Goodkind XXII: Better than Newcomb and Stanek

[Mad Monkey]

I'm looking forward to it, too. I want to see how it all ends, and more importantly, which magic he invents to get Richard and friends out of the mess they are in.

I for one, look forward to counting how many pages of speech making there are. I think this one will be the most speecherific yet!

I'm going to wait to see how many paragraphs it takes for him to violate the established continuity. When that's over (about two pages in), I'll start counting the pages until he steals something from Ayn Rand. I gather that will only take a chapter or two, and then I'll just donate it to charity.

[Larry.]

Pardon me if this has already been posted/skewered, but Tairy has some "excellent" words of "insight" in Kirkus Review's inaugural Fantasy/SF issue:

TG: The genre is irrelevant; it’s how you tell the

story that matters. It wasn’t called “the Sword of

Truth†lightly. I’ve never for a moment believed

that people read novels as an escape. Do people

go to museums to look at art as an escape? No.

They go hoping to be inspired, to see crystallized,

concrete visions of the beauty of life and the

nobility of mankind. Novels—proper novels—

show not the humdrum of how life is, but how life

can and ought to be. They define how we look at

the world.

When people say that they read as an escape I

think it’s because they’ve never consciously

thought about how to express their frustration

with daily life. They see an obvious absence of

justice in the cheating, lies, betrayal, crime and

violence all around them. They turn to a novel

hoping it will give them a sense of justice

fulfilled, wrong being righted. Is justice an

escape from injustice? They may say that they’re

seeking an escape, but I believe that’s shorthand

for saying that what they are really seeking is to

be energized by seeing their values realized.

From the time that mankind lived in caves, the

stories they told around campfires have been

expressions of their values. People today also

want stories about heroes who triumph over the

same sorts of problems they face, just as people

around the campfire may have wanted to hear

stories of how a hunter survived a battle with a

predator. While readers may not be specifically

targeted by a murderer, they know that they are

the prey of every sort of person who would harm

them, from someone cutting in front of them in

line, to someone wanting to cut their throat. They

want to see a hero overcome the same kinds of

threats to their values that they must face in

their own lives.

I’m fortunate to have a large following among

law enforcement and the armed forces. These

are men and women who put themselves at risk

every day to protect life and liberty. If they want

escapism, they collect stamps. They come to me

for the bone and muscle of meaningful stories.

I love writing about people with noble values,

values that most of my readers hold. What we

are really seeking when we read is to be uplifted

by how good really can triumph: stories about

heroes who show us that it can be done, stories

that inspire us and give us strength to fight our

own battles. I love telling those kings of stories.

You’re right, they are not an escape, they are

weapons for living life.

Since I haven't heard (to my knowledge - I only read these threads once or twice a week) anyone parody this, I'll just be a death supporter and not claim it

[Caligula_K]

Oh man... So many stupid contradictions (that don't exist, of course)... And I'm glad to know that Goodkind intended his series to be used as a "weapon for living life" (like a gun of some sort?)

[Myshkin]

There's so much to mock in that excerpt that my head exploded when I tried. So I'll just mock the first mock-worthy bit I saw:

It wasn’t called “the Sword of

Truth†lightly.

Really? Did he struggle for days/weeks/months to come up with this profound, and totally non-generic, tittle?

[The Real Will]

Really? Did he struggle for days/weeks/months to come up with this profound, and totally non-generic, tittle?

Of course he did. At first it was called the Scimitar of Exactitude, but he felt that it lacked the requisite punch, not to mention the overtones of weirdo cultural diversity. After that, it went through several permutations: the Rapier of Veracity, the Cutlass of Candour, it even spent a brief period as the Katana of Being Pretty Honest in Most Situations, before someone pointed out that he was again edging away from his Anglo-Saxon heritage and all of the nobleness that it embodies. So he was down to two choices, the Poniard of Factual Accuracy, or the Unidentified Edged Weapon of Avoiding Lies. It wasn't until one of his friends invited him to a local back alley freak show that he finally settled on a title, and it was under the name "A Midget has Sex with a Half Octopus Lady" that it finally hit the publishers desk. The final title came out of one of those typographical mishaps which are so common in this era of "movable type", when a technician accidentally reached for the wrong tray while setting the type. The fact that he managed to do this eighteen times in a row and that this, in itself, marked a sharp decrease from the forty one letters the original title should have had only goes to prove that, statistically, if something can happen once, it can happen eighteen time and stop there even if it should continue a little longer.

So, as you can see, it was a hard fought for and statistically improbable title. The odds against the book even having a title this apt were quite staggering.

[Myshkin]

You know, I always figured it was something like that.

[Bazzlebane]

You did miss the Vagina of Veracity, which was a working title when Kahlan was supposed to be the main POV character.

[WLU]

Of course he did. At first it was called the Scimitar of Exactitude, but he felt that it lacked the requisite punch, not to mention the overtones of weirdo cultural diversity. After that, it went through several permutations: the Rapier of Veracity, the Cutlass of Candour, it even spent a brief period as the Katana of Being Pretty Honest in Most Situations, before someone pointed out that he was again edging away from his Anglo-Saxon heritage and all of the nobleness that it embodies. So he was down to two choices, the Poniard of Factual Accuracy, or the Unidentified Edged Weapon of Avoiding Lies. It wasn't until one of his friends invited him to a local back alley freak show that he finally settled on a title, and it was under the name "A Midget has Sex with a Half Octopus Lady" that it finally hit the publishers desk. The final title came out of one of those typographical mishaps which are so common in this era of "movable type", when a technician accidentally reached for the wrong tray while setting the type. The fact that he managed to do this eighteen times in a row and that this, in itself, marked a sharp decrease from the forty one letters the original title should have had only goes to prove that, statistically, if something can happen once, it can happen eighteen time and stop there even if it should continue a little longer.

So, as you can see, it was a hard fought for and statistically improbable title. The odds against the book even having a title this apt were quite staggering.

And here I thought he went through some sort of improbable process like randomly picking words from the dictionary.

[Jaxom 1974]

Pardon me if this has already been posted/skewered, but Tairy has some "excellent" words of "insight" in Kirkus Review's inaugural Fantasy/SF issue:

Since I haven't heard (to my knowledge - I only read these threads once or twice a week) anyone parody this, I'll just be a death supporter and not claim it

How does one repsond to Kirkus Reviews that their Terry Goodkind blurb has insulted me beyond what anything Terry Goodkind has ever done? It's not even mockable, it's so infuriating. The man apparently understands nothing and would prefer to think for the people who he thinks enjoys his writing. It's wrong and the simple fact that they put that statement from him in their review is a slap in the face to all who go and check out what they've got there.

[Sophelia]

Alright, after some poking at my home computer's set up (long long ago I'd forgotten to change the web server port from 80, since my ISP conveniently blocks that; who would want even a low-grade web-server, anyway?), I've managed to get my little Tairylib generator fully working.

This is on the "bunch of pre-selected entries for each blank" type.

Click here.

This is pretty funny. I ran it three times and Richard's speeches lasted more pages in each version.

Thank you for making me laugh while stuck here in the office on my own.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

I’m fortunate to have a large following among law enforcement and the armed forces.

I am so very very surprised that such people would enjoy books where the good guys make the bad guys eat their own testicles.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

...they know that they are

the prey of every sort of person who would harm

them, from someone cutting in front of them in

line, to someone wanting to cut their throat.

Best fucking quote, ever. I knew in my heart of hearts that TG believed that everyone who ever did anything wrong to him considered him prey. I want to see someone try to cut in line in front of Tairy: they'd have a neck-smile, as long as they were weaker than he.

Otherwise, he'd wait to poison their children: goddamn line-cutters are stealing everyone's freedom.

[WLU]

Pardon me if this has already been posted/skewered, but Tairy has some "excellent" words of "insight" in Kirkus Review's inaugural Fantasy/SF issue:

Since I haven't heard (to my knowledge - I only read these threads once or twice a week) anyone parody this, I'll just be a death supporter and not claim it

I don't parody, I destroy. I am Wordzilla, Democratic Raper of Words. Fear me.

TG: The genre is irrelevant

Great, now shut up and accept that you're fantasy, douchebag.

it’s how you tell the story that matters.

So it's a real pity you're so bad at it.

It wasn’t called “the Sword of Truth†lightly.

So... you thought about it a really, really long time, and this was the best you could do? How have you not choked to death while trying to chew and inhale at the same time, mouth breather?

I’ve never for a moment believed that people read novels as an escape.

How do you account for the existence of the term 'fiction'? Here is a brief list of things you've apparently never seen:

a) People reading on a train

People reading on a bus

c) People reading on a plane

d) People reading while waiting for the above

e) People reading while on holiday

I can understand that reading is hard for you and all, but take it from me - for the rest of the world it's not so much of a challenge. You may not believe it, but apparently you also don't believe in editors. Or creativity. Though you do appear to have a hearty respect for plagiarism.

Do people go to museums to look at art as an escape? No.

Uh - yeah. People go to museums and look at art for a lot of reasons - aesthetics, pleasure, intellectual appreciation, escape, boredom, school project, to look good, as an activity. And to refute your statement, sometimes I do. In fact, I'm going tomorrow, though it's really more out of spite at this point.

They go hoping to be inspired, to see crystallized, concrete visions of the beauty of life and the nobility of mankind goats.

I fixed that for you there Yeardii. Much of the art I've seen of the European masters I first went just to see what it was, and continued to go because they're pretty. Sometimes there were attempts at nobility, but there's also pathos, joy, religious experiences, ambiguity - just because that's what YOU aim for in art doesn't mean everyone does. Holy egocentric Batman. And one person's nobility is another man's horror - Jesus on a cross is probably kinda traumatizing for a Hindu (any Hindu's out there who can clarify this, morally?)

Modern art, which must just drive you nutty, is designed to express the vision and feelings of the artist rather than a coherent vision to the viewer. Go see Blueman Group, it's awesome. You'll hate it.

Novels—proper novels—show not the humdrum of how life is, but how life can and ought to be.

A novel is an extended prose narrative. You namble-raped the term to try to wiggle out of being tagged as a genre writer. Like many things in life, you failed in everyone's mind but your own. Some of the greatest novels are nothing more than a presentation of humdrum life. It's a whole fuck of a lot more challenging to portray good and evil while going to a grocery store than it is to do so with devils, the underworld, guys with swords and dragons. Fantasy, the genre you write in, was for most of its history a long discourse on explicit good versus evil, only recently is the mainstream of fantasy shading towards ambiguous depictions of the sides of a conflict. Know what I'm getting at? Your writing is actually a regression, a devolution of the genre. You've done for fantasy what 'Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire' did for women's rights.

They define how we look at the world.

Your novels define how you look at the world, and that frightens me, for the same reason as the Turner Diaries.

When people say that they read as an escape I think it’s because they’ve never consciously

thought about how to express their frustration with daily life.

Or it's because they find their jobs difficult because they put effort into it. Try it some day.

They see an obvious absence of justice in the cheating, lies, betrayal, crime and violence all around them. They turn to a novel hoping it will give them a sense of justice fulfilled, wrong being righted. Is justice an escape from injustice? They may say that they’re seeking an escape, but I believe that’s shorthand for saying that what they are really seeking is to be energized by seeing their values realized.

People can also read morally complex stories (now, I know you say you've never read other fantasy books [cough]RobertJordan[/cough], and I'll play along for the sake of illustration; imagine the very opposite of your books. That is the definition of morally complex. Also subtlety. Quality. Originality. Tolerance. Grammar.) as an escape. An escape is like a vacation - sometimes you just go for the experience, sometimes for the break, sometimes to learn and grow. Methinks you're painting your experience all over the lives of others using a very broad brush. This is because you are an intolerant retard.

From the time that mankind lived in caves, the stories they told around campfires have been

expressions of their values.

We don't know the stories they told around campfires (and they'd probably be fires for cooking, not camping - they were hunter-gatherers so calling it camping is kinda stupid). The hunter-gatherer stories we've analyzed are the remenants of peoples pushed to the edges of habitable land. And mankind lived in the savanna before they lived in caves, probably building their own shelters or sleeping in trees. Go read a book you fuck. In fact, go watch a God-Damned National Geographic special. And further, the stories told currently by hunter-gatherers detail eschatologies and origin myths, instructive tales, morals, warnings, hunting patterns and techniques, religious observances, christ, it's a lot more than your narrow-minded, uninformed pinheaded little pretend non-understanding encompasses.

People today also want stories about heroes who triumph over the same sorts of problems they face, just as people around the campfire may have wanted to hear stories of how a hunter survived a battle with a predator.

Actually, I've gotten sick of the kind of story where people always triumph, and kinda like the ones that are a bit more realistic - people dying, getting maimed, suffering, like George R.R. Martin. Now, since you've apparently only read Robert Jordan, you wouldn't understand. And further, I don't really feel like reading about someone who pushed through an important policy on the access to information act. I know what that's like. I want to read an author who realistically depicts something that I've never dealt with. Had I wanted to know about rape, I would still have to talk to someone else, because realism isn't your forte. Though for all I know you are realistically depicting it from the rapists perspective. I just don't really want to read about that.

While readers may not be specifically targeted by a murderer, they know that they are

the prey of every sort of person who would harm them, from someone cutting in front of them in

line, to someone wanting to cut their throat. They want to see a hero overcome the same kinds of

threats to their values that they must face in their own lives.

Though I have had someone cut in front of me in line, I've never had someone want to cut my throat. In fact, I'm guessing I share that with 99.97% of the population. I know you live in the south and all, but the rest of the world isn't like that. Probably because of legislation against cousin-rape.

And a threat to your life isn't the same thing as a threat to your values, beyond the value of staying alive. How do you talk so much, yet say so little? It's not through the use of a thesaurus or dictionary.

I’m fortunate to have a large following among law enforcement and the armed forces. These

are men and women who put themselves at risk every day to protect life and liberty. If they want

escapism, they collect stamps. They come to me for the bone and muscle of meaningful stories.

Here's a clue douchebag, they come to you for escape. They are prevented by laws and human decency from vigilante justice or the wholesale slaughter of the people they have to fight. You have a large following among these people because they crave the moral simplicity that you provide and the law prevents them from indulging in. They are reading your books for an escape. They are reading you for a moral simplicity that eludes them in the real world.

I love writing about people with noble values,

Like namble rape? Attacking peaceful protesters? Killing conscientious objectors? Stifling dissent? Opposing democracy? Fascism? The abandonment of responsiblity? Blood thirst? Your values are not noble, they are simplistic and terrifying. As far as values go, you've got more in common with the 9/11 bombers that you so despise than you do with me - the only difference is the target of your irrational anger. I at least can see their perspective on things, and understand that perhaps bathing in the blood of our enemies might be somewhat problematic. For one thing, we'd have to drill through it to get to their oil, right? What kind of car do you drive? Fuck.

values that most of my readers hold.

Which is why we're afraid of them as well. In the abstract, 'cause for the most part I don't think they're smart enough to actually find me.

What we are really seeking when we read is to be uplifted by how good really can triumph: stories about heroes who show us that it can be done, stories that inspire us and give us strength to fight our own battles. I love telling those kings of stories. You’re right, they are not an escape, they are

weapons for living life.

Face it douchebag, people read for escape. Ayn Rand is an escape. You've read Ayn Rand. Therefore, you've read for escape. Hypocrite.

People read for many reasons. Deal with it. I read your books so I can tear them apart, because it gives me pleasure to know that I'm smarter than a multi-million dollar hack author. Makes me feel good about myself and helps combat the despair of having to live in a world apparently stuffed to the gills with knuckle-draggers who can't seem to understand that turning the other cheek is actually better than an eye for an eye. Do you not see how tribalistic conflicts can lead to the extinction of humans as a species? But that alludes to evolution, and I'm guessing you're not on board with that either. Douche.

I get so ANGRY because I can never slap him when he's being a fucking idiot.

[Mad Monkey]

Ouch. I actually feel kind of sorry for Goodkind, even though there's not a chance that he would even read this if he found it.

On second thought, I feel sorry for mystar. You know he probably has spies watching us to make sure that we aren't planning to assassinate Goodkind or something.

[WLU]

On second thought, I feel sorry for mystar. You know he probably has spies watching us to make sure that we aren't planning to assassinate Goodkind or something.

No, of course we're not...

_{(shut up man, they can hear you!)}

[Jaxom 1974]

I still think we should write the people at Krikus Review and ask them to print a retraction and apology or soemthing. That was, by far and away, the most insulting thing ever uttered by Terry Goodkind. And he's had some doozies in his day.

[Fanatic-Templar]

Best fucking quote, ever. I knew in my heart of hearts that TG believed that everyone who ever did anything wrong to him considered him prey. I want to see someone try to cut in line in front of Tairy: they'd have a neck-smile, as long as they were weaker than he.

'The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.'

Couldn't pass this up.

Also, I think that the trouble Goodkind had with choosing the title of his books is how to purge it of the name 'Shannara'.

[Dycedarg]

Also, I think that the trouble Goodkind had with choosing the title of his books is how to purge it of the name 'Shannara'.

Really, I thought his trouble stemmed from the fact that Tor wouldn't let him call the series 'The Wheel of Truth'.

[Mad Monkey]

'Wheel of Truth'

You just know that he would have called it 'Free Money Inside!!!' if he wasn't too smart to know that that wouldn't work.

[The Wolf Maid]

I thought he did appearances though. Where you have to pay to see him. That's what I heard.

Yep. I think he does paid appearances/convetions/dinners/lunch.

WLU, I :bow: to your words of wisdom.

People today also

want stories about heroes who triumph over the

same sorts of problems they face, just as people

around the campfire may have wanted to hear

stories of how a hunter survived a battle with a

predator. While readers may not be specifically

targeted by a murderer, they know that they are

the prey of every sort of person who would harm

them, from someone cutting in front of them in

line, to someone wanting to cut their throat. They

want to see a hero overcome the same kinds of

threats to their values that they must face in

their own lives.

Oh yes, we just want to read stories how rape is a proper, just punishment for people who disagree with your principles, and that kicking kids in the jaw is OK.

Apparently, people that cut you off in a line are predators. Swell.

I think I need to gargle. I threw up a little.