Orlion Blight

Pretty much. I'll be more specific. 1) He writes at a level most modern published genre authors achieve. In that sense, it is perfectly valid to call him mediocre. 2) People like him for his series. His standalones (with one exception) are not as highly regarded as his series and would probably be mostly ignored if not for their connections to the broader cosmere (take Elantris as the perfect example of this). 3) People also likes his worldbuilding. This dovetails nicely with the previous point as his worldbuilding tends to have a mystery element: characters learn and figure out more about the world as the series goes on. With that in mind, people like Brandon because of his series of epic scope in which an unknown world is revealed bit by bit. This allows for some fan speculation which, provided he produces volumes at a decent pace, remain an entertaining way to pass the time. Hence why people are more interested in him working on the next Stormlight, Mistborn or Skyward than, say, some solo work. Of course, that's also where his weakness lies. Brandon only has two completed series, the first Mistborn and the Reckoners. Everything else is a work in progress (Legion is a series much like how the first Foundation book is s series... that is, it is more like a serialized novel). So how good is Brandon, then? You can't judge him on Stormlight or Skyward because he hasn't stuck the landing yet, and as much as he sells, his bestselling work was probably his finishing of the Wheel of Time. Taking that all into account, it's easy to overhype Brandon. His body of work, as it currently stands, can not justify too much of it. It's important when introducing him to keep that in mind and realize that a lot of your excitement may be due to the interactions in fandom (similar to Star Wars and Harry Potter. It's more about the shared cultural experience than the merits of the actual works themselves).

Yeah, I was also confused about the critical complaints about "not enough human activity" in the movie. It seemed like the middle was nothing but! I enjoyed watching this movie with my old Rodan toy.

Been rewatching Neon Genesis Evangelion, because I've decided I'm not angry enough. And once I commandeer my brother's Netflix account, I can be even more angry at the new dub and translation!

He's a terrible character. From a mechanic perspective and a story one (his stupid actions directly caused a lot of the problems faced by the Resistance in The Last Jedi. If there was a modicum of realism in that movie, he would have been executed by firing squad at the beginning of the movie).

Fine, I'll say it. Calamity by Brandon Sanderson, in the "this stopped being enjoyable halfway through Firefight" sort of way.

I'm glad you feel that way, because other similar examples (well, one similar example) predicts he will abandon the series forever and write other things! Mwahahaha!

Such things happened all the time with A Dance of Dragons. They were never right. The only way you can be sure is if the author says it's finished. And they would say it, Rothfuss is not really a quiet fellow online. Let's see what he has to say. From April of this year: https://www.tor.com/2019/04/04/patrick-rothfuss-kingkiller-chronicle-book-3-update-moving-forward/ Then there's this bit from the FAQ on his website about book 3: And he has been silent on the matter. The book is not coming out in 2020. You'll be lucky if he starts writing it this year.

I have zero confidence in Doors of Stone coming out at all. I think the idea of publishing it has broken Rothfuss psychologically. Martin is Martin. I think his biggest problem is that he has to write on an old machine. That means anytime he's traveling, there is absolutely no writing getting done.

Their efforts to redesign Sonic and delay the movie will ultimately be putting lipstick on a pig. It'll be a garbage movie with garbage actors and a garbage script. So it'll be a 90s movie

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." - Frederich Nietzsche

Honestly, he should just swoop in here and delete the thread. It's how my curmudgeon self would react!

Smashing Pumpkins

I mean, he is pretty much functionally immortal now. The Westeros nobles have just elected an Eternal God King that sees them when they're sleeping and knows when they're awake!

My opinion on that season of Game of Thrones:

Nobody: Steven Erickson: Star Trek Discovery is awful, and here's a series of extensive, rambling posts about why I'm disappointed in it and what real Star Trek is!

Terminator 2 is a garbage movie.

I'm listening to a whole bunch of Gordon Lightfoot.

Saying "follow the money" or "it's all about the money!" or its variations tends to be a lazy, cynical view espoused by people who cannot or refuse to look into underlying, complicated causes.

Get yer filthy Stormlight videos out of here and into the proper Stormlight forum! Tarnation whipper-snaping youth! *shakes cane*

Nah. Sanderson is part of a recent trend in genre writing that emphasizes tighter writing and tighter storytelling (a trend which is mostly good, considering the bloat genre writing use to commonly have *shudder*). Essentially, it's far easier now to find books of Brandon's caliber than it ever has been.

Well, that was disappointing. The parts I could see, anyway

The laws of lazy writing decree you kill the comic relief character because it is more impactful on the audience. Tormund is sooo dead. Lyanna is dead because the same lazy laws decree that as a minor, fan favorite she is disposable and will "up the stakes". Brienne is sooo dead. I don't know about Jaime. Theon is definitely dead. Really, it might be easier to say who will live: Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion and, I'll say it, Bran. Sansa is hard to say, but I think she will survive. Arya? I don't know. We might get a situation where we won't know if someone died or not until the end of the season when they show up again as wrights.

Better than the first episode, but also setting up for next week's episode which has been highly anticipated. Hopefully, fan favorites like Tormund and Lyanna will perish in the next episode so they don't have to be shoehorned into episodes to appease the fans.

Depends. If I added "Brandon is not anywhere close to being literary" and "literary is better than sci-fi", it might be more controversial here, but it isn't what I meant and kinda distracts from the point. I also imagine that it's a controversial opinion for those who have a knee-jerk reaction to this "ongoing controversy." I don't know how many of those are on this forum, but experience tells me there is a substantial number that will grow and become more vocal as the fanbase ages. But, for the sake of controversy, how's this for a spicy take: the literary genre produces more good writers of a higher quality than the sci-fi genre.

The whole "sci-fi vs literary" arguments that crop up all the time are really dumb. It essentially boils down to hack sci-fi writers trying to artificially raise their work to a higher artistic sphere while the literary writers are trying to distance themselves from pulp genre works. All this occurs while both sides refuse to recognize what sci-fi and literary works are, what those terms mean in a genre sense and how they are both in such different markets that they aren't really competing with each other anyway. Just a waste of time.