Sorry I keep popping up but this is probably my favorite thread ever. I don't mean that mockingly, just intellectually.
The claims being made between this and the "evil authors" thread have all been the exact opposite that is expressed countless times at various points in the series.
This whole claim about him seeing things as absolute and wanting to kill you because its "my way or the highway, pal" is so bass ackwards its not even funny. How many times did you read the words "people just want to be left alone" or "to live as they wish". Isn't that the entire duty of the Mother Confessor? To ensure the little people without representation are left to live as they please? Richard is the Lord Raul yet until the very last line in the book does he ever issue a command to his people.
And that was to stop worshiping him...THE FASCIST!/spoiler] Countless times the problem with the enemy was that they saw things as absolute and didn't use their reason to see the truth. Non-bonded D'Harans followed Dharken Raul on blind faith, the Hartlanders who came to kill Zedd for being a witch, Shota as well as the Prelate and all Sisters of the light for having blind faith in prophesy, Brogan of the Blood of the Fold, Jagang and the entire Imperial Order......every single villain or obstacle had the same characteristics. They all believed they were absolutely right and they were prepared to do whatever it took, even killing, to ensure the way they see it is what happened. ALL OF THEM. EVERY SINGLE ENEMY IN THE SERIES. So now how in the world do you conclude that the author thinks like that when he writes every single enemy that way and those antagonists are always either defeated or convinced by one of the heroes? Explain that bit of reasoning to me.
On a lighter note, I'll tackle the complaint about the women crying too much and the author possibly being anti-woman. So Kailen is the Mother Confessor, whom kings and queens bow too, and is often times the main character. When Richard first laid eyes on her he didn't think "Wow shes hot, I want to tap that", he mentions seeing intelligence in her eyes. Only later does he realize that she's beautiful. Just about every powerful person in this series is a woman: Kailen, Shota, the Mord-Sith, the Sisters of the Light....the latter three starting out as villains and then shown to be so much more and actually on the side of good. Heck even Scarlett was a female dragon. I can't recall any female character in the books being always weepy and helpless and needing some man to come and help her. Kailen has instances where she cries and asks Richard to hold her but this is coming from the same woman who declared no mercy on the Imperial Order and swore to cut them all down to a man without quarter. This is the woman who possesses people with their power and commands them to drop dead. This is the woman who had a child molester's balls cut off and fed to him. I mean wholly shit if she were real she'd probably go down in history as the single most badass woman ever. The fact that she has moments of weakness, cries, and just wants someone to hold her makes her more human just like anyone. It makes her character more dynamic and more realistic instead of fitting some stereotype or perfect ideal of a woman. You even got Rachel who even as a little girl shows to be intelligent and perfectly capable of learning what Chase could teach about what he does as a Boundary Warden. Holly, Valdora's granddaughter, takes the death of her grandmother pretty well and is able to join the sisters of the light as a novice and stay strong. There are so many strong female characters that I wonder if its not the exact opposite. Men without reason are shown to be evil, throat-cutting, rapists if let loose on the world. Hey I know men without reason, they drink and party a lot and post on internet forums, they don't go cutting people's throats for fun. Every strong male character is always shown to have "more sense" than others even like with Bill the inn owner in the first book. Everyone in the bar is ready to rape Kailen because they have a woman in their mists as if they've never seen a woman before.
One more, the idea that the author is "pushing his believes" and being pretentious. Only in rare instances, all in book 6 or later, does the author actually delve into objectivism. Even then, its not as if the fourth wall is broken and the author is telling you where to go to find more on this or what to do and think next. It just simply "occurs" in the story. That's it. Most of the assumptions and conjectures are very basic ideas that everyone has, even if they don't realize it. Simple things like, thinking before you act, reasoning out solutions to problems, be careful because its hard to tell what the truth really is, evil people always perceive themselves as good. Very basic stuff that if you don't agree with or don't understand you're in denial. Its only when you start getting deeper into the ideals of the Imperial Order do you start to touch on the stuff that people may disagree with. Faith of the Fallen demonstrates how a society built like the Imperial Order can never work. People are shown to be waiting in lines for food and there's never enough, bureaucracy is dismissed as useless and wasteful, nearly everyone in this society is either a criminal, a liar, or a cheat. You might start to make the assumptions that the author feels that ANY form of socialism or government handout is bad. But that's the thing, its an assumption. Its never actually stated that these things are always bad and can never work. All of these are pointed out as being wrong under the Imperial Order, a fictional religious-communism hybrid system he made up. So I guess if there are any religious-communistic societies or parties out there vying for power you can say that the arguments in these books apply otherwise it sounds to me that these books are written to have glaringly flawed ideologists in order to ensure the reader thinks and reasons to the conclusion that they are wrong. And in case you still don't get it, you're beaten over the head with it and a little more for good measure by being reminded of why its wrong constantly. The fact that he chooses something that doesn't actually exist seems like he was trying to be safe so that he doesn't get the claim that hes trying to create some kind of political Republican vs Democrat series of books or something like that. Instead it seems to be something like Atheist Libertarianism VS Monotheistic Communism. That doesn't seem to leave room for anything in the middle and that's why things are kept very simple such as defending yourself from being killed from fanatics, regardless of your beliefs. I also have no idea how any of this makes him pretentious. Because he wrote a story with a main character who thinks like he does who saves the world because he is right about some way of thinking? Sounds like just about every story ever written to me. The fact that in the bio all it says about him is that he lives in the Northeastern United States shows that he's trying to be as completely impersonal and humble as possible and he too wants to be left alone. Its not like he's running for political office or starting up some kind of political movement or cult using these books.
I'll end by repeating what Chaos said in the Evil authors thread. One of the main "evil, pretentious, nazi" lessons in the first book is that evil doesn't see itself as evil, it sees itself as good. Good and evil is all based on perception. The claim that Goodkind uses "straw man" arguments is all based on the perception that what he is saying isn't true or isn't real, therefore its made up. But if you DO think its real and not made up, then obviously it isn't a straw man but a valid point. Its all based on whether you think its real or not. This is one of those things that just kills me about logical fallacies because they in themselves are not logical. You have to use your own judgment in order to determine if something is a logical fallacy or not and your own judgment can be faulty, thereby leaving a chance that there is no logical fallacy. I could claim that the argument that polar icecaps melting is proof of global warming is a straw man simply for the fact that I deny polar icecaps can melt. I don't have to have any proof or make any argument. I could just stick my fingers in my ears and say "NOPE! Straw man! Polar icecaps don't melt and wouldn't cause global warming anyway NAH NAH NAH I'm not listening" and there wouldn't be a damn thing you can do about it. I'm going to believe what I'm going to believe and choose to be irrational and close-minded about the whole thing. Its still possible that Polar icecaps melting really isn't proof of global warming, but I'm never going to get there or make a valid, convincing argument if I choose to dismiss it in such a fashion. If you guys don't get anything else I said, I hope you at least understand this bit of it.
Topic: Terry Goodkind (Read 6863 times)
