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[OB] Lyn Question


Quiver

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12 hours ago, BlackYeti said:

Out of curiosity, did you have the same feelings regarding Vasher (I'm assuming that you've read Warbreaker)? His name is, after all, also based off of someone in the real world.

And what about Sarene (again, assuming that you've read Elantris)? Parts of her character were borrowed from a real person as well.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that you can easily tell the difference between characters based on real-life people and characters who are not, because that’s definitely not always true.  I did know about Sarene being based on a real person, but I didn’t know about Vasher, and I never would have known unless I was told.

There is a difference, for me, between basing a character on a real-life person, and naming a character after a real-life person.  It doesn’t bother me when a character is based on someone real – I assume that all authors do that to some extent when they’re writing.  They use the personalities of friends they know, and characteristics they have seen in real people, to add believable depth and idiosyncrasies to their characters.  Borrowing personality traits from real-life people, in my opinion, is fine, but naming a character after someone bothers me a bit more, because then it seems like the author has literally pulled a person out of the real world and shoved them onto the pages of a book, which sort of disrupts the illusion for me.  This is especially true when both are true – when a person is both named after someone and based on their personality traits.

Another reason why this bothers me in Sanderson books in particular is that for one thing, they are fantasy books.  The layers of fiction are much thicker than they would be in say, a mystery or a romance book that takes place in the real world.  So when there are an abundance of characters that are named after/based on real life people  in a fantasy book, I find it somewhat jarring to be pulled through that many layers of fiction and reminded of the real world (it wouldn’t bother me as much in a mystery or a romance book).

Of course, this isn’t that big of a complaint – Sanderson is my favorite author and I love his books, I don’t really mind that much if some of his characters are based on real people.  I do wish sometimes that he would dial back a bit on naming and basing so many characters on real people, because just between the ones I know of, it comprises a surprisingly large number of his characters.   

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I didn't read everyone response, so likely some overlap, I just wanted to share my interpretation/opinion.

I think Lyn is challenging Roshar gender roles, like many mentioned.  Personally though I felt she was asking Shallan because she thinks Shallan already does challenge those roles (which she does).  But I think Shallan was to oblivious or to worried about appearance to pick up on that, and so made her statement reinforcing them.  Which then deflated Lyn, both in her challenge, and to learnt hat this person she saw a powerful and successfully challenging the roles just implied in conversation that she wasn't.

I have no issue with the scene because I think it's a good depiction of realistic iteration of two people trying to break out of society induced restriction, be sly about it, and actually hide it from each other on accident specifically out of fear of discovery, all without realizing they are compatriots.

Edited by Chinsukolo
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On 1/12/2018 at 1:01 PM, Calderis said:

How have the linguistics been broken? We've seen Lyn's name in a male variant in Shallan father Lin, and Veden and Alethi are so close as to be considered dialects of each other. Yes, Kaladin sounded "like a lighteyes" name to a bunch of rural villagers, but we've seen two syllable names in the upper lighteyes before, how is May worse than that? We also know that the Alethi upper dahns are more likely to marry foreigners than anyone else so we can't even be sure that May's name is Alethi. 

If a name doesn't fit he does change it. For example, Moash is named after his editor Moshe. It's similar, but changed to fit the linguistic structure he has. 

Brandon's not going to break his stories for fan service. If this stuff hadn't blown up and gotten all of this attention it wouldn't be an issue. 

Edit: and to add to the Moash example, that's a perfect highlight of how a character being named after someone in real life has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what that character is going to do in the story. It's just a name drop, that will normally never be noticed. 

I disagree, as his editor Moshe has probably killed several of Brandon's darlings, the parallels should be obvious.

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