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#365 - But Lin-Manuel Miranda!
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I confuse Tassie and me all the time, too. But I am also old. #WaldorfAndStatler
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We are interchangeable at this point ;-)
#grumpyoldmen
and yes Trike is an old fart :-P
I liked the show. What happened to the shoutouts to the patrons? Tom used to do that and last few shows, it hasn't been there (ever since I think my name was mispronounced, oddly enough :-P)
This is wild speculation, but I wonder if Showtime has gotten cold feet since the last book in the Kingkiller Chronicles isn't out yet. I wonder if they are worried about having a similar situation as the last season of Game of Thrones, where they outpaced the source material.
Jen, except my understanding was the showtime series wasn’t based on the book series, but a prequel to it. The movies, that are still supposed to be made are based on the trilogy of books. But you may be on to something, with the prequels not having been written, maybe Showtime didn’t think there would be interest.
John (Nevets) wrote: "Jen, except my understanding was the showtime series wasn’t based on the book series, but a prequel to it. The movies, that are still supposed to be made are based on the trilogy of books. But you ..."Tbh I can’t blame production companies for passing on a movie/tv show based on an as-yet-incomplete book series. I can’t help thinking that Rothfuss would be better off directing his energies to finishing the 3rd Kingkiller book, and then trying to get an adaptation off the ground once it’s published.
In the meantime, there dozens if not hundreds of other book series out there which are already completed and ripe for adaptation...
Ruth wrote: "In the meantime, there dozens if not hundreds of other book series out there which are already completed and ripe for adaptation..."The Warded Man series, for instance. The visuals would be AMAZING, but it would be expensive as hell to put on, what with all the demons running around, the elaborate costumes, and not to mention the epic settings.
Trike wrote: "The Warded Man series, for instance..."I second this. I'm reading The Desert Spear right now and was thinking how cool a show would look. I love seeing how other people's takes on fantastical beings match up with my own. You are definitely right, though - it'd be extremely expensive.
I'm with you, Veronica! Also could not connect with Maggie. For Lin's fans, we are still going to see him in His Dark Materials soon (and surely many more).
Re: Veronica's comparison of Maggie and Kate Daniels..Warning! Complete speculation ahead...
I would guess that you are more able to connect with Kate Daniels as a character simply because she is further along in her journey of being a survivor. She recognizes that she was abused. She has built other relationships since leaving her abuser. She has been able to piece together a life that means something.
Maggie, on the other hand, may not even recognize the relationship with her mentor as being abusive. It's not entirely clear. If she does understand that it was abusive, she is clearly not at a point where she could even name it as such out loud. It's difficult to work on healing when you can't even name the problem. She is still suffering and that makes her just generally unpleasant. Given time and space and the ability to heal (as Kate Daniels clearly has had), I think she would be a more pleasant person.
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Warning! Complete speculation ahead...
I would guess that you are more able to connect with Kate Daniels as a character simply because she i..."
That seems like a reasonable explanation!
Ruth wrote: "I can’t help thinking that Rothfuss would be better off directing his energies to finishing the 3rd Kingkiller book, and then trying to get an adaptation off the ground once it’s published."This might come off as a little cynical, so allow me to preface it by saying that I think Pat Rothfuss is a wonderful human being. I've played board games with him, helped him with multiple book signings, and I donate whatever I make selling my own books to Worldbuilders every year (55 cows and counting!). He is the only person who can and should decide the future and meta-future of his story, because it's his story.
However, once that final book is out, do you think people will be as interested? As hyped? Imagine if GRRM had finished Ice and Fire and we'd gotten the ending that we saw in the show before that last season. How many of the truest fans would have just not watched? How would that have propagated to the rest of the viewership or impacted the show's profits?
And forget interest in the show, how much interest will there be in Rothfuss himself if people aren't waiting for book 3 even if it's great? Will he maintain his level of nerd celebrity? Will Worldbuilders bring in as much money? Does he have a plan for what comes next to keep fans engaged?
In my head The Doors of Stone is a masterpiece, and certainly will be until proven otherwise. I will without a doubt consume it in the first form of media upon which it is released, including adaptations of the first 2 books. Until that happens, I will eagerly await news about it and get hyped when I hear it.
I hope that it's a The Hero of Ages-esque tour de force that leaves me wanting it translated into another entertainment medium so that I can enjoy it again! But... let's just say that right now, I'm really not looking forward to Winds of Winter or whatever comes after it.
At the moment I will watch anything they make based on an as-yet-incomplete Kingkiller Chronicles, as long as they do justice to the beginning that I love. Once the series is complete, it might not matter. Would Rothfuss be better served devoting his time to finishing first and adapting second? I'm honestly not sure.
That's probably not fair, but I'm practicing to join the #grumpyoldmen.
Sky wrote: "Would Rothfuss be better served devoting his time to finishing first and adapting second? I'm honestly not sure."Books have a longer lifespan than movies do, and way longer than TV series. Even the most popular TV shows fall by the wayside far sooner than novels.
So it comes down to what you want now versus what you want other people to experience years from now. I’m willing to bet that 25 years from now people will still be reading The Lord of the Rings but almost no one will watch the movies, or Amazon’s TV series.
Ideally in such matters the unfinished book would come out while the show is still running, but it’s far more likely this will be like David Gerrold or George R.R. Martin, where it’s entirely possible they might finish their series, but at this point it’s not probable.
Even though I’m a movie guy, I’d want the books to be complete before they start getting adapted. TV shows and movies require so much more time and effort that involving the author even tangentially will steal time from their writing.
If Rothfuss does go ahead with this TV series, he won’t ever finish the book. Putting obstacles in front of a slow writer just means things will be unfinished. I don’t have a dog in this particular hunt, as I’ve never read the Kingkiller books, nor do I have any interest in them. But my preference, were I a fan, would be that the author get down to authoring above all else.
Otherwise you’re far more likely to have a perpetually unfinished tale.
Trike wrote: "But my preference, were I a fan, would be that the author get down to authoring above all else.Otherwise you’re far more likely to have a perpetually unfinished tale."
As a fan, I agree with everything you said. I don't think I'm reading a single ongoing series that I would prefer to see stay unfinished.
And yet I still wonder if not finishing the book until enough interest has been drummed up to create something on the scale of GoT might actually be the correct decision in terms of total profit and immediate cultural impact. Not the correct decision from my perspective as a fan, of course, but for the author and/or production studio.
I also can't help but feel like finished book series draw less attention for adaptations, especially during the lifetime of the author. But that's probably some weird confirmation bias or something.
Sky wrote: "I also can't help but feel like finished book series draw less attention for adaptations, especially during the lifetime of the author. But that's probably some weird confirmation bias or something."That’s an interesting question I’ve never considered before. When I get home from work later tonight I’ll take a deeper dive into that idea.
Trike based on other things you like, I think you might actually dig the Kingkiller books, but I’m guessing there is a reason you are avoiding them. Maybe start small with The Slow Regard of Silent Things. It’s very much in the vein of a Neil Gaiman story.Sky, I’ve been fortunate to have some of the same experiences as you have with Worldbuilders, and very much enjoyed it, and look forward to it’s mission to continue. From some things I remember Pat recounting either in his blog or elsewhere, he originally wrote this trilogy as a single book, and saw it as only the opening chapter of a much more involved story he wanted to tell. But with how things have happened with the reception of the trilogy I wonder if that is still a goal, or if he now sees it as more of an ending, and that is what is daunting.
The single-book-thing doesn't make sense anymore, because that was a very early draft (which didn't even have Auri in it for example). There's a lot he's had to do since to adjust since then.
John (Nevets) wrote: "Trike based on other things you like, I think you might actually dig the Kingkiller books, but I’m guessing there is a reason you are avoiding them. Maybe start small with The Slow Regard of Silent Things..."I disagree. Although I loved TSROST, he wrote it in Auri’s voice which is tonally much different, plus it makes more sense after meeting her character in TNOTW.
Instead, if book 1 is too much of a commitment, start with The Lightning Tree. It’s written in Bast’s voice and the novel isn’t a prerequisite to appreciating it.
I can’t praise PR’s work enough. When he writes in Kvothe’s voice, it’s so poetic!
Trike wrote: "Sky wrote: "I also can't help but feel like finished book series draw less attention for adaptations, especially during the lifetime of the author. But that's probably some weird confirmation bias ..."I've seen these kind of theories before - about authors deliberately not-finishing books in order to drum up more interest - in places like the Fantasy Faction Facebook group. Pat Rothfuss and GRRM are the two authors most often mentioned, but I've also seen Scott Lynch drawn in. I can see the appeal of these theories - the idea that the author doesn't have writers' block, instead he has a masterplan!
But tbh I don't, ultimately, find it very convincing that an author would deliberately not-finish something for an extra-long time in order to try and increase his cultural impact and eventual sales. After all, while the book remains unwritten and unpublished, he's missing out on sales of not just that book, but on all the other books he could have written in the meantime. Think how many books Brandon Sanderson has published in the last decade, and how many fans eagerly await all his new releases. Meanwhile Rothfuss is missing out on readers who decide not to start the series at all, and now that Showtime has passed on the TV show, there's a risk that interest in The Kingkiller Chronicles will fade away.
I also don't really agree that adaptations of finished book series draw less attention - The Lord of the Rings films were massive in terms of profit and cultural impact, and those books were finished fifty years before! Game of Thrones was also already huge in the early seasons, when they were directly adapting the books, and there was a reasonable expectation that the book series would be wrapped up before the tv show. Stuff like the Red Wedding had a big impact on TV viewers, even though that book had been published long before.
Anyway this has become a super-long comment so I'll stop now!
tl;dr I don't think Pat Rothfuss has a masterplan, I think he has writers' block.
Trike wrote: "Sky wrote: "I also can't help but feel like finished book series draw less attention for adaptations, especially during the lifetime of the author. But that's probably some weird confirmation bias ..."So far I’ve found that there’s no definitive answer. As always, things are more complicated once you look closely at them. Right now the list is fairly equal, and there are some cases, such as Jurassic Park, where the author didn’t intend to write a sequel but was inspired to do so based on the adaptations.
Also, I’m not sure how to categorize series which don’t really tell an over-arching story and were never intended to. Many series, such as Hercule Poirot and James Bond, were designed as “the continuing adventures of...” rather than a tale with a beginning-middle-end structure.
Anyway, here’s the list I’ve compiled thus far, with the earliest adaptation I could find noted. (view spoiler)
Ruth wrote: "I don't think Pat Rothfuss has a masterplan, I think he has writers' block."I agree with you.
If Rothfuss could snap his fingers and finish his book right now exactly as he wants to see it finished, I don't doubt that he would. The fact that it's taken him so long to finish probably upsets him more deeply and frequently than any fan. I also don't think he's the kind of person who would intentionally leave his fans hanging for the sake of his personal popularity. Rather, I think he has a hard time writing an ending that he believes is worthy of the acclaim and expectations his books have garnered over the years.
The attention he's received (in part) because of his incomplete story wasn't something he was trying to garner, but I don't think he would have gotten it with a complete series under his belt.
Then again, for all I know he'd still have the same level of nerd celebrity today even if he had released the 3rd book immediately after the 2nd. He probably leans into it harder than someone like Sanderson. I just know that, anecdotally, I started checking his site regularly because I wanted information on book 3, and became a fan of him in general largely because of that.
Trike wrote: "Some actual facts related to my baseless assumptions."
You know Trike, you're encouraging my bad behavior by compiling relevant data into a well-formatted list when clearly I could have Googled this myself and gotten closer to an informed opinion before bringing it here.
To be honest, I was thinking of several of the series you listed when I made that claim. I knew that GoT, HP, and True Blood were incomplete, but I'm surprised to see that Twilight, Divergent, and Maze Runner were complete before adaptation.
If anything you've cast severe doubt on my (unspoken) hypothesis that the modern immediacy of information makes building hype for a show off the existing inherent hype of fans waiting for a new book easier.
I know it's a kind of faux pas thing to do on the internet, but I'll admit I was wrong.
Sky wrote: "I know it's a kind of faux pas thing to do on the internet, but I'll admit I was wrong."Yeah, I don’t think you’re internetting right. Please begin ad hominem attacks immediately.
But in all seriousness, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think hype plays into it, but as with Bond and Poirot, the picture is not as clear-cut. Part of it is a book becoming a hot property, with movie studios getting buzz from agents about an as-yet-unpublished manuscript that will be the next big thing. That’s just capitalism at work, but it skews the data.
Did some more digging, found 6 more Incomplete and 7 more Complete. So far I think the answer is definitive: there’s no definitive answer.(view spoiler)
The new question is, “Will I let this go?” I tend to get fixated on things like this. Loves me some lists.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Rogues (other topics)The Slow Regard of Silent Things (other topics)
The Hero of Ages (other topics)
The Warded Man (other topics)
The Warded Man (other topics)
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