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Revision as of 02:24, 12 November 2006

My Time

Okay, so I didn't go back to my grandparents' when I said I would, I leave in a couple of minutes from now. Mystar knows how to get in contact with me if there is anything uber urgent. Please ask him to contact me in the event that I am needed.

Terry Godkind

I just wanted to stop by and thank you for your contribution to the discussion at the Talk:Terry Goodkind page. I hope you stick around and look forward to being able to edit with you in the future! NeoFreak 01:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Would you be willing to be a participant in a Offical Mediation in regards to Mystar and the Terry Goodkind / Sword of Truth articles? NeoFreak 16:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you point me in the direction of the Inchoatus discussion? Thanks. WLU 23:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Mediation Notice

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- Happy Editing, Runch 15:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

SoT Characters

Please take a look at Sisters of the Dark and let me know if you approve (in general terms, feel free to edit the blurbs themselves, I only copy-pasted the better part of them from the individual pages). If you do, I'd say the pages for the Sisters of the Light as well as the Mord'Sith could get a similar layout, though that doesn't mean the most important ones among those (Cara, Nicci, maybe others) shouldn't get their own page. Paul Willocx 16:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And same thing for Creatures in The Sword of Truth. Paul Willocx 17:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done. I think we can agree that format is a good starting point. Hopefully no one will disapprove of it, it seems like the best way to start.

Sisters of the Light, Mord'Sith or D'Harans could include Mord'Sith and other's such as General Trimack, Ulic and Egan, etc. grouping characters together by certain features, like Geography for those people from the Old World (Victor, Ishaq, Favel, Kamil, Nadi, etc) or alegance, like the Imperial Order (Kardef, Gadi, Sabastian, Stein, Imperial Order Soldiers , the gifted under Jagang's control, etc.).

Alright, I'll start giving a few tugs here and there and see if I can get some of the people I know to take the dive and become n00bs to wiki.Omnilord 22:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd say you are off to a great start! I'll try and give a little more input when I have the time to review the articles indepth. Maybe when you're done with the heavy lifting at SoT you could give us a hand with the ASOIAF pages ;) NeoFreak 23:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Sword of Truth

The Sword of Truth WikiProject is now up and running. Thought you might like to know. It still has a long way to go before it'll look truly respectable, but it's a start. - Runch 18:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Addition to Sword of Truth series

Hi Omni,

I checked into a couple other books - LOTR, Harry Potter, DaVinci Code, Song of Ice and Fire. There is in those pages, sections exist for criticism, themes, praise, and general commentary on the series. I still think the Sword of Truth page could contain a section like this. I presented this on the TG page, but here's an option for something on the SoT page itself. It's mostly the same.

Critical reception

The Sword of Truth series, has received both criticism and acclaim. Reviewers discuss the awkward and repetetive prose, and also the extremity of the violence and sexual violence found in some books. However, critics have also noted improvement in his writing over the development of the series, his ability to construct a detailed and creative world, and his writing of heroic characters with a powerful sense of morality. Goodkind himself has defended his inclusion of items such as torture, stating that (regarding Wizard's First Rule) his purpose was to highlight the helplessness, degredation and irrationality of an abusive relationship, not to shock or disgust.

1. Review at www.sfreviews.net
2. Review at www.flakmag.com
3. Review at christianfantasy.net
4. Review at www.inchoatus.com
5. ^ Review at www.infinityplus.co.uk
6. Interview at a Virginia booksigning

The following bit is also found on the TG talk page, I still think it holds:

Christian Fantasy and Inchoatus are just used to support inclusion of sexually sadistic elements. I'm going from secondary sources here myself, having not read most of the books, but unless there really is a huge anti-TG conspiracy designed to smear his name by putting forth the completely untrue idea that he has an unpleasant amount of rape and sadism in his novels, well, they support the claim. If people are willing to concede that the books contain sexual sadism, hey, leave the references out. I'm not citing Inchoatus discussion of TG's apparent lack of education and ignorance of scholarly definitions; I'm not pushing the opinions I'm just using it as a reference for the existence of the rape/sadism in the series. I also included TG's justification of some of the elements in at least one book (WFR), which I think does an excellent job of balancing out that particular section. And having read WFR and having had a reaction to that particular section, it does make more sense and seem less lurid and sensationalistic in the light of his comments.

I also think that would be the place to put a section in talking about (how you mentioned before) how only the bad guys do the raping and whatnot. It means you're not having to fight over people trying to smear TG (yeah, I don't like him, but I think the above section is more than fair, and allows critical praise as well - think of it as a pre-emptive strike against critics).

Addressing what you said on the TG page below:

Addressing the plot and thematics of an individual novel or a series should remain local to the relivant article. To discuss that information on the biography casts a very negative POV of the author himself, not the books he writes. Terry is not a sadist, don't make him out to be one just because he is able to create evil villains who can portray evil traits (IE sadism, violence, sexual-misconduct). If you want to address this, keep it local to the books/series, and don't make it sound like you are labelling the author with the same sweeping judgement. We can work on making it read appropriately in the appropriate article(s). Omnilord 22:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

That sounds more than fair, wanna take a couple days to mull it over, or I can paste it into the SoT talk page itself for comments? If you want to put it in yourself, that's fine I'll add the page to my watchlist. WLU 20:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is the thing, people feel loathing toward the dispicable acts of evil in these novel is not a bad thing. It is how they react to this correct value assessment that is off kilter. They don't want to know that there are bad things in the real world, and that they are as bad as Terry has portrayed them, and even worse because there are real people who are victims of such violence. Disdain for Terry just showing the truth without holding back is like saying you don't like to hear the whole truth about reality. It is like you want to be sheltered from the real world in which violence happens whether you want it to or not.

And I'm 99% sure that you'll agree none of that is appropriate for the article itself. My thoughts on including it is that becase TG's writing is as extreme as it is on the violence and graphic sexual violence, it's noteworthy for inclusion. I'm also set on including TG's rebuttal 'cause it gives an excellent context for these elements. The rest of it gives the section more volume and adds a couple points on (title of the section, tah-dah!) Critical reception. I can't think of any other author I've read who included 70 pages of a detailed discussion of torture in his debut novel (most actually skp past it completely), so noteworthy. His rebuttal is a good one as well, makes him sound like far less of a violent, sadistic f*cker who'se including these elements for the shock value and to keep people reading the series to see what other violent, sadistic things will crop up in following books. WLU

while I appreciate your attempts to come to a neutral point, this needs alot of further work to become encyclopedic.

I'll reply further soon, I just got home from the Battle of Germantown and I am very tired (marching and trying to play a fife is really exhausting when you haven't done so in years!). Omnilord 23:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

So many jokes I could make about the fife. I was a clarinet-ist and falutist (flutist?) myself, and I never marched while playing. Does the fife get a lot of wind instruments looking down their nose at it? Uh... my apologies, my sense of humour tends towards sarcasm and insults - it's a measure of respect for you that I kid, I'm sure you're flattered.

Have you noticed the suspicious tendency to use the word 'concensus' when the anonymous users revert the TG biopage? WLU 12:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sick of Mystar

Hi Omnilord, I'm soliciting comments regarding Mystar, he's really pissing me off and I'm sick of it. I'm putting in a request for comments in a bit, in the mean time I'm soliciting people who've been pissed off by him in the past. If you're willing to have any input, I'm asking for help. Both people involved are scrutinized, so if there are comments where I've pissed you off or made stupid comments, I would also like those - they'll help me improve my conduct. I'm also posting this on other people's page, check my contribs for this chunk of time. Realizing you have a different relationship with Mystar than I do, I understand if you aren't interested. WLU 22:51, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party has been accepted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/Terry Goodkind. For the Mediation Committee, Essjay (Talk) This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to open new mediation cases. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

Terry Goodkind mediation

Hello, I'm sorry it's been awhile, and I'm not sure if all of you are still interested in formal mediation, but I recently agreed to mediate that case. Please either accept or reject me as a mediator there, and if you accept, please let me know if you would prefer public or private mediation. If it's a stale issue, just say so. Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 16:00, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

SoT stuff

G'day Omnilord,

I'm replying on your talk page so's I'm not cluttering up the SoT talk page.

WLU, you need to realize that there is more conversation that goes on about these articles than is present on these talk pages. Talk pages are somewhat inefficient to realtime colaboration efforts. In most of our cases, Mystar happens to be the person who makes the edits for the group. Some of us who are able to make use of their time to perform edits will login to wiki and do so, but of late many of us have been quite overburdened with work and the impending holiday season doesn't help to aleviate time constraints. So when Mystar speaks, he often does not speak only for himself, but for a large number of editors that just don't have more time to contribute than to have a brief instant messenger conversation with mystar about the direction something should take.

So he speaks for everyone? 'Cause right now he's the only one saying anything beyond you. Which I appreciate you taking the time to do by the way, as well as the reasonable way you engage the conversation.

Mystar is a very blunt person after a point, and you passed that point a long time ago by refusing to yield your constant and consistant insistants on including material that the concensus has deemed inappropriate and un-encylopedic. Not only have you presumed to be the only authority on editing and have "owned" pages, you have repeatedly been cited as deliberately stating that you want to see mystar banned, you want to see Terry Goodkind shamed on Misplaced Pages, and you are now trying to use the wikipedia dispute resolution process to do so.

I don't believe I own pages, I think I have conceeded where reasonable discussion has yielded something worth keeping. Case in point, the SoT bit I would like to see included - if I owned the TG bio page, where I originally wanted to put it, I'd have slapped it up there and kept reverting it until people got bored. I didn't, I took your suggestion, posted it on the SoT talk page, and am still waiting for comments. I want to see Mystar banned 'cause he's been wikistalking me, 'cause he doesn't engage in actual discussion with anyone who disagrees with him, 'cause he uses wikipedia policies punitively (and improperly), 'cause he's generally a crappy editor and 'cause he's generally disruptive. You could argue the same about me, but I don't think this holds in recent months. Anyway, I'm happy enough if he just ameliorates his conduct to civil and reasonable. As for wanting TG shamed, I'd say I've downgraded to wanting at least the fact that his books involve strong and explicit violence, torture, etc. It was my main reaction to reading WFR, and the reason I stopped reading at that point. More on this later.

If you have such a strong aversion to Terry Goodkind, why don't you just walk away from all things Goodkind like a reasonable person would? Omnilord 05:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

At this point I'm averse to Mystar getting his way through bullying. It pisses me off that he has yet to learn and adjust his conduct despite all attempts by other editors to have him read and actually take to hear the policies that Misplaced Pages uses to regulate itself. I could portray it as somehow a noble way of forcing learning, but no-one would believe me and I'd be lying. When people have pointed out policies to me, I've tried to read them (when I've got the time) and follow them (for the most part). Anyway, I really would like your opinion on the following. It's what I would like to see a version of on the SoT page. Even if I haven't read the books themselves, I've read enough talk pages, on-line reviews and transcribed interviews to think it's valid. Here's the overall section, then I'll break it down line-by-line for reasons why I think it's valid for inclusion.

Section's called critical reception. Actually, you've still got it on your talk page. Incidentally, to dig this up on the SoT page, I'd have to go through the history 'cause Mystar edited it, as he as done to me before. I should not have to revert talk pages, that's just dumb.

The Sword of Truth series, Goodkind's sole body of work to date, has received both criticism and acclaim.

this isn't too bad I think, perhaps criticism could be replaced by an adjective. I don't think acclaim will get any fighting, and opens the door for people to add positive reviews, something I think most fans would be happy with.

Reviewers discuss the awkward and repetetive prose,

I think this is fair too. WFR I found so, and as mentioned below, there's demonstrations of improvements and learning throughout the series. That reflects well upon TG and the series itself.

and also the extremity of the violence and sexual violence found in some books.

OK, maybe sexual violence is iffy, but violence and torture are regular in the later books, unless there is a vast conspiracy of on-line reviews all saying the same things. If you tell me that there's absolutely no violence, torture and sexual violence, well, maybe I've been had.

However, critics have also noted improvement in his writing over the development of the series, his ability to construct a detailed and creative world, and his writing of heroic characters with a powerful sense of morality. Goodkind himself has defended his inclusion of items such as torture, stating that (regarding Wizard's First Rule) his purpose was to highlight the helplessness, degredation and irrationality of an abusive relationship, not to shock or disgust.

This does nothing but reflect well upon TG, and demonstrates that it's not just done for shock value and to sell more books. There's a purpose behind it.

Now, the references might be iffy, but beyond the first one (awkward prose), the rest are just discussing elements which are noteworthy because of their extremity. If they demonstrate, as you said in an eariler response, the extremity of the evil of the characters doing the torturing, so much the better, though I think it's a bit weak to say 'oh, but it's only the bad guys'. Anyway, looking at the actual text, I really do not see anything horrific in the four sentences. I've never received any input or feedback. Again, sure I've been a jackass in the past, probably ongoing, but what do you think about what's there? Can you honestly say it's worth discarding wholesale? I can still write about things I disagree with or dislike, and it's not like everyone else will let blatant vandalism or abuse will stand. Thoughts? WLU 02:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)