Jordan. By maintaining such a high profile, he again helps fantasy by giving new people experience with he genre.
3) He put in his time. He may have had inside help, but he spent years writing those Conan books before he finally was able to put out his own series. The Eye of the World was not published in hardback originally (as I remember.) It received only moderate publicity. It succeeded on the merits of its story.
Now, he may have exploited this success a little too far, but is there really any reason to pick him out as opposed to other authors, such as Anne McCaffery and Piers Anthony, who have done the exact same thing?
ps. Lay off Mellville, you philistine. ;)
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Mellville is the devil.
And who's letting Piers Anthony off the hook? I regret every last second I spent reading him as a teenager, or which there are more than I care to mention.
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who is peirs antony?
For that matter, who is mellville?
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Piers ANthony has written about a billion fantasy and science fiction targetted at teenagers. They're all horrible and yet teenagers still love him. And as he gets older he becomes more and more perverted. Ick.
Mellville wrote this heinously boring novel called Moby Dick, Or the Whale.
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What is it about Anthony, anyway? You're dead on. Teenagers--and I was one of them--love him. I can think back to most of my teenage infatuations (even most TSR books) with fondness, but I think of him and just cringe.
Perhaps Anthony was a bad example. The point of the referance, however, was to note that few series can keep momentum through that many books. Some very fine authors write some fairly bad books when they're forced to reuse the same ideas over and over.
As for Melville, I have only one question. Have you read Billy Budd? It's far superior to Moby Dick. (Though, to be honest, I like Moby Dick too.)
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I dunno. I attribute it to general lack of taste in adolescants.
Better examples for your rant would probably have been Terry Brooks (though I don't really want to see this become a Brooks/Jordan fight again) or Raymond E. Feist, who had a really good first series and then let it slowly deteriorate until we got the Krondor series (ick!). Upholding your argument would have been citiing his Servant of the Empire series or Faerie Tale, both of which used new characters and new settings, and were much better than any of his successive books set in Midkimia after the Riftwar Saga.
As for Mellville, yeah, BB is considerably better than MD, but I still can't say I enjoyed it like I do even a number of other American classics (and I don't like much American "literature").
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The serpent war series was quite good, but all the ones between rift and serpent were pretty crap. And the ones based on the computer games are just painful. But the servant series was awesome. And i liked the horror one set in modern day america.
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That's sort of my point. The Serpent War had new characters and a huge chunk of it took place on a completely separate continent from the other series. That's why I liked it better than most of his others.
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I would recommend to someone the first three, but then they should stop.
This is strangly exactly what I tell people. Read the first three and pretend it ends there, otherwise you are just wasting your time. Now there are some people who still love the series, but these are usually the same type of fans who make me hate the books even more. You can't even do a WoT RPG with them, because if the even slightest deviation from the novels is found, you will never hear the end of it.
These same fans who actually do roleplay get even worse. 9/10 times they will play an Aes Sedai and mock anyone who plays a nonchanneler that believes they have even a slight chance of doing anything significant. No one is allowed to play a book character unless they are only going to do a scene out of the book word for word, in fear of changing the story. Which of course leads to the group never being able to do anything of real importance, because anything remotely useful would somehow change the story. So keep in mind that one reason I do not like these books as much is from roleplaying with people like this.
The first two books were good. The begining and end of Dragon Reborn was good, but everything in between was boring save for the occational scene (like when they fight the darkhounds), because RJ took out the main character. Four got better, with a lot of the story about Rand, but ever since that book the story has steered further and further away from the main character and to all the secondary characters. Its now got to the point where you are reading 20 pages about a character who was mentioned once or twice in a previous book and you only get passing mention of the main character.
Its also slowly becoming aparrent that many of the things RJ said about the series is untrue. When people first started noticing the change in tempo, he credited it to moving away from the LotR base he set the first book on. Now it is easy to see the change in tempo was him moving away from the idea of having a central character and going to a bunch of secondary characters with occationally interwoven plotlines (similar to a soap opera). Strangely enough, his fanbase has shifted from young males to older females. This is probably the same reason so many fans complain about the WoT RPG, since it was based off the fantasy world of the first few books instead of the drama of the latter.
Probably the worst thing is how hard the story is getting to follow. The first books, it was about all of these unmentioned things you could figure out by rereading them and paying attention. All of these have been completely revealed at this point, and left in their place are overdone descriptions and even more characters. I've heard a few confused people think its because the answer is in these little untold stories that the first few books had (like how all the main characters had some type of bloodline connection to each other). But nothing is there, the reason its confusing at all is the sheer overwhelming force of all the characters. The books are practically split into 20-page chapters each about a completely different character and plot. The books are also litterally backtracking. Between the end of book 9 and end of book 10, only several days pass. This is because most of the book is a flashback to things that happened in book 9 and even far back as book 8 or earlier. The book will say one thing has happened (that something being a plot advancement), then in the next book you only discover it never happened. Which goes back to RJ's contrived method of "rumors" he set up, where only 10% of what you hear is true. At least he gives readers a clue that most of what they're reading is BS.
I can't talk about this anymore today. The more I think about them the more I hate them. I'm ashamed to even say I've read them (and a lot more than once... its basically a requirement to understand what the heck is going on).
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WOT Sux. Lord of the Rings rules. Anyone who says different should be fed through a grater....
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uh... thanks for that enlightening viewpoint.
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Yes have you noticed our new pet teenager? Gorgon and Onion can breathe a sigh of relief now that they no longer carry the title of "absurdly young newbie who comes out of nowhere and posts random things that have no purpose."
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I know him IRL. I apologise for him. Please don't blame me, I didn't invite hm here or even tell him about the site.
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Oh, be nice. Honestly, we were all random, brainless teenagers once. I have fond memories of that time (the ones I'm not repressing....)
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I wasn't a random brainless teenager who went to new places and spouted off random things to people I didn't know. I was a quiet shy introverted brainless teenager who kept to herself and read lots of escapist fantasy.
I just think it's common sense to introduce yourself when you're among strangers. If I walked into a crowd of strangers at a party and said, "Man I hate Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time!" (and I might, don't put it past me) I'd expect to be looked at funny, and for them to make fun of me once I'd left.
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YOu should note that the only post I mocked (and mocked very lightly at that) was the one that had the least content and was the most flamable of Xaio's posts.
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I know him IRL. I apologise for him. Please don't blame me, I didn't invite hm here or even tell him about the site.
Yes but the question is, does he enjoy hitting Koalas with sticks?
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Quite possibly, but I've never witnessed him doing it. Koala whacking is a high ranking and well-repsected job here, so i doubt he'd get a position doing it.
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I thought you said it was a minimum wage job
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I could imagine some PETA group paying people to hit the people who hit koalas, but...
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Maybe the government pays for Koalas to be hit with sticks in order to bait PETA.
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No, no, no, no no. There's Koala Whacking and then there's *Koala Whacking*. One is a minimum wage job done by teens and uni students. The other is a professional career requiring a four year degree. We respect our Koala Bashes, we do.
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other is a professional career requiring a four year degree. We respect our Koala Bashes, we do.
I now know what I'm going to change my major to next.
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We just went through this on the other thread. You can't change your major in an Australian uni, you need to apply directly to the course, in this case Bachelor of Koala Relocation. You then need to do several units. First semester includes:
Basher's Network, which discusses how the career uses a combination of compitition and co-operation.
Studies of Koala Bashing, which looks at the Technical and Social issues of Koala bashing.
Tools for Bashers, which is all about the equipment.
Recording Koalas, which is how to fill out the complex paperwork in order to claim rightful bounties and not be overcharged in tax.
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We just need to import a high quantity of Koalas so we can start a program in koala bashing at an American school, so we can remain competitive.
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Won't be hard, thanks to the new Free Trade agreement. Score another for The Man vs global diversity.
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well, this thread went off the wall...
I recently finished reading the WoT books. I'd read the first one during my senior year, and wasn't impressed enough to keep reading. But then a couple months ago I got bored and decided to try them out. Went through them all pretty fast.
I was entertained. I'll read the rest when they come out. I do not believe it's possible to finish the story satisfactorily in just two books, but Jordan is swearing he plans to do this. At the end of the Dumais Wells chapter with the big battle it says it's only a small sample of what's to come, and so far we've seen nothing even close. Things like this are pointing me to the belief that the end will be a letdown. But maybe if I expect the worst, I can be pleasantly surprised.
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Jordan doesn't, in my opinion, deserve the harsh criticism he's received. But, I think I mentioned something along those lines earlier. Either way, he is masterful at writing. The entire project got kind of bloated, but he's been very successful with it.
I'm in the 'once he finishes them all, I'll go read them' camp. I fizzled out around book eight or nine.
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I'm in the 'once he finishes them all, I'll go read them' camp. I fizzled out around book eight or nine.
I got to book 11. He seems to be slowly tying up the loose ends - the other countries basically. Its quite amusing. Not only are critics wondering why he just doesn't finish it off, so are some characters. The north kingdoms sent an army down to ask Rand just what the hell was taking so long.
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I started reading WoT about 2 years ago now. I agree with the general consensus, the first ones were good, now they are pathetic boring and generally irritating. Since starting, I've managed to get to about the 8th book, after having to stop several times for breaks of months to recover from boredom ++
And incidentally, i like Terry Brooks. The books did get repetitive and boring after a while, but generally I think he's a good writer.
*Crouches and waits for flames*
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I remember LOVING the first three when I read them years ago.
When I came back to try Scions, I got very bored. Landover, however, had some amusing parts.
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I confess a guilty enjoyment of all the Shanarra books I've read (all but one, I think). I have more hardcover Brooks books than anyone else. And his Star Wars Ep. 1 novelization was better at showing character motivations than the film was (Note, this is the ONLY Star Wars novel I have remotely thought was good, and I only purchased it because Brooks wrote it). You're probably tired of me saying it, but the Word and the Void series are immeasurably better than anything else he's done, and I recommend them even to Shanarra haters.
Brooks, whom I've met several times, is a really nice person as well.
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He has a nifty website too.
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I like Brooks too. I got all the way to the new series where Bo is the Druid, but I haven't made it to the second book in the series. (I should borrow it from my brother since I gave it to him for Christmas in 2002.) I disagreed with what he was doing with Bo. It seemed to trivialize the characterization of Allanon in Wishsong that I liked.
I met Mr. Brooks (and he signed my copy of Wishsong) but he pronounced it Shan ar a , instead of shah Nahr a, which weirded me out.
I love David Eddings. I know his plots and characters are similar, and yet I've never seen anyone handle so many characters so comfortably before. And there really isn't as many direct correlations between the Belgariad/Mallorian and Elenium/Tamulli series as some people claim.
Patricia C. Wrede, juvenile fiction, is the one that I have the most hardbacks of. One day I will have all of her books in hardback. For now I am content to have the hardbacks of all of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The cover art is much better.
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I think the only hardbacks I own are the Harry Potters my mother in law buys and whatever free stuff I get from World Fantasy. The most books I own by any one author, however, is definitely Saberhagen.
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I haven't read the WOT series, nor do I follow it. But it seams funny to me that Jordan hasn't even finished the series and he's allready writeing Prequals (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765306298/ref=pd_ts_b_11/104-3383949-3163117?v=glance&s=books&n=25) to it.
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well, there's no rule that says you have to write your books in order.
I was going to say Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books are written in an order that's not very chronological, but the best example is probably CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Apparently he preferred them to be ordered chronologically (I saw some recent edition that says "in the author's preferred order") but they were written in a very different order.
It's easier to get away with when you have a loosely-connected universe you're writing in (like Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe novels, which are in all sorts of places along the timeline), but with a series like WoT, if there's a story you feel should be told before the series is over, and it happens to be set before the other books so far, why not write it?
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well, there's no rule that says you have to write your books in order.
Yeah, with most authors I would agree with you, but in this case I can't. He is already angering huge numbers of fans with this perpetual series, that is never getting anywhere close to ending. Yet he keeps promising that he will end it soon, and on top of that hes publishing a trilogy (I believe) of sequals (remember, WOT started as a trilogy I believe). And hes writing slower and slower.
I don't really mind that the books are becoming more and more about a group of main characters rather than just one. What bothers me is that a) nothing is happening, and b) the prologues. Each book they grow, become less and less about anything that is happening in the books, and more about introducing new chars and plot strands that are unnecessary (and that he swears he had planned on all along). Even more annoyingly, he doesn't bother to mention a lot of these at all in the rest of the book. It is one thing to add a new plot strand in a book if it is important to the book, but there are no reason for them. Was anyone else annoyed that he added another famous general in the last books prologue, and then added him in to a few random discussions about the 'best generals in the world' just to make it seem like everyone had known about him all along?
Sorry about the rant. I fall into the "I'm never going to buy another hardback from this man again, but I'll get the series in paperback and read them" category (but not the prequals).
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I was forced through the first three, which i thought were great, and now i've stopped for the moment...a LONG moment...for a rest of his nonsense.
I have determined a formula for the series i think may need some revision and i dont mind if you help.
1. All characters begin in last location of previous book. All then note that they must "all" go to point D or be accidently led there by Rand's influence.
2. Haphazardly stumble around points A-C without accomplishing anything but splitting the group into three new, equally boring groups.
3. Now with one group each in points A, B, and C, they all decide that they "should" go to point D after all.
4. After much boring, useless detail and character flaws mentioned in their own heads, they do go to point D.
5. Point D is the battlefield of some climatic event near the end of the book to get you excited about getting the next one and reading it through.
6. You come to the realization of this pattern and stop reading, for the series could have ended nicely after book three.
7. Kick friend who introduced you to books.
8. Find Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and have a good read.
The last few were for humor, but the rest were nearly intelligent. I didnt like how each character was afraid of their own abilities, and unconfident, regardless of the situation.
Jordan spent a lot of time telling the reader that the characters needed to be somewhere, only for four chapters of useless running around was complete for everyone to know where to go and when. I wish they could be more like a D&D session, the DM explains something while another character was not present, but the player was. When the character returns, we "tell him what happened" as though he had been there the whole time.
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I always recommend that people read Wheel of Time, particularly if I don't like them.
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That's an interesting analysis, Paper. However, I must point out that the presence of a formula alone isn't necessarily indicative of an unentertaining book.
Most books and series follow patterns. Whether the author uses the traditional heroic cycle, or a more modern narrative structure such as the 'detective/mystery' plot, formulas are quite common in writing. In fact, if there ISN'T a formula, then many readers become confused and uninterested because they can't unconsciously predict the narrative flow and tension of the book.
The skill of an author, therefore, is not to defy plotting conventions, but to use them in a way as to make them invisible. Depth of characterization, clever discoveries in the plot, general world submersion--these things, when done well, can make the most cliched plotting structure seem vivid and real. That is why we can read virtually the same plot structure at the beginning of every Harry Potter book, yet enjoy them all thoroughly.
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Ok who keeps on resurecting this thread! Some threads deserve to die in obscurity and this is one of them.
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I think his point was more that the story could have finished in 3 books yet for some reason RJ insists that it can't and now we are moving into 10+ books. And he is right, its getting even worse now. The last book even worked in reverse, moving further from the ending. Grrr, I must stop thinking about this now before I tear out my eyes.
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I wish I could get paid to write a book with no plot, no action, and is worse than a fanfic.
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which fanfic?
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That comment barely deserves a response, so I'll barely give one.
If they have no plot, no action, and terrible writing, why do people read them? I guess the fantasy-reading public is just a big mass if idiots who can't distinguish quality. I'm glad we cleared this up--now we can all go read James Joyce and Toni Morrison and forget that fantasy even ever existed.
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Old One, (why did you pick that name? It doesn't suit you at all, and I have trouble associating the real you with it...) You'll find that going around posting in threads that are over a month old is going to annoy people.
And in cases like this where we've already hashed out why we do and do not like Jordan, will apparently gain you nothing but contempt from EUOL.
Edit: I personally share your opinion of Jordan, but EUOL has hashed his views to death on this, and he's quite right. Not everyone hates Wheel of time, some love it, some worship it, and enough people buy it to make him a very successful author.
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yes, your posting patterns indicate someone who is much younger in habits. But at least you're either interested in fantasy or you can pretend to have some knowledge of it.
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She's a bastion of trivia concerning Tolkien's mythology, for one thing.
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I wanted to say 'Thanks" to fuzzyoctopus, but I wasn't sure whether you truly want this thread to go the way of Paul. For something that you are all so desperate to kill off, six posts in one day sure doesn't seem to help.
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actually, what was more annoying was the contentless bashing of something that we'd already discussed. It was more about content than resurrection.
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Another Tolkien buff, heh.
The Golden Rule of forum conversations is: 'Does this post add anything to this conversation?'
Meditate upon it, little one.
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Golden Rule Two:
Never take anything we say TOO seriously.
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I kinda figured that. It's a good thing I waited until this evening to reply or you'd all be subject to a blast of sarcasm. This is the first board I've been on where people get upset for bringing up old threads. Elsewhere it's encouraged as opposed to starting a new one.
Just out of curiousity, if an entire forum should fail to have a post for over a month, does the forum die? Or would the poster that resurrects a thread therein be also subject to such a blast of ire? And if you're looking to kill a thread, why don't you just wield that handy-dandy sysop power and delete it?
Just consider those to be rhetorical questions. And since you seem to feel that everything that could be said about Jordan has been said, and since I don't feel like defending my opinion on the subject, I'll go ahead and let this thread "die in obscurity."
BTW, fuzzyoctopus, I picked this name because Brenna never lets me forget my age. I'm what, 235 by now?
Ok who keeps on resurecting this thread! Some threads deserve to die in obscurity and this is one of them.
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close. You're 236 today. Silly. ;D
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Just out of curiousity, if an entire forum should fail to have a post for over a month, does the forum die? Or would the poster that resurrects a thread therein be also subject to such a blast of ire? And if you're looking to kill a thread, why don't you just wield that handy-dandy sysop power and delete it?
Just consider those to be rhetorical questions.
Not really. It doesn't always apply I guess, but I think with you it won't be an issue because you're an adult with, you know, social skills.
We got a wave of teenage newbies all at once and they posted in like every thread just for kicks.
And things don't get deleted because we like to quash the spirits of others through sarcasm and insults instead of deleteing free speech.
;D
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it's not really resurrecting old threads, again, it's adding no content at all. People don't start new threads to say "yeah" but they do resurrect threads to do so.
New threads are brought up when there's a new discussion -- usually predicated on new ideas. In the rare occassions when the new comment DOES relate to the previous discussion, the usual practice is to resurrect the old one.
Finally, deleting threads takes time. not much, I know, but it does require the admins to pay attention to when a thread is old enough. Since it's all volunteer, it's MUCH more efficient to correct someone when they do soemthing wrong. Plus it's good to have an archive for reference. People can go back and read the old stuff.
This really rubs you wrong doesn't it? Which means you've forgotten the cardinal rule for ALL forums: become familiar with THAT particular forum's nuances before joining hte community. People don't want their idiosynchrocies argued about. We have established practices. Too bad, that's not going to change, sarcasm or no.
btw, if you DO have something legitimate to say about Jordan, something that doesn't repeat what's been said before, please post it. We DO want to hear new thoughts. We just don't want a foundationless slam (even though I agree with you).
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You know, I'm now really tempted to start a thread that just says "Yeah".
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But then I would prod you with the learning stick.
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I would reply with "Hey Man" and only Fellfrosch and Brenna and some other TLE people would laugh.