Well folks, the votes are in on the twitter conetest.
And the Winner is… Pat Rothfuss.
Or rather, the winner is @Pat_Rothfuss
Which is to say that the winner was *not* Pat Rothfuss.
By which I mean that the winner was not me. And it wasn’t even a close thing.
With a crushing 42% of the electorate, the winner is.
- @Pat_Rothfuss, which was Mary Robinette Kowal.
Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. In 2008 she received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2011, her short story “For Want of a Nail” won the Hugo Award for Short Story. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and several Year’s Best anthologies. She is also a cast member of the Hugo-award winning podcast Writing Excuses. Mary, a professional puppeteer, performs as a voice actor, recording fiction for authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.
Everyone played a good game, but simply said, Mary crushed this contest. Not only did she get nearly three times the votes anyone else did, but she managed to convince twitter itself that she was me.
It was a little disheartening, in all honesty.
Who were the rest of the players?
- @NotPatRothfuss was Amber Benson, with 11.63% of the vote
Amber Benson is a writer, director, actor, and maker of things. She wrote the five-book CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES urban fantasy series and the middle grade book, AMONG THE GHOSTS. She co-directed the Slamdance feature, DRONES and (co-wrote) and directed the BBC animated series, THE GHOSTS OF ALBION. She also spent three years as Tara Maclay on the television series BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. She doesn’t own a television.
- @FakePatRothfuss was Kiala Kazebee, with 7.69% of the vote
Kiala Kazebee is a writer on the internet and co-host of Felicia Day’s web show/book club “Vaginal Fantasy” on Geek and Sundry. She apologizes in advance for making you google that.
- @RealPatRothfuss was Veronica Belmont, with 8.97% of the vote
In the world of SFF, Veronica is the co-host of the science fiction and fantasy book club, podcast and video show The Sword and Laser. She is also a member of the monthly Google Hangout show, Vaginal Fantasy, where she drinks too much and waxes intellectual on paranormal romance and erotic scifi and fantasy.
- @PatRothfuss was my assistant, Amanda, with 14.05% of the vote
Amanda and I have known each other for years now, and she’s been reading the blog for even longer. Not only is she my personal assistant (aka Pat-herder) but she’s also developed a creepy knack for impersonating my phraseology. She’s good enough at mimicing me that shes’ managed to fool Sarah once or twice, so it’s not really surprising that she also tricked 14 percent of you….
She tells me she’s considering getting her own Twitter account now, though she worries she’ll feel significantly less cool than while she was pretending to be me.
- @PatrickRothfuss was me, with a mere 15.33% of the votes
I am the actual bonafide Pat Rothfuss. Or at least I thought I was until I lost my own fucking contest.
* * *
First and foremost, big kudos to Mary Robinette Kowal, who was above-and-beyond cunning and devious. Her charity, Con Or Bust, will receive $1,000 from DAW Books, and bragging rights for all of eternity.
She already did a bit of strutting, walking around parts of World Fantasy con looking like this:
I expect I will never live this down…
Secondly, I’d like to thank all of you for a lovely game. Even with a few hiccups, I’m very pleased. Once again, you’ve proven that my readers are some of the brightest, wittiest, snarkiest folks a writer could hope to have.
And thank you to Mary, Amber, Kiala, Veronica and Amanda for spending a couple weeks being me. I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate y’all taking time to goof about with me. You should really check out their work if you haven’t already. Because while they’re quite good at being me, they’re much better at being themselves.
In the next couple weeks, I’m hoping we might be able to schedule a Google hangout together and talk about the contest. But that will probably have to wait until I’m back in the US….
Tonight, (Monday night) I’m going to be doing my reading and signing in Oxford. I hope to see some of you there….
Fondly,
pat
p.s. I wrote goodly portion of this blog using stolen wifi on a moving train. If you ignore my minor typos up here, I’ll ignore yours in the comments below. Sound fair?
81 Comments
Wow. I mean, *wow*. Pat, you were the first “fake” I eliminated.
And apparently Amber Benson has even more talent than I had previously known…
Oh dear…I picked Amanda…however I thought the real YOU was totally cool enough to be the REAL Neil Gaiman! So there is that to cheer you up…I mean if you can’t be Rothfuss, Gaiman is a great second choice…xx
I’ve never had so much fun being wrong.
Haha! That’s amazing!
So which twitter handle will you be tweeting from in the future?
<3
Totally called it! I knew it was you from the beginning! Hahaha. So chuffed with myself! But this phenomenon is apparently not uncommon. Check out this link: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MistakenForAnImposter
under the “Real Life” tab.
…and then the rest of us lost 4 hours of our lives on tvtropes :P
Well played all of the real and fake Rothfusses…Rothfi? not sure what the plural is there.
Pat, I am fluent in typonese, as I am sure many others are. But being a writer, I am sure the little typos probably bother you. Well, we can live with them.
If you’d go for the German version (as …fuss could be seen as a German word) then the plural would be Rothfüße/Rothfuesse. But that doesn’t sound so good. And I even think that Patrick used the term “Rothfi” himself.
“… and proudfoots! –”
“Proudfeet!”
Having been a fan as long as I have, I’ve come across a lot of people who criticize your portrayals of women. It’s kind of thing, though I have no idea why. There’s a weird symmetry in a woman creating a more convincing you than you yourself. In Four Corners terms, she was the Pat we all told ourselves Pat should be.
I wouldn’t worry. Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently once finished third in an Arnold impersonation contest. He was rather miffed, as it was a radio phone-in.
At least you came second!
That’s what she said.
That made the inner 15 year old boy in me giggle
*facepalms*
I was right! I knew it was you, and not just because of the top hat picture that made you look so dapper.
Charlie Chaplin once came in second in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest, so you’re in good company.
Now I feel like a fool! Which is appropriate, being a fool and all.
However, I think Amanda had inside knowledge as well as being brilliant, so I don’t feel too sore.
Pat, this was a wonderful idea. I haven’t enjoyed Twitter so much in a mortal age.
Thanks everyone who played, you ‘sneaky bastards’ – it’s been great.
Well. I was right. I am awarding myself bragging rights.
Well fancy that. I voted for Amanda. Though I guess if she’s fooled your girlfriend a time or two I can’t complain that she fooled me. The girl deserves a raise, Pat.
Well played by all!
Mary had your voice down from the start, and must’ve laughed when I sent her a note about how it’d given you away. :-)
Bragging rights!
I wasn’t able to follow very much but there was one twit I read at the beginning that had me convinced. I do have the advantage of meeting you in person and talking for about 5 sec. when I ran into you at a BN in Madison.
Oh man! You were my second guess. :-) Thanks for the game. It definitely provided some needed distraction around here.
I was RIGHT!? I picked the correct Twitter @Patrick Rothfuss Oh how awesome! Brag, brag, boast, bragetty brag-o-rama! Beautiful game indeed.
I guess I can ask this in person in a few hours in Oxford, but will you be tweeting from @PatrickRothfuss then? Also, what’s going to happen to the other twitter accounts (i.e. will they remain in the hands of Mary, Amber, Kiala, Veronica and Amanda or will they revert back to you?)?
Sorry to point out a typo but the hyperlink for Mary’s website is missing the colon; so it sends you to an error page.
As for the contest, it truly was a beautiful game, thank you to all the players!
Fixed, and thanks! Never be sorry for pointing out a typo that might stop people from getting where they need to go!
Thanks brett.
I..I voted for Mary because she used the same profile picture as you in Facebook.
*gives a slightly disappointed look*
Well, Amanda had me thoroughly fooled. Since day #2 or so I was CONVINCED it was either @PatRothfuss (Amanda) or @NotPatRothfuss (Amber), but only a few days after that I discarded Amber for some reason, smugly assured @PatRothfuss was the One. I had a couple of brief moments of doubt (in which I planned to put together an industrial strength program that would scan all of Pat’s blogs, apply algorithmic machine learning to learn his writing style, and then run it against the different Twitter feeds), but I never seriously reconsidered…
Pat, I am sorry, you are absolutely horrible at being you. But I will give you this – #TheRealRothfuss has been a positively beautiful game. I am thoroughly pleased.
Oh, of course, congratulations to Mary – I am still unfamiliar with her work (though I’ve been aware of it through Writing Excuses), but this (and residency in Chicago!) is yet another point that tips the scales towards “okay, enough messing around with random authors, time to read someone with a long list of recommendations.”
Pat, I am sorry I eliminated you, but I’m not sorry I called you Joss. I apologize for criticizing your ellipses. Your get to redefine how ellipses are used, if it’s up to me. Also, Amanda deserves a raise. She fooled me. Well played, all.
Boom baby! One of the 15.33%! Who knows his favorite new(ish) author? That said, apologies that you didn’t win at being you. It’s been said that you should always be yourself because no one is better at it than you. I guess we can throw that one into the worthless drivel pile.
Well played, Amanda. You had me completely hoodwinked. Pat was my second choice. I can’t believe two of the Rothfi were my Vaginal Fantasy ladies! Anyway, thanks for letting me observe the contest without joining Twitter. It was fun!
This was actually a very simple game. I chose the name the that was most similar to the url of your website. You apparently like your full name and didn’t do anything “cute” when you chose an URL for your website; so I chose the twitter handle most similar to your website address. I never read a single tweet of any of the accounts. I can’t believe more people didn’t use this logic. Wizard’s First Rule, I guess.
And Amanda had the same Twitter picture as Pat’s Facebook..nah, Pat wrote somewhere they had picked the Twitter accounts randomly.
^ What s/he said :)
What’s more, I didn’t pick the URL of my website. My publisher did.
Pat, I would like to know if you have planned to add some Kvothe stuff (like the t-shirts or the talents or the cards, to tinker’s packs or to the traditional Worldbuilders campaign :) )
I have 30 euros left to Christmas and there is nothing I would like more in the world than some Kvothe stuff, since the cards won’t arrive indecember and not in january, I believe.
Let me know if you can.
You will like Madrid…
That’s all I can say.
Yay! I knew it from the first “W” tweet. Which was an awesomely Rothfussian fail, acknowledged as only you can do.
That, and you always make my 10-year-old laugh. The other dead-giveaway.
Ha! I totally called it and pretty early on too. And I was not following the competition too closely either. I read the first few tweets when I heard about the contest and knew it had to be @PatrickRothfuss, and about a week later I checked in to see all the accounts one more time and there was nothing there to change my mind.
Great game, Pat!
I’m so frikkin proud of myself, totally guessed correctly! Woot Woot!
Dohoho! I guessed correctly, and I am unreasonably proud of myself. Unreasonably because I didn’t actually follow any of the Twitter accounts or read a single tweet, and I based my vote entirely on the fact that top hats are awesome. BUT I WAS RIGHT! w->.<-w
Going back to Booklandia now.
I guessed it!! I know that Ms. Kowal ran away with the contest, but I have to say, Amanda played a really good game. I was torn between the two of you, but your Pat-isms won the day. Well, for 15% of us, anyway.
I’ve not been keeping up with the contest for the last week and I certainly don’t want to subtract from Mary’s game,
BUT – is it a complete coincidence that the account that won used the same picture that Pat uses on Facebook? It just looks like too much of a landslide victory to me OR maybe she’s just that good. ;)
My question would be to the voters: How much did the Twitter validation affect your vote?
Pat, I find it interesting that All the Rothfakes were female…intentional, or just the way it worked out?
I noticed the same thing, and was scrolling through to see if anyone else did too…
I also noticed that.
Damn, PatrickRohfuss was my second choice. Though I only read a few posts from each, and were you actually being yourself Pat? I think the most major factor in my choosing Pat_Rothfuss was simply because it was fairly convincing and it was the first one I saw. I tend to get attached to things very quickly.
Figured you were @PatrickRothfuss when it was the only account still tweeting after voting ended. Amanda would definitely have an edge for impersonating you, makes me feel a little less stupid for creating campaign posters the last night of voting for @PatRothfuss.
Likewise! Amanda had me fooled… then again, she’s around Pat the most so it eases the sting a bit.
Hooray! I was one of the 42%, but @PatrickRothfuss was my second choice. Looking through the timelines now I can’t actually remember why I dismissed @PatrickRothfuss, but it definitely made sense at the time!
I was actually pretty sure @Pat_Rothfuss was not the correct answer (they tweeted a bit too much to be plausible) but it was definitely the best Rothfuss-impression. I think it was the casual “Amanda will do this” and “I will do that” type phrases scattered through various posts that swung it for me – completely natural things to type if you’re you, highly unnatural if not!
I also suspected Amanda was one of the Rothfi, although inevitably I picked the wrong one.
Well played all around, and congratulations to Mary!
(oh, for the person asking above how much the verification tag affected things: for me, not at all. I was already leaning towards @Pat_Rothfuss before it happened.)
Oh man, LOL. Wow.
What I find extremely amusing about this is that I ruled out the RealRothfuss first because I felt that his speech pattern was overly feminine…..*facepalm*
I ruled it out within like 5 tweets too. *sigh* LOL.
Amanda won my vote, I definitely think she needs a twitter so I can follow her now. :)
And Congrats to Mary!! She always does everything so well it seems like!
Ha! Awesome, I picked Amber. Maybe it was because I was watching her get killed by an angel on Supernatural when I submitted my answer.
I really wish I was in Oxford at the reading. Hope it goes well!
Woot woot!!! I picked the real Rothfuss!! However, I have to admit that it was the top hat that ultimately one my vote…..classy ;)
Well crap. Known you for 20 years and I still picked Manda. At least I knocked out Mary from the start.
That’s hysterical. *waves to endo*
This made me feel *really* proud of myself.
Mary is a twitter pro; she’s a good one to lose to.
But now the important question: are you staying on Twitter? And if so, which of the accounts will you use? (Personally I feel that you should keep all accounts active and tweet periodically from each of them… as well as give access to others in order to keep up the confusion and merriment for all time… Until of course the poor Twitter verification tool collapses in a rage taking the entire twitterverse down with it. Either way you can’t lose.)
Amanda, you got me! Well and good! Real Pat (as in PatrickRothfuss) was my second choice but you absolutely had me! Brilliant. Such a fun game! I’ll really miss all the fake Rothfi!
Was W written with will? We would waste wits wondering…
Actually, I think that probably threw quite a few people off – obviously you wouldn’t be that bad at Twitter… (That said, I was pretty sure @PatrickRothfuss was you from the first “suss”, although @NotPatRothfuss had me unsure for a while.)
Oh, I feel so clever. You were my first choice! Although Kowal came in at a close second, so obviously she’s wicked good.
Yay, I was right. Although no I wished that I’d posted it on twitter instead of just voting as proof. :)
Oh, my lords. I am so surprised. Your real handle was the one I would look at and say “Nah, you’re trying too hard, mate.” I was so sold! Now I’m sold on Shades of Milk and Honey.
Funny thing is that I would have never picked up the book if I saw it in a bookstore. Now that I know, though, even my outlook on feminine fantasy (if that’s a thing I can say) has changed completely. Yay for learning new things!
This, sir, is unbelievably awesome; now I can’t wait for the next signing by either yourself or Mrs. Kowal which is within driving distance – many years from now I look forward to explaining “why isn’t this book signed by the author?”…oh, it is honey, it is.
Dear Pat,
What I like most about this contest, is that you guys actually played sort of a Keynesian beauty contest. Consider the following. Mary did not win because she’s better at being you, but because she’s better at being what your fans consider you. Put differently, all players painted a picture of you and her’s resembled the mental image your fans have of you the most. That doesn’t mean she actually got it *right*, but she got what the voters thought was right. So no worries, you’re still the best at being you.
See here for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
Best,
schomi
I feel remarkably accomplished, in an odd way… On one hand; I feel bad because I made somewhat of a kneejerk decision on which was the real you, but on the other I feel I pegged your particular response that caused that decision rather well.
I was WRONG, dammit! At least I got to confess this dreadful misdeed in person to both Pat and a magnificently fake-bearded Mary at WFC, and to hear Pat read a BLOODY WONDERFUL story about trees and towers and a mysterious lady (from the ‘Unfettered’ anthology). Thanks for the entertainment to all Rothfi – and Pat, your panel wisdom on the matters of world-building and currency geekery were fab and most entertaining.
I thought it was Mary because of her last post: “Hm….I just realized that while I’m in Brighton I have to be very, very careful about tweeting in public. It’ll give the game away”.
I thought it unlikely that someone who wasn’t actually there would think of that. My error was not realizing a fake Rothfuss could also be in Brighton.
I got it right! Even though I didn’t spend all day on Twitter *grins proudly* :)
Amanda, you opened a hole in my heart with your portal gun. *sigh
I knew who you were from the letter W.
Literally, I was like, “Okay, 5 of these people are likely experienced enough with twitter not to make a mistake like that. It could be a trick, but let’s go with Occam’s Razor on this one. The person who mistyped their first post is the one with no prior twitter experience.”
Honestly, I couldn’t really tell the different accounts apart very well, but since there was such an immensely clear victor I have to imagine people were spotting tells. Or maybe it’s because of subtler things, like the way the profile picture is the same one you use at the top of your blog…
This whole experience is rife with potential for social experimentation!
Thanks again for inviting me to play. You have amazing fans.
I *knew* I caught your scent, you meandering, verbose bastard. That meta acronym almost threw me off, but I got you in the end.
So you were the only male Patrick Rothfuss? Hmmm….
Post by Mary Robinette Kowal over on tor.com on how she out-Rothfussed the real Rothfuss…
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/11/how-i-beat-pat-rothfuss-at-being-pat-rothfuss#more
Thanks for the article. No wonder she fooled so many of us. Pat can’t research himself that much before each tweet.
I must say, I did guess correctly and I’m proud of the logic that I used, because I didn’t actually follow any of the Twitters at all.
Basically, and I knew that this was a longshot, but I figured that if you were going to *keep* one of these accounts, you’d keep the one with the name you would actually use. The logic? The one that matches your Facebook account – Patrick Rothfuss. So with that in mind, I just voted for the Twitter tag that I assumed you would hang on to in the end.
Surprise surprise! I was right!
I guess I was right.
I didn’t so much base my guess through the contents of the posts to make my pick.
This is just my point of view so you might disregard it if you think I’am way off.
From reading your books and some of the posts on facebook and twitter I would say you wouldn’t take your own name as it would be to obvious, but you’re a smart guy and that is exactly why you picked your full name. I believe you picked it simply for the reason that people wouldn’t expect it from you.
Or more likely I was just lucky *shrug*, well at least there is only one you to follow now, which is good. Even though I think the world would be an better (and interesting) place with more people like you it was rather confusing :)
What a delightful contest. I’ll admit, I didn’t think you were you either.