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straits

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Everything posted by straits

  1. To add to those already listed, the scene where windspren rush around Kaladin to help him push back a part of the highstorm and rescue human refugees in OB. I think there's a significance in Kaladin standing up to a force of nature to save lives. Also - Shallan's presentation of the girl climbing the wall and her breakdown in the Tower as she admitted to herself what happened with her father.
  2. The tools that you use to break a system (violent revolution) and the tools that you use to build a state (economics, diplomacy, etc) are not necessarily facilitated by the same parties. Nor is the slave required to plan for a positive, organized and egalitarian society after the revolution - the slave does not have the tools nor the network to do so, and is only interested in breaking the chains and killing the masters. And if breaking the chains happens to be inconvenient for the masters at that second, so what? Perhaps the master should have thought about liberating the slave before the house was lit on fire. You can hardly start attacking the elites during peacetime and economic prosperity. That's when they're strongest. Your anecdote is somewhat consequentialist, which I don't fully oppose. Maybe the anarchy that comes after the revolution will be overall worse for everyone. But this is the price of discontent in a racist and classist society. And the moral failing is not that of the slave, but of the master. As a side point: Kaladin post-duel is a prime example of why peacefully airing your grievances to the elites does not work. He won the favour of the lighteyes crowd, and held the confidence of Dalinar after putting his life on the line for his highborn sons. When he verbally and publicly accused Amaram of the wrongs he committed, he was thrown in prison despite all of his achievements and it took all of Dalinar's clout not to have him executed for daring to step up to the supremacist masters.
  3. Yes, you can say it is treason as dictated by the law. However, the same constitution(s) that define this treason, also allow lighteyes to own darkeyes as slaves and hold them several social classes below them. In that sense I argue that the law is immoral, and breaking it is righteous - and it is even morally imperative to do so. The "rule of law" is less a moral compass and more a system designed to maintain the status quo, no matter how bad the status quo may be. As an aside - this is why despite his many failings, I don't hold Moash's murder of Elhokar as a crime worth lamenting. He did many things wrong, and killing a king is nowhere near the worst.
  4. That doesn't actually surprise me very much, given that the newly minted bridgeman units don't really have oversight from anyone other than Kaladin (who is probably the only "visible" person to the lighteyes). I don't really remember where Moash got the shards from though... Kaladin handed those to him after he got them as a reward, right?
  5. I actually hope he continues to provide social commentary on lighteyes in Alethi society and that he doesn't lose distrust and dislike of the caste system. Kaladin should be wary of being allowed to "succeed" as a Brightlord within this society, because the title itself holds the connotations of a slavemaster. Moash was briefly a good vehicle for this analysis. He saw it in the prison camps of the Parshendi - how lighteyes reinforce the racist Alethi status quo, with lighteyes taking an excess of food and resources while an old darkeyed woman (and child?) starves outside of their quarters. I think Sanderson put that scene in for a reason. What saddens me is that the way Moash has been radicalized against the Alethi elite has been tainted by his own nihilism. I hope that the validity of Moash's grievances against the Alethi class system does not get lost in his transformation into a villain. I don't fully understand this claim of treason, but mostly because I don't classify an attack on the ruling elite lighteyes (the king), by disenfranchised darkeyes, as treason. It may not be entirely well-timed given the looming world war, but absolutely understandable in its motivations.
  6. Hey, the guy was the kingiest of kings thousands of years ago. But yeah, I was half-kidding. I still don't think his apathy necessarily means he's a super-villain, though.
  7. That's not in the spirit of Windrunners at all. Vengeance is not a component of their ideology.
  8. Maybe, with a metallic spin on blonde hair. But with somewhat Asiatic eyes? Actually, that sounds a bit like east Finland/Karelia.
  9. Agreed. Their People's Revolution has been hijacked by malignant extraterrestrial interest
  10. The brilliant thing about Sanderson's series is that he demonstrates the humanity (or sapience) of the Parshmen. It is the humans who committed cultural and literal genocide upon the Parshmen. Which leads us to the question - is humanity in this case something good and noble? Or should Moash align himself with the victims of the original sin on Roshar? Interesting food for thought, in a fantasy series of course
  11. That makes perfect sense. I kind of imagined the Alethi to be of Arab complexion, with east-Asiatic eyes and bone structure of something in between. Of course, no 1:1 mapping between them and our world. What puzzles me is the Iriali. Metallic golden hair, yellow eyes, but what do their faces look like really?
  12. I read it as the sardonic, malicious salute of someone who fulfilled his original goal. Calling it cowardice is appealing to a component of fair play that didn't exist in the war the Kholins waged to get their throne. I don't see why Moash should have waited to kill an enemy combatant until some kind of chance for an honorable duel presented itself. I understand the sentiment in the bolded sentence and I don't claim Moash is a good person. But your last phrase about his humanity, I find to be hyperbolic, his transformation notwithstanding. This may be whataboutism, but the readership here generally holds Dalinar in high esteem. This is someone who waged an aggressor's war (read: the Kholinar brothers caused the war, they weren't defending themselves) and left thousands if not more innocent civilians dead in his wake. And this murderous adventurism is supposed to be forgiven because Dalinar took the Sweet Forgetfulness pill and is now a better man? No. He has yet to answer for these crimes. But if a man like Dalinar can redeem himself, why can't Moash at some point?
  13. Hear hear. He lived the reality of the bridges and the chasms. The experiences down there are part of what led him to killing a king, and to becoming who he is today. He has the right to that salute. He might be distasteful as a person, but as several other posters have said, he is not a supervillain for his deeds up to this point. Whether he might become that later in the books, is up for debate. And to echo @Ookla the Obtuse, the salute was an incredible literary moment. It hurt to read.
  14. His freezing in combat is the highest point of his arc, along with his failure to say the words. It is the epiphany you were waiting for, and seemingly missed. He realizes the conflict is not black and white, and he is witnessing good people from both sides die in it, not to mention his PTSD and other combat-related trauma kicking in. I think you're misusing the metrics of "success" and "failure" for Kaladin's arc and character development. For him, experiencing decision paralysis and actually relying on other people to save him (even with the "final" fight with Amaram), is a huge character development. It is the foundation of the road to his fourth Ideal. I personally enjoyed reading about his failures and depressive episodes through OB. When you listen to a song, sometimes the silences between notes can be used for great emphasis, and I think that's what Sanderson did with Kaladin's arc in a literary equivalent.
  15. In the process of overthrowing a king (a tyrant from the perspective of someone in the lowest strata of the kingdom's society) you aren't going to challenge him to an honorable duel to the death. You'd get laughed out of the court, and then hanged. Remember the treatment Kaladin got when he challenged Amaram, a mid-tier lord? Jail. And right after saving the sons of a highprince in an extremely outmatched duel. So no, I don't think that the circumstances of Elhokar protecting his son somehow immunizes him morally from being attacked by an ex-slave. Because there is no one "correct" way of murdering a king when you have been in the lowest segment of society that he rules. Any method goes. On liberating the city from Odium - here I agree. The very nature of the conflict in Alethkar had changed; it had very little to do with darkeyed liberation and everything to do with parshmen liberation. Moash either didn't realize, or didn't care that he was on the side of a malevolent Shard vessel, which damns him. This is indeed a very slippery slope. Because you are applying a moral system that we ourselves in the real world don't, or shouldn't, use. Plenty of people in jail rot there and are not given the chance to improve. And I think most of the public in our world is fine with that. Dalinar coming out of his meeting with Cultivation reminds me a bit of the movie Angel Heart, where an unredeemable criminal takes on the psyche of an innocent man in a bargain with the devil so that he can escape his past through amnesia. Just because Dalinar artificially altered his psyche, does not make him innocent. And to be clear - Dalinar was, and is, a war criminal of the highest order, who waged war on the aggressor's side throughout his entire youth and middle years. I agree that he is making amends, but if he were tried and convicted, and sentenced to life in prison/execution for his crimes, after the events of the Stormlight Archive, I would be in agreement with the outcome. EDIT: for the sake of fairness, the information we received about the Thrill and its effect on some humans of Roshar, some of the blame for the crimes can arguably be lifted from Dalinar.
  16. It is wrong to call him poor. It is not wrong to call him unprivileged. His success is in spite of the system of privilege present in Alethkar, not because of it, so his "privilege" is not the privilege of a lighteyes.
  17. Not to derail the rabidly-hating-Shallan thread, but none of these facts redeem the behaviour of a lighteyes towards a darkeyes, in any situation. "Look at how successful you've gotten under our oppressive system! Aren't you grateful?!" No.
  18. I think she's a well written character whose motivations and (sometimes toxic) behaviour is well explained by what she experienced in her childhood. Without her arc the entire SA series would be diminished. This visceral feeling you get when you read her arc hints that you do not like her personality, moreso than it suggests that she is a "badly written character". And the language you use here to describe your dislike of Shallan tells me more about your personal politics than it does about the author's writing of the character. I think you should reassess the way you approach critique of Shallan. There are valid points to make with respect to her character progression and you've hit none of them.
  19. Within the context of the story, I'm not surprised about Moash "betraying the human cause". Running back to the captain of a highprince's bodyguard for redemption wouldn't have made sense to his background. He comes from an oppressed segment of society, and due to a chain of events that landed him in a bridge crew, he was in the position to feel the worst Alethi society can offer to someone of his heritage. I liked Elhokar's character, but from a political standpoint, a turncoat slave, from the Alethi army, ramming a spear into the head of the leader of the society that made him a slave does not constitute a moral crime. However, given that we're privy to Moash's inner thinking though, it's clear that his deeds don't intend to liberate the oppressed population of Alethkar, despite his allegiance to the awakened parshmen. He's seemingly entered some nihilistic mentality and is going along with the bloodbath of humans out of some blandly morbid curiosity. The only thing that seemed to affect him was Kaladin's expression when he killed Elhokar. All in all, I'm curious as to how his story will end.
  20. I'd like to chime in and agree with most of the responses here. We as the readers have the privilege of a top-down and third person view of the situation, which could make us harsher when judging the characters' failures in their context (Kaladin's depression, Shallan's depression and destructive coping mechanisms, Dalinar's past, etc.). I agree with this. He has a lucid view of his own depressive episodes, shown by how he describes the difficulty in looking past his dark mood, even as he acknowledges that things may improve in the future, as they have before. I was excited to read how close he was to uttering the Fourth Ideal, but his inability to do it made perfect sense in the context of his character growth in OB. The repeated theme for his character arc is the calluses he'd been growing as he saw good people from both sides of the conflict die senselessly, and a friend of his kill Elhokar. And here "calluses" do not mean the supernatural ability to shrug off PTSD or the horrors of war, but to accept that things are not black and white, and that he can't save everyone - something he still hasn't done. This is the core of his identity as a Radiant, as it has been shown in WoK and stressed in WoR. His Windrunner powers leave him when he acts against his oaths with Syl, and even his combat prowess is diminished when he fights against his moral compass (attempted Elhokar assassination). The most impressive deeds by Kaladin in OB had nothing to do with bravely charging into the enemy ranks and laying waste to them. His character-defining moments were primarily about helping people and saving lives. The help he provided escaped parshmen as they struggled to survive in a world they'd forgotten. The way he pushed back a small part of the highstorm with the help of windspren, just to save human refugees. And of course slamming into and deflecting a boulder thrown by a stone monster towards his comrades in Kholinar.
  21. Besides the other posters pointing out that Teft's achievements (and that of other bridgemen) only add to Kaladin's own, it is worth pointing out that Kaladin bonded with the Ancient Daughter, not just "some honorspren".
  22. This is also not necessarily true. In fact, thus far in the series, it is Kaladin's difficulties with relationships that gives more depth to his character. Not every individual in this series (or any) is necessarily enriched by a relationship. For some, it is a way of escaping their problems. If he does enter a relationship, I suspect it will either be a slow buildup that develops into something more concrete after the 5-book time gap. That, or a fling. Although the latter doesn't quite go in line with his personality.
  23. Thanks for the clarification! I recently took a look at some Coppermind info and the way reality functions in the Cosmere was an interesting topic. Would you say Realmatic theory is something that "explains" why things are the way they are in the Cosmere? To be more specific, the Realms are described as abstraction layers of a program - with the Spiritual realm being the "source code" of perfect souls without uncertainties, where the passage of time has little meaning; whereas the Cognitive realm is the representation of the how sapient minds conceptualize reality and interact with it. The Physical realm seems to be just the outward representation of what is really happening.
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