Why Is Terry Goodkind Controversial?

all right everybody you have been asking for a Terry Goodkind author deep dive for a while I'm not gonna give you that because I really don't want to dive into this guy's life on that deeper level but I'll meet you halfway I'm gonna make a video where I basically break down why the fantasy genre and most fantasy fans seem to have an intense hatred for Terry Goodkind and what he has done for the fantasy genre I'm going to try to recite the events and the quotes from Terry as objectively as possible and then give my opinions on what he is saying just you know to try and have an attempt at this being completely objective though it won't because I really really really really really do not like this guy and then from here on out just know I will never be reviewing another Terry Goodkind book because I do not want to promote him or increase his spotlight in any way shape or form which even a negative review can do not that I'm saying every book he's put out would inherently get a negative review I would try to review him fair but after reading one of his books I highly doubt he will ever match my taste now before I jump into Terry's ego I want to address his writing which is probably going to be the smallest focus of this video because it's not terry goodkind's writing per se that makes me really dislike him he's bad in my opinion I'm not gonna say I think he's a good writer but he is by no means a bad person for writing what he writes but what he does write is incredibly remarkably derivative books from other fantasy authors and then just injects his politics at just an incredibly base level I have only read one book of his but I've also read many excerpts from other books and done some skim reading to just kind of do basic research for what people have been telling me for a long time and after doing this basic level of research I can say with almost 100% certainty that it is as bad as most people online will say he takes the very wide broad themes from Ayn Rand writing and then just slathers his own writing in it I don't particularly agree many things and Rand says but if I was an and Rand fan I would not once her writings represented in this way because in my opinion this kind of overly preachy annoying approach to politics is certainly not going to sway anybody I actually do like some politics and writing I like when an author is willing to take a stance whether I agree with it or not but you have your character stop and just give these highly politically motivated monologues is obnoxious so yeah I don't like the way he writes I find him to just rely on MacGuffins plot armor and convenience more than any other author I've come across and I've read Harry Potter no hate to Harry Potter but that series is full of that to the point we're in the one book I did read a guy just became friends with the dragon and got a dragon to help him within the span of about five pages because Terry needed a dragon so if you want to know more of my thoughts on terry goodkind's writing linked to the Terry Goodkind review I have done at the end of this video right to a much deeper dive into my problems with the Sword of Truth more specifically Wizard's First Rule the book I read for that review and now let's transition into terry goodkind's ego and before we go any further I know people are going to comment that this video feels like a personal attack I don't mean it to be I want this to be an objective look at why I do not want to talk about this man in the future because people still recommend Terry Goodkind books to me I still get asked to do more reviews I don't even want to do bad reviews I do not want to lend my voice to giving him any more of a spotlight period I'm sure if I did a bunch more of sort of truth meme filled reviews they do really well my Wizard's First Rule review is one of my most viewed reviews on this channel it would be profitable for me to dive deeper into sort of truth I'm not going to know I want to talk about authors I want to promote I want to talk about authors I like and Terry Goodkind is neither of those so let's now transition into terry goodkind's ego which again is something I guess I could look past and forgive but it's certainly were note and mentioning here and I'm going to be pulling from two separate instances that are amazing examples of how he views himself one is a 2003 interview and another is a reddit AMA he did sorry it's not an interview as a panel he was on and it's kind of become infamous online for his responses and answers but let's just dive on into it and i actually have previously covered this in a world hoppers video shout out to world hoppers and elliot brooks heard in that video with me but i want more people to be aware of this and if anyone in my comment section in the future is mentioning Terry Goodkind my dear audience please just link them this video so I don't have to address it I'm gonna start with not the worst example let's just jump into this one a fan in the panel asked him how many books will there be in the Sword of Truth series Terry Goodkind responds the answer to that is there will be one less than too many right now I have two more books under contract as readers know each of my books is a complete novel but the series has an overriding background story arc when the series concludes the background story arc will be concluded ok one less than too many you have confidence in your ability to in the series at the right time alright but let's let the trend emerge in your opinion who was the most must read cutting-edge writer publishing today his response and Rand Ayn Rand had been dead for over 20 years he he really just wanted to mention and Rand and you'll notice Terry Goodkind will never ever promote or shout out another fantasy writer he will only talk down about them from another fan what do you think distinguishes your books from all the other fantasy books out there and why shouldn't readers choose to read your series Terry responds there are several things first of all I don't write fantasy I write stories that I have important human themes like most other good fantasy Terry they have elements of romance history adventure mystery and philosophy most fantasy is one-dimensional it's either about magic or world building I don't do either so Terry almost all other fantasy has those things you've just listed in fact the most popular series have all of those because they're a necessity for the genre they're staples of the genre mister romance pulling from real-world examples those are all real things but then you just mentioned that you don't have magic systems or world building and I agree I don't think you have the energy or capacity to write your own world or magic system that's why you steal from other authors in most book fantasy magic is a mystical element in my books fantasy is a metaphysical reality that behaves according to its own laws of identity that doesn't really make sense and is a whole lot of nothing it's what I would call a fluff answer to make yourself look good and again your magic systems in my experience do nothing but move the plot along because you're stuck because most fantasy is about world-building and magic a lot of it is plotless and has no story my primary interest is in telling stories that are fun to read and make people think that puts my books in a genre all on their own no it puts them where almost every other writer is at almost every other good writer anyway so I guess readers who are interested in a story rather than world building and details of magic would have a good time reading my books Terry now this is also an example of when Terry insists on talking down to people something that is a nother theme if you read multiple interviews from him I'm not gonna pull a ton of examples there'll be one more big one down the road in this video but a fan simply asks him I've noticed similarities between your Sword of Truth series and Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series I've often voiced my suspicion that these two series might be occurring in the same world how crazy am i it's a kind of strange question but a legitimately valid one because Terry if you look online what people say and just obviously based off of Wizard's First Rule he steals from Wheel of Time a lot there are whole cultures and societies that are just lifted from the wheel of time I think I should add in my opinion so I don't get sued for this in my opinion for everything I say here but this is terry goodkind's response if you noticed a similarity then you probably aren't old enough to read my books if you notice a similarity then you're probably not old enough to read my books ter-bear terry t-dog noticing something that is there does not mean you're not old enough to read the book and and if there was a kid asking this question there's a lot of weird BDSM sexual stuff in your writing so I would have been way more concerned about that another question was what made you choose to leave out other common races dwarves elves etc from your books Terry's response please refer to my previous answer in which I explained that I am NOT writing fantasy my purpose is not weirdo cultural diversity I repeat I am writing stories about important human beings no you're not you're writing stories about very shallow characters who regurgitate your political philosophy after having incredibly cliche stolen storylines but again this insinuation and just vibe of I'm better than fantasy is truly repulsive to me it shows a lack of understanding of genre in general because genre is not something that restricts you it's just a label publishers put on certain stories and you can write whatever you want no one's putting a gun to fantasy authors heads and making them write certain things there are examples of countless fantasy stories that bleed across genre and those authors happily and proudly say they're fantasy authors because that's that's what that is man if you have romance in your story it doesn't somehow make you not fantasy it just means you're a fantasy series with romance what authors do you read yourself I think the most important author to read is an R and of course you do most of my reading is researching for things I'm writing about now but if I have any time to read one of the people I like is Dean Koontz I like his sense of life okay he likes Dean Koontz Dean Koontz is fine that's cool you can like Dean Koontz that's cool I like Dean codes he's alright but then he twists this question and adds a little bit at the end that I find so weird there's actually very little to read today because more and more books center around characters who are they're unremarkable pathetic our reprehensible I don't like authors who choose to tell stories about these kinds of people I like stories about individuals who can show the nobility of mankind so this is actually a recent development and I could and I think I have make a whole video about how modern protagonists are much more flawed much more relatable and much more human than they used to be we're seeing a lot more characters who are morally gray they have questionable motives because that is the real world they're deeper they're nuanced Terry is clearly wanting a return to the Doc Savage type protagonist the everyman the perfect man the guy who solves everything and is just always right and on top that's fine it's a preference but it's the tone of condescension that drives me wild because in my opinion these more nuanced flawed deeper characters are way more interesting difficult to write and notable I'm gonna end this by pulling from his reddit AMA and this is already going longer than I want so I'm gonna pull one example even though there were a couple in there I wanted to examine but when asked what his favorite book was Terry Goodkind responded right now the first confessor a book he wrote but the first book for me Wizard's First Rule will always be my favorite so he responded two of his own books okay and when someone followed up with V probably unneeded follow-up your favorite book from another author Terry Goodkind responded and rands anthem because of course he did one last quote Terry talking about himself in his own influence what I have done with my work has irrevocably changed the face of fantasy in doing so I have raised the standards I have not only injected thought and do a tired empty genre but more importantly I've transcended it showing what more it can be and in doing so spread my readership to completely new groups who don't like and won't read typical fantasy agents and editors are screaming for more books like mine from here we're going to transition to something covered in detail before but it's something that is certainly worth mentioning in a video titled why is Terry Goodkind so hated and that is the probably greatest infraction on professionalism I've ever seen from an author when he took to Facebook posted a cover for an upcoming book of his and said shroud of eternity is a great book can you just stop with a very bad cover laughably bad so let's have some fun with it tell us what you think of this cover in my next post the poll above and we'll pick ten random entries to win a signed copy of the hardcover we'll pick the ten winners March 1st everyone's welcomes to play just cast your vote and post a comment so maybe if you don't think about it for two seconds that seems fine but there was an artist who was paid to make that who probably thought it was a really cool amazing thing that a best-selling author was going to have them make their cover and the artist found it and responded it was nice working with you Terry what you're doing is totally disrespectful as if I didn't create those covers according to exactly what I was told to in my entire career I have never seen an author behaving like that - which Terry responded Bastion we have never worked together never met nor have I ever spoken with you we've never exchanged a message before today and I never told you what to create for this cover all of that was between you and the publisher I think there's been enough pot stirring for one day so right away just not his fault the publisher screwed it up and the fact that I'm publicly shaming an artist who by the way does amazing work I'm gonna link to his site down below the guy is a genius and I totally believe his claim that he made this according to publishers notes because Wow does he know amazing work but he ends it by saying enough pot-stirring today basically saying this man calling him out for his incredible lack of professionalism is pot-stirring and not calling you out for being a total douche nozzle and now we're gonna talk about my final point for this video and what I find to be terry goodkind's worst infraction as a human being and yes it does involve my personal favorite fantasy author Robert Jordan I do not want you to think that is why I am doing this I would be bringing this up if it was any fantasy author it happens to be my personal favorite even if as an author I did not like trust me I would be mentioning this so the year is 2007 it is publicly known that Robert Jordan the author of The Wheel of Time is suffering from a terminal illness he's in and out of the hospital and desperately trying to finish the Wheel of Time before unfortunately this illness takes him he has to cancel going to an event because of needing to go to the hospital because he's freaking terminally ill Terry Goodkind was also going to this event and did go and made comments mocking Robert Jordan for not showing up while he was there and then felt the need to point out that he had recently been the doctor and was told that he had the heart of a of a strong sixteen-year-old boy Robert Jordans health issues were heart related can you imagine doing that mocking a terminally ill person who it's publicly known as terminally ill at this time and then pointing out your own great health but my god man how can you feel that is an acceptable way to behave as a human being as someone with a platform I have a tiny platform and I already feel the need to watch what I say be respectful and be kind because I know if I say something bad about a person it has a heavy impact people can go leave comments on their videos on their channel on their Facebook pages because people on the internet do that please no do not go send Terry Goodkind messages or tweet at him leave the guy alone let him wallow and who he is but I do want to end this video by making one point Terry Goodkind and I completely agree on one thing he absolutely does not belong within the fantasy community anyway guys that's this video I feel weird doing my normal like like and subscribe patreon sign off so I'm just gonna say hey if you want to donate to some charities they're linked in the description down below I have the Robert Jordan Mayo Clinic as well as one for veterans that I personally support so go ahead and hit those if you want to put some good in the world after we just talked about so much negativity have a good one y'all peace you

Channel: Daniel Greene

Views: 330,581

Rating: 4.7714286 out of 5

Keywords: terry goodkind, fantasy genre, sword of truth

Id: W6ylsQ0DepI

Length: 18min 6sec (1086 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019