The title of this blog makes more sense if you pretend you’re singing it….
Today we’ve got some Link Salad and an interview.
So apparently, (he said without preamble) folks have been making Kvothe memes.
Like this:
In a similar vein, someone sent me a link to a blog appropriately titled “My God What Horrors have I wrought?” A blog in which they take several pictures of me and… well… lolcat them.
I really don’t have anything to say about either of these things. I find myself ambivalent, but strongly ambivalent. It’s like feeling extra-medium about something.
It’s like yesterday. I was digging in the garden with Sarah, and I found a rock that was kinda cool, so I wanted to show it to her.
“Look at this cool rock,” I said.
She looked at it. “Cool,” she said.
“It’s flint,” I said.
Then I just stood there holding it. Kinda at a loss.
“What are you going to do with it?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
And that’s where I kinda stalled out. The main thing I wanted was for other people to acknowledge that it was interesting. It wasn’t purposeful. It wasn’t useful. It was just….
There should be a word for that. I think we have a hole in the language. We need a word for something that feels more significant that it actually is. Or perhaps something which is only significant in that it possesses a feeling of significance beyond any practical value or purpose.
I think the word should be…. hygapean. Maybe just ‘agapean?’ Can you adjectiveize “agape?”
Is adjectiveize even a word? It should be. Adjectiveate?
Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ve just invented at least one word up there. So I can cross that off my list for the day.
I think ‘hygapean’ is the right way to go though.
Pronunciation: Huh Gape Ian. Emphasis on the first syllable.
Proper usage: “I used to have a crush on her, but it turns out my attraction was primarily hygapean.”
“Look at this hygapean rock I found.”
There. Now each of you has to use it at least once today and we’re all set.
Okay. Moving on.
In other news, here’s a photographer that makes me feel like I really should step up my game when it comes to taking pictures of my kid.
And lastly, here’s an interview I did over at Toonari.
Share and Enjoy,
pat
76 Comments
Can’t we say: It has interestability?
That also more LOLcatable: Can haz interestability?
Is anything really hygapean? Maybe one does simply not know other people who would find the subject matter just as interesting?
It’s more interest “in potentia” ;-)
Once again, great post, Pat. Like always, I’m loving your hygapean blog! :)
Those memes were pretty hygapean… there i used it once! Ha!
hey, flint is very useful. you can start fires with it or make knives or arrowheads. good stuff.
Just to let you know I’m going to be just a smidgen disappointed if “hygapean” does not appear in Day Three.
caption for kvothe meme:
Like a girl a lot?
Speak to her in seven word phrases. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
Nice! But perhaps if you left the bottom portion simply as, “Speak to her in seven word phrases.”
You’ll notice it is seven words in length. ;-)
HA! Great point. I never noticed that.
I had a collection of really cool rocks when i was a kid, i lived in front of the beach so i had the oportunity to really see weird and amazing rocks, so i just collect them and i actually keep some of them this day. They are so hygapean to me, but maybe just a stupid hobby for others.
: ) You are really nice Pat, i am serious. So real, so human, so caring, so different from other writers, you are great =D
I still collect rocks. I’m a geek for rocks.
“I still collect rocks. I’m a geek”
Fixed it for you :)
No need to limit oneself to just rocks when ther is so many other things to be geeky about.
Leave the man to his rock-geekery. It’s quite hygapean after all.
I just added hygapean to my white board at work. I keep a word of the day so people actually know what the words they use mean. Now, your word has become the word of the WEEK. Thank you Pat.
Pat! Pat! The idea of your world as a table-top source book? Has me giddy. Giddy. Would you make this as a new system? Use the D20 compatibility stuff? Go through an established publisher and use their system (like, for instance, Paizo)?
…none of those (even the awesome Paizo) seem to have appropriate magic; I realize that saying “and then he cast Magic Missile” in any story (that wasn’t satire, I suppose) would be a terrible way to describe pulling the energy around a wizard into bolts of kinetic energy then flinging them at his enemies…and it’s not a method I’ve seen you use (and would be kinda surprised if you did). But, turning the wizarding, the sympathy magic, used in your books into a spell system…
That’s a tough one.
Ditto here. So much. A friend sent me the above linked interview a couple days ago and the sourcebook thing was the very first thing I zeroed in on.
Maybe it’s a spork thing…
I also found myself wondering what system could be used, and admittedly I only really know D&D 3.0 to 4.0 and Pathfinder which didn’t really seem appropriate. I’ve vaguely read about GURPS, which is supposed to be generic enough to apply anything you want to… but, yeah. In any case, if he comes up with something, I trust it will be fine.
Could be, could be.
I don’t know about GURPS – might work, but variations on the White Wolf system might also work for sympathy magic. I think it might take whole-cloth creation of a magic system, though.
HERO System.
In my humble opinion it is the only toolkit capable of doing the setting justice.
Hero system is the best. I only hesitate because it’s kinda mathy. I don’t want to frighten people off with the sharp learning curve….
Those are some fun pictures, but if you want to see some good kid photos that weren’t photoshopped, check out Poor Baby Boy – not that the kid is a baby anymore, but he’s been doing these types of photos since the kid was born. Always a good laugh.
Oh man. I don’t know how I feel about some of those. They kick off all my protective daddy impulses.
Um. Wow. Try momma bear instincts. I got to the towel rack one and just closed the window before I was either triggered to run home and put my kiddo in a protective bubble and/or find this kid’s parents and them in the face (in fact, probably the only thing stopping the later is seeing the kid is still alive and well). Eesh.
I think “hygapean” sounds way better with an emphasis in the second syllable.
That might be where it actually is, now that I’m thinking of it. I suck at identifying the stressed syllable.
You suck at identifying the stressed syllable in your made up words?
I can sing. That doesn’t mean I can write musical notation.
…I have no response…
I believe that with emphahsis on the first syllable it might sound more like “Hoo gap ian” (sorry, Germanic pronunciation infecting my brain) or maybe “High gap ian”…with the second syllable it’d probably be more like “heh Gape ian” or “huh Gape ian” depending on dialect/accent.
But then, deltaflip has a point – it *is* your word…sounds however you like.
That’s actually the meme I made back in March when a bunch of us were posting them on Facebook…I’m kind of sad you didn’t find it funnier but it’s cool that you saw it.
“Hygapean” seems awfully similar to “poshlust” (“the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive”) as defined by Nabokov. Of course, poshlust is Russian, not English, and the exact meaning is widely debated, encompassing everything from the banal to moral judgements. Maybe we do need a better word.
Pat,
how do you NOT have your own comedy show? I read your blogs and you absolutely crack me up!!!!
Thank you for inventing hygapean. I am always telling my wife to come look at how cool the layered, oily salad dressing looks when you tip the bottle upside down, and other .. uh, neato things like that. Very non-purposeful and non-useful, but try it sometime, it’s fun!
“thats what I do, I make things up”
for some reason that made me laugh so much.
Love reading your interviews! And cannot wait for the campaign setting to be released. *crossing my fingers*
I love all of this, but am at a loss for what else to say. I should probably just go show this blog post to someone and have them acknowledge it.
“something which is only significant in that it possesses a feeling of significance beyond any practical value or purpose”
I believe there is a term for that, and it is ‘art’. :)
Hmmm…. I think you could argue that art actually does a lot of practical, if intangible things. It communicates, evokes emotion, educates, etc. etc.
Maybe the feeling you’re describing is the foundation of art, the thing that comes before art… ur-art!
Thanks for linking to my completely random bullshit, Pat!
And yes, I agree with everyone: “hygapean” is a most excellent word. My favorite word is still “psychopomp”, however.
Someone has been visiting the House of Windowless Rooms, yes ? Lucifer is indeed the coolest entity ever to have used the word Psychopomp though right ?
I have no Idea how to say “hygapean ” I’ll not use that word.
“primarily hygapean” might be an oxymoron.
My linguist girlfriend once pointed out something along these lines.
Romance languages: heavy on the verbs.
Anglo-Saxon languages: heavy on the adjectives.
Frankly, you can probably adjectivize just about anything in English even if it makes little sense. You can describe something as “papery” (errr…thin and made of dry pulp?), which is the first random example that came up. “Chalky” is odd, as it describes a taste but we’re all likely more familiar with the tactile texture of chalk.
So go ahead and adjectivize. You write fantasy, so have fun making us wonder what the heck you’re describing ;)
I’m adding it to my lexicon. That’s sort of the way I felt about my last boss at the soul-sucking cubicle farm. In a field observer, anthropological sort of way. You know, so I wouldn’t tell him to f*ck off every day.
Good word.
I still covet the photo you took with me in Reno last year at WorldCon. *bestillmyheart*
Jules
fighting cancer
http://www.indiegogo.com/julierickseye?amp;
In the interest of lexicon, fuck is spelt with with a U, not an asterisk.
Speaking of longed-for words, read this today:
‘There needs to be a word or term for the phenomenon where someone says, “X is Y!!!” when it’s pretty clear that overall and in the general case there are a much larger number of non-X things that are much more Y.
“The US Federal government bureaucracy is an agile, fast-moving cheetah!”
Yes, except all those businesses which are even more agile and faster-moving super-cheetahs. But okay.’
(this was someone commenting on a Microsoft recruiting venture)
“TOAP” (Text On A Picture) memes really need to die out; I think those amply demonstrate why.
Perhaps “pyrrhic” applies?
Just got a chance to look at those meme’s
I’m sorry but those are just awful…they’re so awful its actually what makes them funny.
I also really dislike the interpretation of Kvothe in that piece of artwork – I notice it gets used all the time so I just have to say it…
It’s not that the artwork is bad, its a great drawing, love the cheeks and the lute, but the hair….yah, thats not red like a flame at all, thats brown and thus – confusing and for some reason oddly disapointing….
Totally distracts me everytime I see it.
I am feeling terribly sad now because, since I’m brazilian, I’ll not be able to use “hygapean” on my daily speech. I’m currently thinking about the possibility of creating a translation for this word :)
Agápico? Agapiante? I think Agapiante sounds cool, almost arrepiante.
The pics made me ambivalent too, except one. For some reason it bothers me that they would repost pics of Oot. That makes me uncomfortable.
Apologies if you have covered this in a Q &A, but is there one particular rendering of Kvothe that you think really captures his look? It would be hygapeanistic to get your thoughts (ehhh…I’ll leave the wordsmithing to you, Pat)
I’ve seen a lot of good Kvothe’s over the years. There’s a lot of them over on Deviantart.
Oh, and in completely unrelated news, my husband is currently at a Perl conference in Madison. I told him he should look you up while he’s there. He seems to think that would be creepy. I think you guys would get along famously, but eh >.>
He sent me these photos though, with the message of ‘I think I see where Patrick Rothfuss gets his inspiration for the architecture of the University’
http://lofn.hardison.net/~dylan/madison/
I’m not sure if he’s correct there, but it sure is pretty!
(he also is currently *gushing* about how nice the town is, and the people, and how everyone rides bikes, etc. I told him we are NOT moving there! Ugh!)
Anyway, I just thought this was well… hygapean.
Madison is a great town. If I were to move anywhere, I’d probably move there.
Thought this particular Kvothe meme was amusing.
http://i.qkme.me/3ppb01.jpg
I added Hygapean to Urban Dictionary. Oxford English wasn’t accepting my calls…not after last time.
That is a fantastic post.
What was so cool about this rock? Was it the shape? Did it look like something? Was it extra sharp?
I swear, I could almost envy all of you folks out there — staring blankly at rocks, and enjoying your hygapean thrills.
I have a little sack full of odds and ends I’ve kept throughout my life. A couple of rocks that didn’t have any right being where I found them, A chess pawn that didn’t have any right being where I found it…I seem to get excited when I find things that I deem are in places they have no right being.
Do they belong where you put them? If they do they no longer do. If they don’t, why put them there?
About the memes, they made me think how facts don’t tell a story at all…
OH MY GOODNESS. Stop me if you hear this all the time Mr. Rothfuss, but looking over those image macros of you it came to me in a feverish vision…
Have you ever been told you look like a friendly adorable version of BRIAN BLESSED!?
Specifically the one wherein you are about to devour Neil Gaiman.
Espero te des el tiempo de leerme, porque yo si me lo he dado para leerte. Supongo tendrás a alguien que te traduzca esta, que es la historia de alguien a quien haz marcado con tu genialidad.
Hola, el porqué de que te escriba en español se debe a que es mi lengua materna; además de que creo que eso puede volver este post algo más entretenido y particular.
Soy Mauricio Saavedra, un joven de 21 años procedente de Chile; un país muy al sur de este pequeño mundo, y como muchos, víctima del neocolonialismo. Te escribo porque tuve las ganas de contarte brevemente mi historia.
Siempre me gustó transcribir mis ideas y sentires al papel; con el pasar de los años le agarre el gusto también a escribir pequeños relatos, pero lo que más me agradaba era CREAR, por eso jugué rol un par de años, encantado con mi papel de Dungeon Master. Cree una realidad paralela a través de este juego, mapas, criaturas, traiciones, amores y crueldades. Pero con el tiempo sentí limitadas las historias y tomé la decisión de pasarlas a algo que perdurara y que llegara a más personas. Mi decisión tardaría en concretarse y es en este proceso donde se conectan nuestras historias, por supuesto no estabas enterado, pero creo que es bueno que lo sepas.
Llegue al “Nombre del viento” por la sugerencia de una compañera de universidad. Debo ser sincero en que nunca fui un gran lector, y a pesar de eso, siempre terminaba los libros que nos pedían leer para el colegio. Drácula fue el libro más extenso que leí, de unas 450 paginas nomás. Te imaginarás que cuando me recomendaron tu libro sentí una patada en el estomago equivalente al doble de la que había recibido por el clásico de Bram Stoker.
Pasaron los meses y le pedí prestado el libro a mi compañera. Supongo que no es novedad para ti el que te digan que tu libro tiene una increíble capacidad para envolverte; pero tratándose de mí, créeme que fue sorprendente. Es un libro precioso, y cautivador dentro de su género. Pero para mi fue más que solo eso, siendo el primer libro de fantasía que leía (No había leído las obras de Tolken, Martin ni las del resto del panteón) creo que tu trabajo ha sido una gran fuente de inspiración y gracias a él he tomado la decisión de dedicarme a este loco trabajo (casi de dios solitario) de formar universos.
Hace un par de semanas he dejado la universidad por diversos motivos, y he querido concentrar mis fuerzas en esta dura labor que debe ser tan dura como tener y criar a un hijo. Pero no me arrepiento; luego de haber descubierto qué es lo que me apasiona solo me resta seguir siendo así de sincero conmigo mismo.
No te diré que soy fan tuyo, pues detesto los fanatismos, pero si considero que lo que haz hecho es digno de una gran admiración y por ello he adquirido tus dos libros con el dolor de mi bolcillo (si es que me entiendes), pero más que eso se ha producido en mi una increíble sed por leer más historias que puedan cautivarme como lo hizo la primera entrega de tu trilogía.
Actualmente estoy en camino a construir mi novela, que espero algún día puedas leer traducida a tu idioma. Cuesta escribir; sin duda me he lanzado a una odisea temible solo con mi imaginación como arma y mis ganas de escribir como escudo ante las monstruosas críticas.
Leí tu historia, yo también pretendo ser escritor algún día; actualmente estudio Letras Hispánicas y me estoy versando en estos temas. Sé que no es de mi de quien esperas la respuesta; pero he pasado por el complicado tramo de escribir una novela. Por lo que quiero recomendarte un libro que puedes descargar gratis en la red. Es un pequeño curso que una persona con maestría en letras creativas escribió hace un tiempo, se llama “Cuaderno para Quijotes”. Lo encuentras gratis en la red (es de distribución gratuita) pero debo advertirte que no es tan sencillo conseguirlo ultimamente.
Suerte.
Un cordial Saludo:
Yael
Acabo de ver este mensaje. Muchas gracias, lo buscaré inmediatamente.
Quizás muera joven por esta alocada decisión; si es que este mundo burocrático y materialista le da prioridad a mi falta de contactos y dinero antes que a mis capacidades. Pero al menos habré muerto feliz ¿no?
Gracias por leerme.
The rule (as I learned it) is that any Noun can be verbed, and any Verb adjectified.
Hey Pat,
Here’s these memes of you too!
http://www.quickmeme.com/PatBrow/?upcoming
I would Call it inspiration, with an aspiration to truth.
The feelings Pat is experiencing. lol
Hahahaha I¿first of all sorry if my english sounds a bit odd, but I’m seriously doing my best.
I think some memes are funny, at least originals, is like a local joke for Kvothe’s fans.
For example I really enjoyed the one that saids: “not sure if stealing a pie is worst than killing… determinate the kind of pie first”
I luaghted… (reí) a lot with that in the book.
I think that the memes are starting to mess with kvothe ’cause he is a remarcable char.
Well… there is one more people reading your blog.
Good luck with the muse bite xD
If this world would be fair and just (English is not my mother tonge), you would be gay.
I don’t know where that came from but reading your comments about that rock it occurred to me that the though was hygapean enough for me to write it.
You, sir, really know how to write.
We need a word for something that feels more significant that it actually is. Or perhaps something which is only significant in that it possesses a feeling of significance beyond any practical value or purpose.
“Reality TV”.