Pink Slime: The Name of the Wind (Part 3)

Part the First

Part the Second

Based on Kvothe's existing characteristics I feel safe in predicting how the story goes. This was informed slightly from what I had heard from other people (the magic school, for instance) but mostly I'm going off of the modern cliches of mainstream fantasy writing.

IS THAT A JOJO REFERENCE??

His family is killed by an evil overlord that is evil because that's cruise control for hack writing. He runs around homeless for a while to build sympathy for him and give him a “hard knock life.” Despite this, he will run into several people who will do everything for him, minimizing his street urchin suffering. Despite all this, he will speak lovingly of urban life and how it is superior to country living among the bumpkins.

He will get into not-Hogwarts, a school allegedly with very high entrance qualifications, on an absurd technicality because there's something special about him. Women will throw themselves at him, but he will awkwardly reject them, instead focusing on one particular girl that he fixates on to an unhealthy amount. They will probably have awkward teenage sex. Kvothe will rise quickly in his class, despite frequently neglecting his studies because he is “brilliant but lazy.” He will make friends easily because he's ripping off Harry Potter.

He will have a rival at the school. That rival will be equally as sociopathic and insane as he is, only he's the bad guy because Kvothe is the designated protagonist. He probably has dark hair. Maybe he's a little taller than Kvothe. He will come from a comfortable upper/middle-class life to contrast with Kvothe's hardscrabble origins. The two will go back and forth and Kvothe will kill him at the end of the story with unnecessary cruelty.

Kvothe will be unnecessarily cruel to many, many people. He will kill several innocents in the course of his studies and extracurriculars. He will then spend the next chapters justifying it to himself and the audience. It will always be written like that poor nameless mayor. Legitimate motivations described as malice. He will always dodge responsibility and self-reflection.

There will be a magical library. This is where all of the wonder and exotic magic will go in the book. It will be lovingly described and ultimately have no bearing on the plot.

The only other fantasy elements will be Kvothe learning the names of things (like the wind) to get them to do stuff. It will be subtle instead of flashy, and achieved through some combination of schizophrenia and dissociative disorder.

Sympathetic magic will be explained further, and it will be nothing like actual real-world Sympathetic Magic, which is found in tribal societies (and appears in Voodoo). Instead, it will be something brainy and lame like math.

There will be no standard fantasy creatures. There will be K-Mart brand knock-offs. Kvothe's Chekhov's Gun sword in the framing chapters will not be explained, saved for a second book.

He will save the girl/school/world, yet still be expelled because he's made powerful enemies along the way and also because he's a sociopath. The second reason will not be acknowledged.

It will end by going back to the framing device. Chronicler will be gushing about how great Kvothe is. It will end on a preparation/teaser for the next book. Maybe there'll be a bar fight or something to try and breathe some life into the ending. It will be anticlimactic and unsatisfying, thematically tying into the rest of this dreadfully dull waste of dead trees.