Timewaster's Guide Archive

Eric, depending on how Unforgettable goes, do you plan to go the Inde rout for your novels?

I don't know who this Jon Snow guy is, but he sounds like a pansy.  All he has is some dog and a sword.  That and he probably is a jerk!

When they said he was a b@stard they meant in the traditional sense.

Bejay: Go back and re-read Richard's brother's "fire is bad" speech at the very start of the first book.   Keep in mind that in pre-electrical societies, (especially ones with no magic,) the controlled use of fire is synonymous with civilization itself.  But people were listening and agreeing instead of denouncing him a an obvious nutcase.

There were a few entertaining bits in the first few books, but on the whole the series is rotten through and through, from the beginning to the end.

Yeah, I never made it past that part. Sooo stupid   

Quote from: maxonennis on March 17, 2011, 06:23:59 PM

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One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will.

This should have basically the same affect as having both Steel and Iron (until the user runs out of metals or stored up weight). Neat idea of  how to get around the limitations of only Mistings and the Feruchemy equivalent of Mistings existing.

No, this is much, much better.  Pushing and Pulling at the same time had strong limits, because your body could only take so much.

Being able to be heavier or lighter (given time) could be nearly limitless depending on how much weight is stored.

On top of all that there's the cool floating rather than falling trick that Sazed did with weight.

Is that a good almost-fall-out-of-chair or a bad one?

The good kind. I was laughing in agreement.

Anthonypeers, you probably read the books before you watched the movies. Everyone I've talked to who watched the movies and didn't read the books hates or simply got bored during the first two while the third movie (which, IMO, was the best of them all) on were well received by those who never read the books.

Books and movies aren't directly adaptable. They are entirely different mediums and even a 50,000 word novel filmed to be 100% true to the book would be at least two and a half hours long (far longer than the average movie goer wants to sit through). In order to make good movies out of the Harry Potter franchise they had to heavily rewrite the plots to make it conform to the different medium.

In the end you have to chose rather you want to make a movie completely true to the book, or make the best movie you possibly can. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was very true to the book and not a very well received movie by those who didn't read the books, while The Jungle Book was absolutely nothing like the novel but was a great success by those who've never read it.

Pug could take Rand in like a second. (Thanks Argent, I completely forgot about Pug. I haven't read Feist in about six years. Brings back memories)

One thing to point out... the middle age era that most fantasy takes place in was a much bleaker world. Even in dark fantasy the authors rarely make it as dark as life really was. Virtually no one bathed. The infant mortality rate was over 50%. The fairy tale Hanzel and Gredel is based on actual truth. When the famines hit in the 1300s, people abandoned some of their children since they could not feed them all.

The leaders of Europe were basically a military aristocracy. The kinds were military dictators. The vast majority of these nobles could not read. People were hacked to pieces in wars. The average lifespan was probably in the 30s.  Peasants rarely left the villages they were born in. Serfs were basically slaves that you did not have to feed yourself.
It was common for children to go to sleep hungry at night.

There was very little technological innovation. so the only way to get wealth was by oppressing others. The catholic church was corrupt. (this is not church bashing, this is what lead to the reformation).

All of this is true, and while I think it justifies the existence of darker fantasy novels, fantasy as genre is inherently unabashed escapism. I think it would be sad and dishonest should all fantasy lose that part of itself. To that degree, I actually agree with the writer of that article.