Pat Rothfuss XVII: Games, Bets, and Minecraft

[Ser Not Appearing]

We are all tragic heroes in the right POV.

[butterweedstrover]

7 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

I largely agree, although his reasoning behind the cancellation (which we can't know) is the real key here. If it's:

A. "I need to cancel this year's fundraiser because it would be ridiculous to aske people to buy in on more promises after my actions"

then I agree, it's overwhelmingly positive. But if it's more:

B. "I need to cancel because the jerks on twitter will be relentless and ruin things because I'm a little late."

then I'm not sure things have improved.  

I think it is somewhere in between. 
 

Honestly I am surprised how many people say stuff like “Rothfuss doesn’t give a damn”. A person who doesn’t care what people think is relaxed. That person is content. Hakuna Matada: it means no worries for the rest of your days. 

Now that may mask some deeper insecurities, but the way Rothfuss acts it isn’t like he doesn’t care or is just in it for the money. He is visibly tense and agitated. He has incredibly thin skin and allows everyone to get under it. And he was actually nervous reading the prologue. 

I don’t think he is doing it out of a genuine moral sensibility or annoyance at his followers. I think he isn’t showing up because he is scared. Scared to death about the backlash to the point it would be traumatic. 

These fans, more specifically his chat, are the biggest part of his life socially and career wise. They are his safe zone, and the idea of his loyal regulars turning on him is terrifying to the point he doesn’t want to think about it. 
 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

These fans, more specifically his chat, are the biggest part of his life socially and career wise. They are his safe zone, and the idea of his loyal regulars turning on him is terrifying to the point he doesn’t want to think about it. 

It’s like the fear of telling your parents, people who really love and care about you, just how badly you have really fucked things up.  I can remember that.  

[butterweedstrover]

28 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It’s like the fear of telling your parents, people who really love and care about you, just how badly you have really fucked things up.  I can remember that.  

Yeah, but parents (supposedly) are suppose to love you unconditionally. Or at least that is how most kids think of them. It's still incredibly frightening, but I don't personally remember having a fear that I might lose them due to any transgression. 

For Rothfuss this is a very serious possibility. These people might very well abandon him (I don't know if they will but they might). 

Edited December 8, 2022 by butterweedstrover

[Gaston de Foix]

10 hours ago, butterweedstrover said:

I think it is somewhere in between. 
 

Honestly I am surprised how many people say stuff like “Rothfuss doesn’t give a damn”. A person who doesn’t care what people think is relaxed. That person is content. Hakuna Matada: it means no worries for the rest of your days. 

Now that may mask some deeper insecurities, but the way Rothfuss acts it isn’t like he doesn’t care or is just in it for the money. He is visibly tense and agitated. He has incredibly thin skin and allows everyone to get under it. And he was actually nervous reading the prologue. 

I don’t think he is doing it out of a genuine moral sensibility or annoyance at his followers. I think he isn’t showing up because he is scared. Scared to death about the backlash to the point it would be traumatic. 

These fans, more specifically his chat, are the biggest part of his life socially and career wise. They are his safe zone, and the idea of his loyal regulars turning on him is terrifying to the point he doesn’t want to think about it. 
 

This.  But I would say (a) if you want understanding, ask it for it.  Look at Lynch.  He's been open about his issues, and his fan-base has been disappointed but not angry. 

(b) we have to put to rest the idea that Rothfuss is not trying his very best to write the best story he can.  But success usually is iterative and a team-effort.  

I mean GRRM, Rothfuss, Lynch are all kind of on the same boat.  They chugged along, mostly anonymous and ambitious, until their moments of recognition. They won all the plaudits for being visionary, brilliant and poetic (and in Lynch's case wickedly funny), and those plaudits were largely well-deserved.*  But those plaudits were for a decade or more of hard work (and in GRRM's case, a skill honed in thousands of pages of published works).  

Now they have to perform an encore with sky-high expectations from the same crowd.  GRRM's perhaps lucky that he got to road-test the ending of his story with a tv show that took the brickbats for some plot ideas that would have bombed in the books.  But sometimes you have to put your faith in your fans.  If he read a shitty chapter, sure some would mock him, and others would point out the flaws.  Ideally that's a process that happens with beta-readers, editors, trusted colleagues before being exposed to the public.  If Rothfuss doesn't have a process he has faith in, he should try to improve it. 

A fantasy writer I know asked for beta readers on his blog for his new series.  I signed up together with a bunch of other people.  Just watching the hive-mind work through the issues in his new novel has been illuminating.   We are not having Eureka moments, but the slow, plodding work of working through tough issues with good humor and charity.  At the end of the day, Rothfuss' problems are not beyond the wit of man to solve.  They are not being solved because he insists on solving them himself instead of asking for help. 

[Gaston de Foix]

12 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Yeah, but parents (supposedly) are suppose to love you unconditionally. Or at least that is how most kids think of them. It's still incredibly frightening, but I don't personally remember having a fear that I might lose them due to any transgression. 

For Rothfuss this is a very serious possibility. These people might very well abandon him (I don't know if they will but they might). 

Yeah, but when you fess its almost never as bad as you feared right?  I mean the threshold for parental abandonment is...high.  And I think that's probably true of Rothfuss' fans.  I wouldn't say he has the best fans, exactly.  That would be Sanderson fans who are willing to fork out mountains of cash for....let's be polite and say hastily written novels

But I suspect his fans are pretty Rothfuss-inelastic.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

26 minutes ago, butterweedstrover said:

Yeah, but parents (supposedly) are suppose to love you unconditionally. Or at least that is how most kids think of them. It's still incredibly frightening, but I don't personally remember having a fear that I might lose them due to any transgression. 

For Rothfuss this is a very serious possibility. These people might very well abandon him (I don't know if they will but they might). 

Add divorce and separation from one parent to the child’s psyche and it becomes more clear.  The fear isn’t rational… but it is visceral.

[butterweedstrover]

4 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Yeah, but when you fess its almost never as bad as you feared right?  I mean the threshold for parental abandonment is...high.  And I think that's probably true of Rothfuss' fans.  I wouldn't say he has the best fans, exactly.  That would be Sanderson fans who are willing to fork out mountains of cash for....let's be polite and say hastily written novels

But I suspect his fans are pretty Rothfuss-inelastic.  

He fears they could turn on him, but we can’t know for sure. The fear is enough to not say anything or apologize. 

If the regulars/mods start calling him out that is a doomsday scenario and should be avoided at all costs. Imagine if people start asking questions and he tells his people to shut them down and they don’t? 

What is he supposed to say then? He is doomed, and I mean completely doomed. He has lost control of his own twitch channel and the illusion of authority is gone. Stripped of all his support he is back to being some nerd in a chair, all his achievements turned to ash in his mouth. 15 years annihilated in that one brutal moment. 
 

I imagine he is suffering immensely, he cannot go to twitch but he cannot leave the twitch either. The twitch is his lifeblood but it has been contaminated. He cannot go on without it but he cannot go on with it either. 

In this state writing a blog post has proved impossible. Writing a coherent chapter even less so. But the more he delays the worst it will get. 

This is all in his head BTW. He can escape this if he so chooses, but he doesn’t have the mental fortitude right now.

Edited December 8, 2022 by butterweedstrover

[Myrddin]

Makes you wonder if Twitch is his main revenue stream right now. Can he be getting enough new royalty checks from NotW and WMF to pay the bills?

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, butterweedstrover said:

He fears they could turn on him, but we can’t know for sure. The fear is enough to not say anything or apologize. 

If the regulars/mods start calling him out that is a doomsday scenario and should be avoided at all costs. Imagine if people start asking questions and he tells his people to shut them down and they don’t? 

What is he supposed to say then? He is doomed, and I mean completely doomed. He has lost control of his own twitch channel and the illusion of authority is gone. Stripped of all his support he is back to being some nerd in a chair, all his achievements turned to ash in his mouth. 15 years annihilated in that one brutal moment. 
 

I imagine he is suffering immensely, he cannot go to twitch but he cannot leave the twitch either. The twitch is his lifeblood but it has been contaminated. He cannot go on without it but he cannot go on with it either. 

In this state writing a blog post has proved impossible. Writing a coherent chapter even less so. But the more he delays the worst it will get. 

This is all in his head BTW. He can escape this if he so chooses, but he doesn’t have the mental fortitude right now.

 

 

Unless you're actually him, this is an insane amount of supposition to be stated so authoritatively. 

[butterweedstrover]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Unless you're actually him, this is an insane amount of supposition to be stated so authoritatively. 

It’s just a theory as to why he does not just write a chapter to save his charity stream (which he himself has said is his main passion). 

Also, a bit of exaggeration for humor.

Edited December 8, 2022 by butterweedstrover

[Lord Patrek]

3 hours ago, Myrddin said:

Makes you wonder if Twitch is his main revenue stream right now. Can he be getting enough new royalty checks from NotW and WMF to pay the bills?

Well, both books have spent the bulk of the last couple of years in the Amazon Top 100. Given that both are over a decade old and have already sold millions of copies, that remains an impressive feat. And that's just for the USA. Add to that international sales in a multitude of languages, and I'm sure Rothfuss is not looking for a side-hussle.

[butterweedstrover]

No charity but he will maybe write a blog at some point "soon". 

 

[Ninefingers]

This is a next level trip down the rabbit hole. People are monitoring the traffic on his translators' forum and concluding that something is going on.

 

[Myrddin]

I hope for Patrick's mental health, it's truly nearly done.

But I'm really in no hurry to read it. At this point, I'd need to re-read the other 2 books first, and my to read pile is already too large and neglected.

It's weird that he would be all radio silent if the release was on the horizon, though. No posts on his site since last June if I remember right.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

This is a next level trip down the rabbit hole. People are monitoring the traffic on his translators' forum and concluding that something is going on.

 

Is there a better link?

[Gaston de Foix]

"Nearly done" at this point would mean a manuscript was delivered to his editors.  Would still be years before revision and publication. 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

"Nearly done" at this point would mean a manuscript was delivered to his editors.  Would still be years before revision and publication. 

It depends how much work is needed on it. Given its expected sales, they might just push it out the door ASAP, within a few months of completion. Certainly not years.

[Gaston de Foix]

18 hours ago, Werthead said:

It depends how much work is needed on it. Given its expected sales, they might just push it out the door ASAP, within a few months of completion. Certainly not years.

I'm sure DAW is keen to get it out ASAP. 

But look past is usually prologue: https://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2012/07/why-i-love-my-editor/

[Rhom]

Wait... are we really do this again?  We really believe this is happening?  Seriously?

Have we learned nothing?