Patrick Rothfuss – Geeking Out About.com

Road to the Hugo Awards: Selected Fancasts, part 2 – The “Professionals”

Posted on 28 February 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

Road to Hugo Award Header_Part 1 Continuing to go through the Best Fancast Hugo Award eligibility list on this Google Spreadsheet, there’s something I noticed which I thought was interesting: For a category called “Best Fancast,” there are an awful lot of “professionals” on it.

This is not to say that someone who gets paid to write and/or edit and/or create science fiction and/or fantasy works by another company can’t be a fan and talk about the industry, the genre, and/or the people who are involved in it. It does set up a potentially unrealistic expectation about the quality of said works, and/or that the hosts have access to better equipment and a higher caliber of guests or material.

As a result, there’s a chance that as I review these “Best Fancasts” further, I may be a bit more critical of certain shows than others; I certainly hope that’s not the case. So here’s round two of my reviews of Hugo Award-eligible works for “Best Fancast”:

Hugo Fancasts_WhosRound Toby Hadoke’s Who’s Round
Episode 127: July #01 (feat. Keith Hodiak)
Hosted by Toby Hadoke
Date Published: July 3, 2015

First Impression: This is precisely the kind of stunt podcasting that I like. The premise behind British comedian Hadoke’s podcast is that for the 50th anniversary year of the BBC series Doctor Who he would attempt to interview as many people as he could who were involved with the show over its lifetime. For this episode, he caught up with dancer/actor Keith Hodiak who played the Raston Warrior Robot who annihilated a bunch of Cybermen in the 20th anniversary special episode “The Five Doctors”. Not being a true Whovian, I had no idea why Hadoke was so enamored of this minor character; subsequent research and some time watching YouTube clips has revealed that because the Raston Warrior Robot moved so differently and destroyed its enemies so completely in such a short amount of time, it instantly became a favorite Monster-of-the-Week for fans of the show. For a podcast with such a limited scope, Hadoke is a deft interviewer, starting off with questions and anecdotes about the filming of the episode, segueing into Hodiak’s post-Who career filming Full Metal Jacket with Stanley Kubrick and the genesis of his career as a modern dancer who was given a scholarship to a prominent British school, and then circling back around to the Doctor Who theme of the show to end the interview. It was very well-done, and I hope that Hadoke may eventually branch out into doing interviews with non-Doctor Who actors, too, for other British sci-fi franchises. Another thing I noticed that was a point against it was that for a podcast which had excellent audio for an interview being held inside a restaurant before and after a meal, the end bumper before the preview of the following episode had terrible audio. How does that happen?

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: For a specific, single-subject podcast, sure.

Hugo Fancasts-Unattended Unattended Consequences
You’re Gonna See Some Hogs
Hosted by Patrick Rothfuss and Max Temkin
Date Published: August 4, 2015

First Impression: While I know that Rothfuss is “not [my] bitch” and I’m sure he’s heard every joke under the sun relating to when the third book in the Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy will be published and out in the wider world, it is certainly no coincidence that the episode I picked to review would be the one where he and Cards Against Humanity co-creator Temkin talk about procrastination. As mentioned in a previous review, this podcast greatly suffered from a descriptive error because for about half of the time, Rothfuss and Temkin talked about GenCon, a convention for board and tabletop games which now has a writers’ track attached to it. There was also a brief segue where Rothfuss talked about the state of Wisconsin (the original home of the convention) and how excited he gets whenever a mainstream media product mentions the state and does a really excellent job of depicting the state and its people how they really are. Wow, I thought to myself, on another show, this would be an excellent way to get into the discussion of under representation in mainstream media and genre fiction for non-Caucasian people. But of course, Rothfuss and Temkin aren’t creating that kind of podcast; to me, this feels more like the All Work, No Play podcast created by voice over actors Liam O’Brien and Sam Riegel where they talk about the voice work they’re currently doing (which they really can’t talk about due to non-disclosure agreements) and try to find ways to have fun while having lives and raising families in Hollywood. There was a different weird turn to the conversation when Rothfuss was talking about how GenCon used to be a convention where there would be so few women that one easily could play the game “Where’s the Girl?” by taking a photo of the convention hall or one of the gaming rooms and trying to figure out where the lone female gamer was in the crowd. I expected the next words out of their mouths to be that of course now there are several women playing games in the halls and showing off their own games in the exhibit hall, but the next words were actually extolling the virtues of the kid-friendly options for GenCon. That was such an awkward transition because it made it feel like Rothfuss and Temkin were saying that because the con is more open to casual play and kid-friendly now, it’s now okay and welcoming to women, as if women couldn’t also be the “dark” rules-lawyering, uber-competitive nerds who used to comprise all of GenCon’s audience, or that it would be the “women’s” job to bring the kids to the conventions. It wasn’t until 30 minutes into the podcast that they actually started talking about procrastination, and the main takeaway I got from it was that while I was very glad that Rothfuss really understands the mindset of someone who works as someone else’s assistant for a living, I didn’t get a sense that he wasn’t about to make the same kind of leap which YA author John Green did last year in removing himself completely from most of his non-writing obligations in order to finish his next book. I hope he’s able to come to that kind of conclusion soon, if only for the sake of being able to spend more time with his young kids and his partner—and also so that he can finish his book.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Nope, as it is only barely about the genre and/or even the life of a genre author.

Photo by Bruce Press Ditch Diggers
Episode 10: Featuring Guest Host Gail Carriger
Hosted by Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace
Date Published: April 30, 2015

First Impression: Despite the fact that I have known and loved Hugo-award winning creator Ursula Vernon’s work for a very long time, I did not choose to review the episode featuring her because I know that she and Lafferty are great friends in real life. Instead, I chose to review an episode featuring a writer with whom I’m not familiar, despite the episode notes stating that she is a New York Times bestselling author. Imagine my “surprise,” when it’s revealed that not only are Lafferty, Wallace, and Gail Carriger also good friends, she was also part of the impetus behind the creation of the podcast. And therein lies a bit of a problem. Listening to this conversation, it made me feel and really believe that there is a secret cabal of science fiction and fantasy authors who all know each other and support each other to the exclusion of others. There’s a verbal shorthand that they have with each other which to a longtime listener and fan sounds chummy but to a new listener feels a bit alienating. At the same time, this is the kind of “professional” podcast which both readers and aspiring writers need to have on their podcast rotation. For both audiences, it not only pulls back the curtain to show off the real life of a working writer, it also turns on all the stage lights and peers into the dressing rooms during intermission as well. The bits from Carriger I was fascinated to learn was that like me, she can’t stand when a book is poorly edited and has purposefully stopped buying books or reading some authors’ work because of it. She also revealed that she was able to circumvent her publisher Orbit’s usual “two-book contract” by deliberately dropping a cliffhanger into her second novel Changeless (which was the first one to hit the NYT list), just so her editor would want to ask her about the next book in the series. I also loved hearing her reaction to what she called the most polite piece of hate mail regarding two homosexual characters in the series, from a reader who had bought all five books but was disappointed by her positive treatment of the two characters. But perhaps the part of Carriger’s interview that I loved the most was when she mentioned that writers should not overly denigrate other writers whose books are bestsellers but not to their own particular taste because the sales of those books are paying for their advances with the same publisher. It’s a very business-first sentiment, and one I had not heard many other writers speak of before; now that I’ve heard it, it makes total sense to me. For their part, Lafferty and Wallace mostly let her speak her mind and helped the conversation along in a helpful way, except for one part about halfway through the episode where it felt like Wallace was re-explaining something Carrigan had just finished saying about how she tailors her social media presence to her established brand and what she knows her audience expects to see from her. He even lampshaded his own mansplaining (“I didn’t want to seem like I was regurgitating what Gail says…”) but to someone who’s never heard him speak before, that’s totally what he just did. The end of the podcast focused on listener questions about things such whether or not it’s a detriment if a person can’t afford to pay for something like the Clarion workshops or how viable the short story market is for a new writer, all of which was very interesting to hear. It was great to listen to this casual conversation between friends, and yet at one and a half hours, I think it was perhaps a bit too long—something which Lafferty, a veteran podcaster since 2004 should have known and tried to prevent.

Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, and bits of this should definitely go into their highlight reel.

You Had to Be There: “An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm” in St. Paul, Minneapolis

Posted on 21 November 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss and Paul & Storm

November 14, 2013
Amsterdam Bar and Hall
Saint Paul, MN
Performed by Patrick Rothfuss, Paul and Storm

When we moved to Minnesota this year, my husband and I made a deal with each other: If there was a live event that sounded interesting and the ticket price was reasonable, we’d try to go. After all, what better way is there to learn how to navigate your new metro area than attending great shows in great venues?

Both individually and together, we’ve seen musical comedy duo Paul and Storm perform many times, and they always put on a good show. Money’s been a little problematic for us recently, though, so I made a decree that if we were going to see them perform again, there would have to be a real good and compelling reason. So when we learned that the next leg of their shows would not only swing through the Midwest but also bring fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss along for the ride, we snapped up the tickets quicker than you could say, “When’s Book Three coming out?”

This is not because we’re particularly strong Rothfuss fans. In fact, until that night, we’d never bought any of his books before. However, judging from the set that he did at w00tstock 5.0 this year, I knew that I’d love to hear what Rothfuss could do with a smaller audience and whether or not he’d be reading snippets from the new book. (A person can always dream!)

Suffice to say, neither my husband nor I were disappointed.

The show was at the Amsterdam Bar and Hall in St. Paul and if you’re driving, I have to strongly urge you to take the B stairs or elevator down from the ramp to street level. When you exit the elevator vestibule, the “red doors” of the Bar and Hall will be directly in front of you and you can go right inside. Getting our Will Call tickets at the box office was painless, and once we had our wristbands showing that we were old enough to drink, we sauntered inside.

For this show, seating was ample and came in two varieties: many rows of chairs for those who had already eaten and wanted to sit closer to the stage, tables and chairs for those people who hadn’t and were okay sitting further back. Because we liked the look of the bar menu, we chose to sit near the back and eat before the show started at 7:00 pm. The food was Dutch-themed “pub grub” and went down easily with our drinks, all of which were reasonably priced. In fact, my husband liked the look of the cocktail menu so much that he had a second drink after his first stout, something he normally doesn’t do. The service was quick, our waitress was friendly, and the food was pretty delicious. We were able to finish everything, including dessert, before the show started.

Paul and Storm performed first, starting with “Opening Band,” a song which they will probably be performing first at every show they do for the rest of their lives. The rest of the set list consisted of a mix of old songs and new songs, the latter of which will be appearing on their next album Ball Pit, for which their Kickstarter campaign was recently approved and already funded more than twice over after only about a week. Of these, I believe I liked and laughed at “Right Here With You” the most due to the chorus. Between songs, they did a quick poll of the audience to see who among them had seen their act before, and very many people in the audience had not. This meant that their older songs got a lot of wonderful and healthy reactions; this further intensified my enjoyment of hearing them played live again because I could enjoy hearing other people react to things I’ve already heard several times before. And since Paul and Storm had already identified that the crowd was mostly here to see Rothfuss and were more book nerds than musical comedy nerds, “Write Like the Wind” (link is to the official music video) was a great big hit and was perhaps funnier than the last time I’d heard it live.

Since another show was going to be taking place right after theirs and the concert staff needed to re-purpose the space, there was no intermission between Paul and Storm’s set and Patrick Rothfuss’; the performers acknowledged it by stating that if anyone needed to get up to use the bathroom, they wouldn’t point and laugh. I chose to make my break during “Nun Fight,” and I’m totally okay with my choice because Paul and Storm’s introduction to the song wasn’t as luxurious as it has been in other shows I’ve seen of theirs. This was probably the biggest drawback to the show, but probably something they couldn’t have avoided unless they could have started the show earlier. The closing number was “Irish Drinking Song,” not to be confused with “Another Irish Drinking Song,” the Da Vinci’s Notebook track which was featured on in the movie Despicable Me 2. With this number, I suspect that they may be trying to create another “Captain’s Wife’s Lament”-style experience with which they can end their shows. Where I was sitting in the audience, I couldn’t tell if many people were singing along with the chorus; perhaps this song would have played better with a different crowd or maybe I was just sitting too far back.

Paul and Storm then introduced Patrick Rothfuss, who kicked off his set by explaining first the story behind a very non-children’s book-style book he wrote called “The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle: The Thing Beneath the Bed” and then reading it aloud while the illustrations were projected onto a screen. Since I’d seen him perform this during his w00tstock 5.0 set, I relished in the fact that I knew what was coming and my husband and some of the audience members didn’t; this made the progress through all three endings and the coda all that much more delicious. Rothfuss followed this reading by reading out loud some old advice columns he had written for his college paper, both of which went over well and had me doubled over in laughter.

He also took some questions from the audience towards the end of his set. It was perhaps this last bit that went over the least successfully with the crowd as the questions from the audience couldn’t be heard by anyone in the back and Rothfuss didn’t repeat the question for the rest of the audience before answering it. This could have been avoided by having a volunteer merch minion take one of the stage microphones and stand in the audience near the front of the stage so that people could line up and ask questions convention-panel time; then again perhaps there weren’t enough monitors on the stage available for Rothfuss to be able to hear questions being asked through a microphone.

Perhaps the most personal Rothfuss became during the Q & A was also my favorite moment. An audience member asked a question, to which his answer was something like, “Yes, thank you, my therapy sessions are going very well.” Rothfuss went on to explain that after achieving success with his first novel The Name of the Wind, the amount of stress and pressure in his life to continue to succeed and support the charity he founded and the people who work for him almost ruined his relationship with his long-time partner and other friends. He explained that being a Midwesterner, the idea of even going to therapy was antithetical to him as he came from generations of farmers who are used to fixing all of their own problems by themselves; the idea of getting professional help for your feelings was something he resisted for a very long time. However, once he understood the need for it, Rothfuss was able to see why learning about how his brain processed his feelings was important and that the year or so he’s had of therapy has really helped him. This was something I could relate to a lot, having gone through several years of therapy myself; I hope more people (ahem, Mike Krahulik) can take his words to heart.

Listening to Rothfus speak, I could tell that he was a great storyteller, but he’s got a long way and many more public appearances to go before his “patter” becomes as polished as someone like John Scalzi’s or John Green’s. There were times where he meandered and dithered while deciding which of the old advice columns he was going to read or how he was going to transition from one section of his set to the other. At the same time, his introduction of the Princess story was flawless and he answered all of the audience questions with ease and humor. The more public appearances like this he does, the more comfortable he’ll become with being a performer as well as an author and thus will be able to win over audiences members like me who may have heard of him but have not yet read his work.

Finally at 9:00 pm, it was time for the show closer, “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament,” which Paul and Storm have elevated from being just a simple innuendo-filled sea shanty to being the kind of long-form improv bit that Frank Sinatra only wishes he’d been able to command during the “Rat Pack in Las Vegas” days. Earlier in the show, Rothfuss joked about how proud he was to have been able to play the “X is my Y cover band” game twice during his own set; during “Lament” and with the aid of a beer he drank rapidly, Rothfuss was able to hold his own against Paul and Storm’s constant barrage of puns and jokes. Again, due to the time limit on the set, the short song only lasted 15 minutes, after which there was a healthy bit of applause and everyone ran to the merch booth to buy stuff.

After taking the last bit of cash out of the ATM—thus depriving other show attendees from being able to purchase any of Rothfuss’ merchandise, the proceeds of which were going to Heifer International via his charity Worldbuilders—my husband and I lined up with our two Princess books to be signed. The line formed very quickly and was very orderly, and judging from how long it took each item to be signed, Rothfuss took his time with each fan and even took a picture or two with some fans. As we waited in line, I noticed Paul and Storm at a nearby table chatting with each other or looking around the room or on their phones with no fans around; that’s when it really hit home how much of a Patrick Rothfuss show this was rather than a Paul and Storm show.

After talking to Rothfuss and asking my question, my husband and I went over to talk to Storm to thank him for coming to Minnesota at this cold time of year and to gush about JoCo Cruise Crazy 4, which will be our honeymoon trip next year. Storm’s face lit up when he learned this and we had a great little conversation about what goes into planning a cruise, how they decide what the entertainment will be this year compared to the previous years, how understanding the cruise line has been about the group’s request for a ball pit. This is probably what I like the most about going to see a geek-adjacent live performance: the performers are generally never standoffish and almost always remember that they used to be “regular” geeks as well and treat their fans accordingly.

According to a recent interview, they stated that their next scheduled appearance will at JCCC4 in 2014; the rest of their energies will be put towards finishing up Ball Pit, managing the Kickstarter rewards and JCCC4, and gearing up to tour the nation and promote the album with an ice cream and guacamole food truck in accordance with their biggest stretch goal. I don’t know with whom they’ll be performing or when they’ll be coming back to Minnesota, but you can betcha that I’ll be there.

With or without chips for the guacamole.

Tag: Patrick Rothfuss