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Unpopular Brandon Sanderson Opinions


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2 hours ago, trav said:

Stormlight Archives would be better if not everyone and their grandmother became a Knight Radiant or a squire.

 

People in Stormlight who are kinda important but aren't radiants or squires (in no particular order): Taravangian, Moash, Adolin, 9/10 highprinces (although only like 4 of them are important so far), Elhokar, Every Rosharan global leader (except Dalinar), Navani, Amaram, Several other characters who died, likely more characters that I can't remember right now.

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2 hours ago, Ishar said:

People in Stormlight who are kinda important but aren't radiants or squires (in no particular order): Taravangian, Moash, Adolin, 9/10 highprinces (although only like 4 of them are important so far), Elhokar, Every Rosharan global leader (except Dalinar), Navani, Amaram, Several other characters who died, likely more characters that I can't remember right now.

don't forget May Aladar

Spoiler

and Rysn

 

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2 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

He sometimes lacks subtlety when he tries to work in the representation stuff.

Which is funny when he's trying to be subtle about it. 

Like in Mistborn Era 2. I forget the character, but Wax told Wayne to knock off hitting on her, the implication being see? Brandon is cool with gay people, there's one right there! They'll never have an onpage romance or marriage and ignore that old blog post about gay marriage that he never disavowed...

I guess what I'm getting at to get to my latest unpopular Brandon opinion: it'll be a sad day when he goes all Old Man Orson Scott Card on the Culture Wars. 

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20 hours ago, Aspiring Writer said:

Radiant I understand, but squire? That's like saying you wish not everyone is a misting in Mistborn.

theres the issue. you can become a squire by remote association. you can not do the same in Allomancy. you don't become a misting by befriending a Mistborn.

half (lowballing) the Kholin family became Radiants. Bridge Four now has how many full Radiants? 4? Kaladin, Teft, Renarin, Lopen.

at least its somehow offset by the large amount of Fused and that they are constantly reborn.

 

still not a fan of it

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9 hours ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

Which is funny when he's trying to be subtle about it. 

Like in Mistborn Era 2. I forget the character, but Wax told Wayne to knock off hitting on her, the implication being see? Brandon is cool with gay people, there's one right there! They'll never have an onpage romance or marriage and ignore that old blog post about gay marriage that he never disavowed...

I guess what I'm getting at to get to my latest unpopular Brandon opinion: it'll be a sad day when he goes all Old Man Orson Scott Card on the Culture Wars. 

Honestly I think people need to stop forcing it, they demand it happen and then get upset when it doesn't work out like they want.

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9 hours ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

Which is funny when he's trying to be subtle about it. 

Like in Mistborn Era 2. I forget the character, but Wax told Wayne to knock off hitting on her, the implication being see? Brandon is cool with gay people, there's one right there! They'll never have an onpage romance or marriage and ignore that old blog post about gay marriage that he never disavowed... 

Well he’s staying away from it for now because he doesn’t want to do it wrong, which would be more offensive. I’m pretty sure he’s planning on eventually having an on page romance or at least main characters:

Quote

Questioner

Are you going to put a gay character in your book as a major character?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! Someday I will, I want to... I'm easing my way into it because my specific culture and biases, I think would lead me to do it poorly, until I've... until I kind of ease my way in. There will be main characters who are LGBTQ in the future. I'm getting there, be patient with me.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

 

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Unpopular opinions:

Warbreaker is easily his poorest book.

Elantris is way better than anyone gives him credit for

Neither Warbreaker or Elantris needs a sequel

And (okay, this is a fandom unpopular opinion, but it drives me crazy) people who say that Brandon's books (and especially his romances) feel YA don't know what the term YA means. (Trust me, I took a whole class on YA lit, they aren't)

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5 minutes ago, Shard of Reading said:

Can I ask what YA is actually supposed to feel like/be?

Here's Brandon's take on it (and his argument for Game of Thrones maybe being YA).  

Quote

marathyu316

Those are all good possibilities [for a novella Brandon is working on], but it could also be the one he mentioned during the first Book 4 update where an apprentice of Hoid is stranded on a minor shard world with an umbrella-based (Edit: oops!) magic system.

Brandon Sanderson

Please. It was a KITE based magic system. An umbrella-based magic would just be silly, now, wouldn't it.

I'm tempted to plot that one as a YA book, to be done after the Skyward novels. I'd like to do something YA in the cosmere, but have been waiting for the right moment.

coolRedditUser

Would Mistborn Era 1 not count as YA? I got those vibes from many parts of it, though most/all traces of that vanished in Era 2.

Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn Era One walks the line. (Having a teen protagonist for one of the viewpoints does indeed give it the vibe--and we did a YA printing of it, with YA covers.) Really only the first book would fit, though, and it's kind of a stretch.

Generally, YA is defined by the age of the protagonist, and the conflicts they're seeking. Vin's quest to find a home where she can trust the people around her is a YA style plot, but by the second book, it's drifted more toward adult style plots.

A lot of sf/f walks this line, though. There are arguments for some Game of Thrones to be YA for similar reasons. (Be aware that in the industry, content--meaning sex/violence/language--is not a descriptor of whether something is YA or not. It's age of the protagonists and the nature of the conflicts.)

General Reddit 2019 (May 27, 2019)
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On 24/09/2020 at 6:05 AM, Oakrobin said:

I wonder if Sanderson was thinking of Aes Sedai when building her character..

I did like Jasnah, but after her ‘return’ I found that as Shallan had moved on from her, so had I. 

 

100% this. Jasnah is my least favourite part of SA, and I was quite annoyed when she turned out to not be dead. Aes Sedai all the way, and I had enough Aes Sedai thinking they knew best and not storming *sharing* important information when I read WoT. 
 

Also don’t particularly like Renarin, but trying to withhold more judgement there. He was much better in WoK prime (as was Jasnah actually, probably just because we got to see in her head and she wasn’t being all “I know best but I’m not telling you louts anything useful.”)

Edited by Kairos
Forgot to include a phrase and closed parentheses
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The ending of Starsight was boring: the "twist" that

Spoiler

Doomslug is the hyperdrive

had been blatantly obvious since the beginning of the book even if you didn't figure it out in the last one, and the confrontation with the hyperspace monsters was the exact same thing we already got at the end of Calamity.

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16 hours ago, Kairos said:

100% this. Jasnah is my least favourite part of SA, and I was quite annoyed when she turned out to not be dead. Aes Sedai all the way, and I had enough Aes Sedai thinking they knew best and not storming *sharing* important information when I read WoT. 

Not to mention the way she reaches for violence and murder as her go-to solution to every problem.

Canonically, every Radiant has some sort of mental issue; it's required as part of making the Nahel bond work.  Jasnah's appears to be what's known as pro-social psychopathy, (ie. the type of charismatic psychopath who ends up leading cults or Fortune 500 companies in our world, as opposed to anti-social psychopathy in the model of The Joker,) and having a psychopath at the reins in Alethkar is a very scary prospect!

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On 10/27/2020 at 11:48 AM, Ishar said:

Absolutely. No question. I wasn't aware that this might even be considered "unpopular."

Really?  I was under the impression that Elantris and The Well of Ascension are generally considered his weakest books, from the Cosmere at least.  (Outside the Cosmere, Starsight and the third Legion book are both significantly worse than anything he's done in the Cosmere.)  I've always rated Warbreaker pretty highly, and since it's available as a free download I've used it to get a lot of people into Brandon's work because it's such a good story.

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