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4 minutes ago, strumienpola said:

You're like one of those guys telling Brandon to be more like GRRM before he got published. 

If I wanted to read something like GRRM I would read storming GRRM. I, we here, like BS because he is different. He's his own person, not another pervy old man buying his audience with sex and violence. I am personally storming fed up with sex in every modern fantasy book. Erotic scenes add as much substance to the story as describing someone's defecation. It's natural, yes, but I don't give a rust. 

The religion thing - you didn't pay much attention to what you were reading, eh? Probably you were too focused on finding fantasies material or something. I'm not going to bother explaining you how the whole cosmere is build upon Adonalsium. Or that Dalinar wasn't always this way. You should have noticed by now. 

To summarize. People who try to impose their believes on others - that is like you, not like Brandon - make me angry. 

Amen.

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Welcome to the forums, I hope you will find your place here.

That said, I find myself agreeing with some of the points raised by others here and I think that the tone of your letter is what some of us are having issues with.

What is bringing us together here is a love for Brandon Sandersons books, and we might not always like all of his decisions, but we can generally agree that he is doing what he believes to be the right decisions for these books. Some of us might give some feedback, and tell him what we liked and did not like as much.

I think your letter comes of as not suggesting something that you might like take a bigger place, but as telling him that he is doing it wrong, and the telling him what he should do. Expressing the same "feedback" as "I feel that there is to much of this and to little of that" instead might make it more likely to give effect, as well as triggering discussion about how explicit sexual relationships should be for example. This would also make it sound less like you are demanding these changes.

If you write your opinions in a less "strong" style, and more diplomatic style, I think that you would find a good home here, as most posts is motivated by opinions in one way or another.

As a final note, I do not think that sex should be much more explicit in the books, but I do respect that you would like that.

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The only thing I could possibly agree with is the paragraph about death of characters, but I wouldn't want Brandon to change his style only to accomodate to that, reading through his Sanderson Avalanche is VERY satysfying. Apart from that, this could destroy the beautiful thing about Brandon's books - hope that they bear. Reading his books gives me lots of positive energy. Let's leave GRRM things to GRRM and Sanderson things to Sanderson, I guess.

Apart from that, I actually disagree with everything else, I don't think that Brandon's books need more sex, or that religion/atheism is not displayed well/tends to favour religious characters (although I'm a religious person myself, so my viewpoint can be influenced by this)

Edited by swieczq
Added some text to better explain my thoughts
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everyone, try to calm down. yes, that letter is poorly conceived and it has some "my world view is the one true view and so I feel i must impose it on everyone else", but it was politely worded and therefore deserves a polite response. Do we not brag about the niceness of this community? Is this not a place where one can write his ideas without fear of being bashed if they do not conform to the majority?

And, perhaps most relevant to the specific case, can we convince him of his mistake by calling GRRM an old pervy and his followers people who are only in for the sex and violence? This is the same attitude we want to discourage. Yes, the OP dislikes many of the things that are the mark of sanderson and that are exactly what most of us likes about his books. Yes, the OP shows he has not understood some subtleties of the story - you'd be surprised, but not everyone reread every book several times looking for subtle clues and then goes to find all the author's interviews; casual readers don't know of adonalsium or hoid - and he probably cherry-picked some evidence to support his wrong conclusions about religion in the books. and yes, he had a somewhat arrogant attitude about it - something many people, me included, can adopt without realizing. There just isn't enough to bash him like some of the replies did.

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14 minutes ago, strumienpola said:

Well, all the GRRM mentions do. That's just really ignorant. 

Two mentions of GRRM. One saying 'You don't need to go so far on sexual themes as ASoIaF.' Once to illustrate how surprise deaths can heighten the emotion, and I can't think of a better example than Martin. That really is his calling card.

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Hey, I didn't say GRRM fans only read him for sex and violence. I said that's his thing. And that's ok. I did enjoy at least half of ASoIaF, actually. What makes me angry is that OP goes to another author to give him this "great advice" to be more like someone he's not. And I was pretty rude about it, I did apologize like two minutes later, I'm quite quick-tempered like that. 

Rethinking it, you're right @king of nowhere that OP might not have known about Adonalsium, so my bad. But the whole overtone of their letter remains ignorant and arrogant and even though wording is polite, a whole world more polite than my own, I cannot give it to "just expressing their opinion". For me, personally, it's like telling someone "you shouldn't be eating that". Really incongruous. 

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SUPER EDIT: In my opinion, I do not think a downvote is warranted for this post. I will be supplying an upvote to counteract the downvotes I am seeing. I do not agree with the general premise, or delivery, of the OP but I also think we, as a community, need to be welcoming to new people and new ideas - even if we do not agree with them. Rockobar did not do anything worthy of a downvote, imo. I also recognize that people might disagree with me so please take this simply as a request for kindness and not a reprimand to anyone who did downvote.

 

First of all, welcome to the forums @Rockobar! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the rest of the 17th Shard.

Second, I want to add a disclaimer before I respond. It should go without saying, though I will say it anyway, that each and every person is allowed their own opinion of Brandon's work, his style, their favorite ice cream, etc. My response is merely a reflection of my own opinion.

That out of the way, I would have to say that I object to some of what you wrote Rockobar. Particularly this line:

30 minutes ago, Rockobar said:

As I have said, your task as an artist is to relate and expound the emotions that are in our lives.

Is that really his task as an artist? Because, honestly, I think it can be far more expansive than that. I've viewed Brandon's "task" or, #jokingnotjoking, his "Intent" as sharing with us the Cosmere and any other works he decides to write. Brandon is under no obligation to produce a certain style of work, to explore certain themes, or to do anything really other than what he and his publishers work out in contract. Now, obviously, Brandon needs to write things that people want or else he will not be offered more contracts by his publishers haha, but, in the end, Brandon has no mandate to relate or expound upon the emotions that are in our lives. You might want that. Others might want that. But to declare it his task as an artist is a bit presumptuous in my opinion.

 

Honestly, this letter seems to be your projection of what a writer is or what they should write about mingled with your inherent assumptions and biases. E.g.:

40 minutes ago, Rockobar said:

I think I know which you still would pick.

Do you find it inconceivable that there exists a subset of people who would choose to save six (6) billion strangers over their family?

42 minutes ago, Rockobar said:

It was useful as a social construct when rural families had little knowledge of contraception to stop diseases when they could not afford multiple partners over a lifetime

This is what you boil religion down to? A social construct to prevent STIs? Again, you can have any opinion you want but I guarantee you that Brandon, and millions of other followers of religion, will not be swayed by this theory. 

46 minutes ago, Rockobar said:

I fear that all will be lost that was the spirit of Mistborn.

I am optimistic that we will see an amazing blend of fantasy and sci-fi.

 

All that being said, I did want to say, again, welcome and I hope you will not take the tepid reception of your first post too hard. 

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I concur with Twi. 

Look, man, your suggestions and opinions are yours and are valid, but if he were to change all these things you suggest (and, side note, the method of suggestion wasn't exactly the best; you wouldn't walk up to an admired artist and say "I like your work... but I like that other person's better; change this, this, this, and this," but I digress), if Brandon didn't write in the way he did, and hadn't garnered up enough avid readers like ourselves to his wonderful works, this site wouldn't exist. Sanderson is Sanderson, not Jordan or Martin. And we love him.

tl;dr:

I'm sad to see that you spent up some of your free time penning this thorough letter telling my favorite author where he has gone wrong, but thanks for your input. 

Edited by bleeder
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Okay. What really makes me angry is not your points, @Rockobar. I actually agree with some of them.

No, the thing that makes me twitch is the way you're conveying those points. Especially how you dive into Brandon's personal history or how you dismiss the themes a lot of people, including Brandon, consider interesting. Or how you go and, how @CaptainRyan put it:

29 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

This is what you boil religion down to? A social construct to prevent STIs? Again, you can have any opinion you want but I guarantee you that Brandon, and millions of other followers of religion, will not be swayed by this theory. 

This is not "people are offended by everything now" thing. This is actively being rude by belittling beliefs of many people.

Anyway, I'd prefer the whole thing to calm down, so I'll be doing some summoning.
Summon: @Chaos, @WeiryWriter, @Rubix... um, @Kaymyth? This is similar to the "drop everything but Stormlight" thing and this time I'd rather it not to end with somebody banned.

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@Rockobar My question is why you felt the need to post this. I don't really care what you send to Brandon. It made for an interesting read anyway, but I don't think that posting something that I think should have been more private between you and Brandon is fully appropriate. I won't judge for it since that is your prerogative, but that was my first thought on seeing this, since it wasn't just a question you asked that he answered. Beyond that, your language was confrontational and demanding. If I was Brandon, I would just throw your letter in the trash after reading the first couple paragraphs simply because your tone was rude. You are projecting your personal feelings on to Brandon and demanding that he write to conform to your view, rather than allow the artistry you respect by simply pointing out things you think are flawed for him to think about.

On another point, I disagree with many of your premises and points. If it was a choice between my family dying and the rest of humanity dying, or even the number of people in my family plus one, I would choose to lose my family. Storms, I would pull the trigger myself. Those 6 billion people you are willing to kill are no more or less valuable than the people in my family. I will take the choice that results in less loss of life. It is better that I personally suffer the grief than many others grieving over their families that I could have saved. Even though that would certainly be emotionally traumatic for me, the net suffering is lower this way.

On your points about having sex in books, I partially disagree with you. I agree that it shouldn't be avoided entirely, but you don't need anything graphic. Discussion of sex is fine, but showing people having sex is not something that fits Brandon's aesthetic. Children read these books, and adding in erotic scenes really isn't appropriate for that audience. You have also taken your examples pretty selectively. In Mistborn, you criticize Elend and Vin for not having sex that you know of before they are married. Beyond that, in Mistborn there are entire discussions about the nobles raping skaa women, and it is one of the central moral issues in the book. I think that fulfills your requirement.

I completely disagree with pretty much all of your other points entirely. Elantris had many religiously devoted people. Dilaf was extremely zealous, and he didn't come out on top of anything other than the pile of monk bodies. Hrathen held true to his beliefs to the end, and was honestly one of the best villains I have ever read. My only regret with that was that he was unable to express his reasons to Sarene. Also, your near complete dismissal of religion is frankly more a sign of ignorance than sophistication. Even if you think it is only a social construct, it still had many more effects than just controlling STIs. Religions are integral to humanity. Wars are fought over them, science is propelled by them, and statistically speaking, people with religious beliefs are happier. To provide examples, conflicts over Israel are partially over religion, astronomy is what it is today due to studying the stars because of religious belief, and statistics speak for themselves. All of those points don't even mention whether there is any form of deity or not. What your and my religious beliefs are is irrelevant to the discussion.

I think his handling of death has been quality so far. He is highly aware of the difficulties around character death, and has talked about this subject pretty extensively. Part of the reason fewer people die during the body of his books is because most of the important action happens at the end. It isn't that there isn't anything going on before then, but there is less action and more character development and positioning for the climax. If someone needs to die to set that up, Brandon will kill them. If nobody needs to die, then adding in more deaths would only lessen the impact of important deaths. He has expressed concern that his resurrection of certain characters will cheapen death like Marvel has done.

All in all, welcome to the Shard, but keep it casual. Also, I have been ninja'd by Oversleep. I think this thread really should be done now, before we end up in all out flame war.

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Welcome to the Shard! I don't support the harsh responses to this post. I think everyone is entitled to his/her opinions. But I do understand why they reacted the way they did. This post seems kind of rude and intrusive. 

I believe that writers should be able to write whichever way they like. The numerous choices available to the readers is part of fun. I do love some variety in my life. After all, we are not Librarians.  :P

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Okay, I'm not going to go into whether you are right or wrong about this, but can I just say that going into a completely Sanderson obsessed sight and insulting him is a pretty bad idea? You remind me of my friend who started stating very conservative viewpoints while on a public bus in San Francisco. We actually had to get off the bus a few stops early because people were glaring at him so angrily. 

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43 minutes ago, Figberts said:

Okay, I'm not going to go into whether you are right or wrong about this, but can I just say that going into a completely Sanderson obsessed sight and insulting him is a pretty bad idea? You remind me of my friend who started stating very conservative viewpoints while on a public bus in San Francisco. We actually had to get off the bus a few stops early because people were glaring at him so angrily.

Personally, this kind of stuff makes me sad. I wish people, whether on a bus in San Francisco or on the 17th Shard, could hear/read something they vehemently, viscerally disagree with but still engage in a kind, respectful manner. (Disclaimer: I have been guilty of reacting emotionally instead of calmly. I think we all have.)

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