To fantasy readers of the world, I implore you:

STOP BEING DICKS.

About a couple years ago, I began reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, mostly because I'd heard so damn much about it and honestly, it sounded really cool. What I didn't expect was that it would become one of my favorite series of all time, and whenever I'm asked to think of my favorite book, A Storm of Swords very nearly always comes out on top. I was a little disheartened when I learned of all the delays associated with A Dance of Dragons (or is it for Dragons? I can never keep that straight), but I trusted that Martin, literary genius that he is, knew what he was doing and would deliver a dependably fantastic book. This belief was emboldened by the fact that Dragons would contain all my favorite characters (particularly Daenerys).

Then, around last year, I read the newer Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which was honestly one of the best fantasy books I've read in years, and I like to think of myself as fairly well-read when it comes to fantasy. After I'd read Name of the Wind, I got it in my head that I'd start reading Mr. Rothfuss' blog--and also Martin's--so I could maybe hear about the progress of the books, and get a bit of insight into the minds of the guys creating books that make me all but salivate with geeky delight.

Their blogs, naturally, were well-written, insightful, often endlessly amusing, and in the strange case of Martin, gave me a rough understanding of football. Honestly, I didn't mind that I wasn't likely to get a new book in either of their series for a while: the blogs were fun to read, and certainly helped me keep in touch with the stories I'd so enjoyed.

Around this time, all but basking in sheer rays of nerdjoy, I started reading the comments section of their blogs, which directed me to think what the bleeding hell?

I guess I had expected fantasy fans to rise above the bullcrap drivel you find on the internet, but half of the people who comment on blogs like Martin's or Rothfuss' act as though they own the author. I was particularly struck by this comment, from Rothfuss' blog:

You totally deserve that blurb.
Ready for vacation? Well after you did all the signing :D and visited all your fans and published book 3 :D hah

Um, no, go screw yourself. The dude has a girlfriend and a baby kid. He might want to address those minor distractions for a few moments before cloistering himself away to finish the Kingkiller Chronicle.

Seriously, what the hell is so hard to get about the sentence that fantasy authors owe their readers nothing. They wrote the book, got it published. You bought it, endorsed their product by way of paying, and then enjoyed a story. That is the relationship between the author and the reader. Anything else is window-dressing done purely out of the kindness of the author's heart, or his/her desire to get some more publicity for it. Either way, it doesn't elevate you to some sick status of ownership over an author.

I had really salient, reasoned-out points to make, but they kind of evaporated in a fit of righteous anger, so for now, this is what I'm posting.

Have a good one. Unless you think authors forfeit their souls to their readers. In which case go join an asshole commune or something.

Things I'm Sick Of

Fantasy novels featuring some sort of phrase that's supposed to sound profound and wise but is really just a platitude. Bonus points if it's repeated often and with an annoying sense of authority.

E.g.

"The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills."

Whoops

By way of this blog post, I have not, technically, gone a whole month without writing a post. Unless you count February, but it's not bloody February.

I don't really have anything terribly witty to write about right now, but I feel as though I need to post something. So I figure I'll talk about the movie I'm currently watching as I sit in between classes, waiting for my next one to start (presuming it, too, isn't cancelled). That movie is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which has been one of my favorite movies for a long time, since I got it for Christmas as a kid (though I thought myself mighty mature and grown-up at the time). Actually, if I were to talk about the first PotC movie, it'd basically go like this:

PotC is awesome.

...

So awesome.

And that's no fun. So instead I'm gonna talk about the sequels to the movie, which have always been a weird spot of contention. On one hand, do I feel that the original movie deserved sequels? Yes. I just didn't think that any of the characters save for Jack Sparrow and perhaps Commodore Norrington needed to be held over from the first film: they were largely just vehicles for the plot to move forward, whereas Sparrow and Norrington provided the real guts of the movie, in my opinion. The face that Will and Elizabeth, two profound bores, will not be returning for the fourth movie, strikes me as a bit of a light in a very dim tunnel, but I'm taking it with a grain of salt.

The sequels do provide a fun distraction, I think, in watching Jack Sparrow interact with other characters, and the degradation and eventual reinstatement of Norrington were spots of interest for me, but unfortunately the rest of the films were bland, cookie-cutter blockbuster material, with no real point or purpose to them. *SPOILERS* I think the mishandling of Will Turner in the sequel films was part of the problem. In the first film, Will was Jack Sparrow's straight man, and could sometimes even be charming and funny. In the sequels, they tried to play Will up as a pirate, and Jack's equal, which failed utterly because the character is, frankly, uninteresting. This is pure speculation on my part, but I would guess that the Will character might be a holdover from early drafts of Pirates of the Caribbean, possibly attempting to blend some of the traditional character elements that Jack Sparrow was supposed to possess into Will's good-natured straight man routine. Frankly, it didn't work.

Elizabeth was even less enjoyable to watch, at least for me. To my eye, she is trying far too hard to be the rough-and-tumble badass fighting chick didn't work terribly well, since not a film or so ago she was running around in dresses all the time (and not prepared to do very much else). The excuse that she learned swordplay from Will comes off about as unconvincing as Will's assertion that he trains with his swords three hours each day. If they wanted to give Elizabeth a bit more clout, she could've used her wits, but then again she tries to do that a couple times in the sequel films and comes off as rather annoying. If they wanted a badass pirate-lady, they should've just introduced a new character.

By this point I'm rambling. I guess my general feeling on Pirates of the Caribbean is that the sequels were sadly mishandled, but they were at least fun to watch Jack Sparrow in action. Nevermind the bloody CGI squid Davy Jones, that's a whole 'nother post's worth.

Hopefully, with the fourth film coming out having gutted about half the cast of the previous movies, maybe the next one'll be better. But I'm not holding out.

What the hell

This post is sort of just a quick ramble on something I saw today that kind of baffled me.

I was on the GameFAQs forums (already a mistake, I know), and was for some reason looking at the Xbox 360 board. I'm not really sure why: whenever I post I'm inevitably the guy who posts the long, thought-out argument that winds up getting deconstructed and misconstrued as something like "ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE BAD" or "THIS IS MY SIDE, WHICH IS GOOD, BECAUSE.", which are essentially the only two opinions you're allowed to have on any internet gaming forum.

Curiously, these attitudes would fit right in at FOX ... if, you know, videogames weren't the devil infesting the minds of our Good Christian Youth (forget the other youths, they don't matter).

Anyway, today I witnessed something that kind of threw me for a loop. Not really, I guess: I mean, you expect to see balls-out false bravado all the time, but this kind of opened my eyes. There was a guy who was arguing vehemently that he would never reveal that he played videogames, for fear of social condemnation.

But he freely spoke about his addiction to crack.

Yeah, I understand the motivation behind such an attitude. Doesn't mean it's any less absurd.

Great Offences

I'm twenty as of yesterday. Weird.

Anyway, I thought I'd return to my blog by writing about something I loathe. That is, the presumption of nearly anyone that they could write a book if they "just found the time"/"weren't so busy"/etc.

This is bothersome on a number of levels. I've tried writing. I'm doing it now. It's hard.

First, the assumption that, when given the time, anyone could write a book. I guess this always bugs me because essentially, it dismisses writing as a developed skill. It assumes that there is no particular skillset that need be acquired, that there are no innate gifts that one needs to write a truly compelling story, that if anyone were to apply themselves, they could write the next great _____ Epic (substituting _____ for one's genre of choice). Anyone who's read the attempted writings of more or less half of this generation's young authors knows that assumption to be bullshit. Half of the people who want to be writers, who practice at it daily, can't write worth a damn. Let alone those who just assume that if they really put themselves to it they'd shit out literary glory.

For anyone who doubts this claim, I recommend one read any number of stories from Fanfiction.net. Then, go to a local business and read any signs or notices printed up by the owner/employees, and count the grammatical errors. Bonus points for bastardized sentence structure.

The second part of the "I'm the next Tolkien" mindset that really pisses me off, is the phrase that, I am sure you have all heard before. It goes more or less like this: "I'd write a book if I wasn't so busy."

Pardon me, but the fuck do you think a writer's life is like? Patrick Rothfuss went from being a student to a professor during the writing of The Name of the Wind. Do you think that the University Faculty would've responded kindly if he cancelled a week's worth of classes to indulge in literary abandon? Do you think that J.K. Rowling, as a single mother, spent weeks reclining in a hammock whilst lazily penning down the pages of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, each appearing as they do in the final version?

Fuck. Off. There is no black hole of free time that writers draw from. There are no excuses made for writers who aren't yet published; mostly, they get scoffs and derision. The actual writers out there, the ones who are published, the ones you've read, your Martins and your Orwells, didn't fucking say to themselves "Oh, I'll write this summer . . . ."

Writers write now. They write when an idea takes them, when they need to, when they're up to their ass in work and study and family obligations. They do it because they have to. They do it because they're writers.

Everyone else is just bullshitting.

/endrant