2. WLU's Post from Westeros which sums up the anti-GK position.
Goodkind's appeal is like McDonald's appeal. It's quick and easy to eat (read), it tastes good (it is satisfying on a basic level), it's easy to digest but wreaks havoc on your body (it takes very little reflection to swallow and destroys your ability to critically analyze), and if you really thought about what goes into it, you wouldn't eat there (actual reflection reveals the intensely harmful, shallow and desensitizing nature of the writing and world).
Goodkind's writing taps into basic human instincts, and I mean like, caveman basic. It's the same instincts that make you slow down for a car accident, turn and look when you think you see a naked person, and cheer on [national event] Day. It's the novel equivalent of a slasher flick - a bit of violence, a bit of tits, and in the end the good guy wins. It's not news, its olds. It's Cops, Montel, Sally Jesse, TLC presents the World's Fattest Man. It's news about the guy who kept a girl locked in his basement for 5 years then killed himself on a set of railroad tracks. Worse, it's a fly-on-the-wall view of what happened in the basement, then the train running over his head. It's every movie where the good guy gets beat to a pulp, but somehow manages to get up and win. It's the War on Drugs propoganda without the CIA forcing people to chose between growing the only viable crop in their dry, nutrient depleted soil while there's a gun pointed to their head or starving.
People want to see gross things, horrible things, but they also want in the end to see the bad guys punished and the good guys to win. Everyone is safe, even if they have to go through something harrowing in the end, the main people are safe. Richard will get tortured again and again, Klan will get almost raped, but you know they will never die, or actually be raped. Richard and Klan can get away with whatever they want because they are right, the people are right, not their actions. It reduces the world to simple things, we never have to wonder who is right, who we should cheer for, because no matter what, it is always Richard. The complicated world is distilled down to a simple fact of 'believe in this person, and you are correct'. It's the same simple view of the world that gets America criticized in foreign policy, so there's already a built-in audience for it. 300 million bored people with tremendous disposable income and a pre-existing penchant for unquestioning acceptance of 'the good guys' (Fox 'News' and CNN), who are already fed a steady diet of violence, sex, black-and-white good and evil on the evening news, freaks and titilation, the moral restraints of the Bible along with constant access to everything the Bible is against, all wrapped up in the idea that an action can be good or bad because of who does it, rather than what is done or why. On top of that, it's got a 'you can do anything if you try it, because you are soooo smart' invincible superman who is good at everything (when really he's not smart, he's magically enhanced) that we all wanted to be when we were kids that we can live out our fantasies in. Plus, he's got a hot girlfriend who's demure and pure when in public but has a turboslut switch he can flip on whenever he wants. And she's not quite as smart as he is, she always listens, and when she does disagree, she's always wrong.
In short, Goodkind provides a series of voyeuristic narratives which maintain a gruesome level of contrived tension, in easy language, with a protagonist we always wanted to be, lots of naughty bits, all wrapped in a ridiculously uncomplicated worldview that simplifies problems down to cushy decisions that generally can be solved with some speech showing how smart you are (against a straw opponent) or a sword. The villain always wears a black hat and the hero always gets the girl (who is a cheerleader in public and a harlot in the bedroom). All decisions are easy and all problems are resolved in 700 pages or less.
Or to be really short, it supports the idea of an world free from doubt.
But that's just what I think.
Side note - if I have to read one more time about how the Mud People 'jabber' I'm gonna ******* lose it. The few other people who speak a different language don't 'jabber', they talk. His contempt for any non-European descent people makes my knuckles itch. And Richard's 'no, you'll do it my way because I said so and I'm important' utter disregard for their traditions also pisses me off. Traditions in societies exist for a reason, to keep the society functioning within the culture and environment in which evolved for hundreds to thousands of years. The contempt for primitive people because they are not casting off their historic cultures and embracing the 'modern' lifestyle with all of its attendant fragementation, alienation, isolation and general interpersonal shittiness really aggravates me. We may have more stuff than a tribal herdsman, but he has a family that is much closer and loving, and if a nuclear war broke out, he's far less likely to resort to cannibalism than I am because he can actually take care of himself. To show contempt for them because they don't 'choose' our life (and that's the implied criticism in all the 'jabbering') is ignorant and short-sited.
And how does a single village of people survive? Who are they related to? A single village, assuming perhaps a couple hundred people would inbreed themselves out of existence within six generations. His 'I do important human themes, not worldbuilding' is such a cop-out for crappy writing and continuity.
even if they may have a few similiar themes, they're miles apart in talent.
