The Wise Man's Fear: Difference between revisions

{{tropelist}}

 

* [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]: Kvothe at times. Sometimes he calls himself on it, as when he's complaining to Felurian that light acts like a wave, not thread, and then realizing how silly this is. Played straight with his reaction to the Lockless Box and the suggestion its sealed with magic, however. Its made pretty clear this is a mix of his university training and disdain for vintish superstition talking.

* [[Armor Is Useless]]: The Adem don't wear armor. It apparently would just slow down their perfect martial arts moves. Armor also doesn't seem to be much use against them.

* [[Arrogant Kung Fu Guy]]: Carceret is a female version.

** Kvothe makes an impression in Vintas as follows.

{{quote|I was one of '''those'''. I meddled with dark powers. I summoned demons. I ate the entire little cheese, including the rind.}}

** 'Oh perfect, a musician on top of everything else.' The Adem, part of whose hat is being [[The Stoic]], consider musicians equivalent with prostitutes because they express their emotions. To a whole room. Again and again.

* [[Artistic License Martial Arts]]: The Adem mercenaries practice a martial art that is so powerful that 10-year-old girls can kick the snot out of men. The Adem also claim that being morally superior makes women better fighters.

** Don't {{spoiler|pretend to be Ruh and go around kidnapping and raping young girls. There won't be much left after Kvothe is done with you.}}

** Hurting, humiliating or belittling Kvothe when Bast is around is also a poor idea.

* [[Book Ends]]: Bast reciting the "Elderberry" counting rhyme. At the beginning, it's to choose what bottles to pick for a mixed drink. {{spoiler|At the end, it's to decide which of the soldiers to kill first, with which [[Noodle Implements|random]] implement about the camp.}} And, as before, the book begins and ends describing the silence of three parts.

* [[Brick Joke]]: In the [[The Name of the Wind|first book]], Elodin asks Kvothe, "Do you know the seven words that will make a woman love you?" Several examples pop up: {{spoiler|"I need you to breathe for me," "I was just wondering why you're here," "I guess I'm doomed to die loveless," "You know, I could have carried you," and "For all that, she lacked your fire,"}} showing that the right words are based on context, as does Naming.

** When Vashet tells Kvothe, {{spoiler|"I will admit, I've never had a student offer himself up for a vicious beating in order to prove he's worth my time,"}} Kvothe replies, {{spoiler|"This was nothing. Once I jumped off a roof." This is a reference to Elodin's test of recklessness in ''The Name of the Wind''}}.

** In ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'', Bast sneaked into Chronicler's room at night and opened a discussion with the line, "We need to talk." Mostly, Bast talked and Chronicler listened. In this book, it's Chronicler's turn.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: As in ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'', exposition and important future plot points get mentioned in stories the characters tell.

* [[Closer to Earth]]: The Adem believe that women are morally superior to men and that only women can teach the Lethani because they understand it better and are better fighters because of it.

** Besides "Folly" which is still hung on the wall of the Inn, Kvothe gets an ancient sword he calls "Caesura" during the story. Kvothe mentions they are not the same sword.

** When Kvothe makes up a story about Chronicler, he claims he has a sword of paper that can cut you from anywhere if he writes your name on it.

* [[The Fair Folk]]: Felurian, The Sithe, The Cthaeh, Bast...we hear about a few more, as well.

* [[Famed in Story]]: Partly due to his own efforts, Kvothe is becoming this by the end of the book.

* [[Fantastic Slurs]]: ''Ravel'' is a slur against the Edema Ruh. As Kvothe puts it, "its use makes light of the systematic slaughter of thousands of Ruh." ''Shim'' seems to be a slur against Cealdish people, as it denotes a low-value piece of their currency; Simmon mentions that Ambrose called Wilem this at one point.

* [[Fetish]]: Kvothe finds extremely erotic to see a woman playing an instrument.

** An offhand reference to persecution of the Edema Ruh begins at the start and eventually culminates in the encounter with Lady Lackless.

** "There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man." Kvothe runs afoul of all three.

** The rhyme regarding the rings worn by Kvothe can be considered this; he acquires rings of wood, bone, and iron (at least) in his travels.

* [[Good People Have Good Sex]]: The Adem consider themselves to be on a higher moral level than "barbarians," and part of that is their total lack of sexual inhibitions. However, Felurian is [[Blue and Orange Morality|completely amoral]], and has terrific sex as well.

* [[Hard Light]]: The shaed Felurian makes for Kvothe uses shadow for cloth and light for thread.

* [[Hot Amazon]]: Kvothe finds two Adem mercenaries quite attractive, and bones both of them.

* [[Hot for Teacher]]: Kvothe is turned on by grappling with his Lethani instructor so much that he gets a boner. Luckily, she takes care of it for him whenever he needs.

* [[Ho Yay]]: Tempi is implied to have something of a crush on Kvothe, based on what the reader learns about Adem culture combined with how he acts around him.

** Kvothe gets the upper hand on {{spoiler|Felurian}} this way.

** He fakes this with Dedan when he gets too unruly, as well.

* [[Intoxication Ensues]]: The "plum bob" alchemical concoction Kvothe is dosed with completely strips him of his inhibitions and moral grounding. When asked if he would consider murdering his mortal enemy in cold blood worse than stealing a pie, he asks whether it's a meat or fruit pie. When asked what would happen if he did kill Ambrose, he says, there will probably be a trial and people will buy him drinks. Someone ''had'' just bought him a drink for messing with Ambrose, but that was ''how'' he got plum-bobbed.

* [[Least Rhymable Word]]: Kvothe is interrupted in the middle of a song, right after he sings a line that ends in "silver." We never do find out what on earth he was planning to rhyme it with.

* [[Little Miss Badass]]: Kvothe is paired with a fighter of a comparable level of skill to his own. This turns out to be Celean, a little girl, no more than ten years old. {{spoiler|She wins. Over and over again.}}

* [[Matriarchy]]: Adem society is a Patriarchy Flip. The Adem all believe that women are morally and physically superior to men. One female Adem says with some pity that men have absolutely nothing to contribute to the world.

* [[Magic A Is Magic A]]: Considering the way sympathy works, some of the audience wondered what's stopping you from using a ''person'' or a corpse as a [[Voodoo Doll|mommet]]. The answer? ''Absolutely nothing''. There's a reason they used to burn sympathists at the stake.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: In-world, names are very important to say the least. Many (possibly most) of the names in the story are inspired by words in various [[Real Life]] languages.

* [[No Guy Wants an Amazon]]: Notably averted by the Adem. The women are thought to be stronger fighters, yet they're screwing so often that no one, over the course of several thousand years, has figured out that sex has something to do with reproduction. That's a lot of screwing.

* [[Noodle Incident]]: "Chapter Fifty Two: A Brief Journey." Also, Kvothe's trial in Imre, which he skips because it bores him.

* [[The Omniscient]]: The Cthaeh, who can see all possible futures perfectly, and is "perfectly malicious." It knows the exact outcome of every single possible action it could ever make, and always chooses the one that will cause the most harm to the world. Bast describes people who come into contact with it as "plague ships sailing for a harbor," because their actions will [[Butterfly of Doom|set up terrible events to occur]]. Bast describes it as infinitely more dangerous than even the apparant [[Big Bad]] of the series, the Chandrian. Chronicler, however, isn't quite as convinced that it can have as much influence as Bast believes. The Fae in general however are so afraid of it that they kill anyone who talks to it from out of hearing range. And then shoot the crows too.

* [[Playing Cyrano]]: Kvothe to Maer Alveron of Vintas.

* [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]]: Any Adem mercenary. Played with in that they are extremely practical in terms of doing what it takes to win.

* [[Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil]]: When Kvothe gets drugged with a poison that completely removes his ability to judge morality, he can't figure out which is worse, killing a man or stealing a pie. But when it's suggested he might rape a girl, he just says, "I could never do that. Just like I couldn't eat a stone or walk through a wall."

* [[Sufficiently Analyzed Magic]]: Sympathy and Alchemy, analyzed to the point that they aren't even considered magic anymore.

* [[Too Clever by Half]]: [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] by Elodin as a reason he's not keen on teaching Kvothe.

* [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight]]: [[Cloudcuckoolander|Elodin]] decided to enter the Masters' Hall one night by climbing on the rooftop, then knocking on the glass window like a door. [[The Stoic|Lorren]] responded to this by unhinging the window and saying hello. (He's probably seen Elodin do much stranger things.)

* [[Voodoo Doll]]: Mommets, a key component in Malfeasance. {{spoiler|Though an actual corpse serves this purpose later on in a grisly and disturbing fashion. There's a reason people used to burn arcanists at the stake.}}

** Skarpi has yet to reappear.

** In [http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/05/rothfuss-reread-pat-answers-the-admissions-questions a recent interview,] the author has stated that Sovoy [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome|now lives happily on a farm in the countryside]].

** Marten is rightfully freaked out when Kvothe {{spoiler|kills the bandits using sympathy with a corpse}}.

** Quite a few people are alarmed at the fact that he {{spoiler|killed the fake Edema Ruh}}.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]

[[Category:Literature]]