Brade what exactly is her Problem

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

Throughout the book Spensa tries to recruit Brade . This was a plan that was doomed to fail . It goes back to identity . Brade was a human raised by Winseck . Her expressions even mimic Khrell . Even though she knows she is human , she does not identify with them . She hates human and therefor hates herself . 

          I have seen people of my own nationality hate themselves . They want to be seen as anything but what they really are. 

      Spensa identifies herself with humans . She loves the fact that Brade the only other Cytonic human she has met her age. Jorgen didn’t realize he is Cytonic until after she left . Spensa loves how they ( her and Brade fly together . She mistakes this as a commen bond . She thinks she can get thru to Brade . She can’t and likely never will . 

      What do you guys think ! 

[ftl]

Totally agree.

Brade thinks she's irredeemably awful because of her nature - she's human. She's wrong. She's awful because of her upbringing - as Krell. 

 

[Angsos]

Because of upbringing and indoctrination Brade is more of a zealous human hater than the aliens. If we saw her perspective, I haven't finished so don't know if we do, it's probably a constant back and forth how she can't kill the enemy collaborator

[dayman]

I would prefer if future books just left Brade alone and refrain from giving her a redemption arch or exploring her phsyc too much. Some people are just ruined and you don't always know exactly why ... That's what Brade is to me and I'm not interested in going deeper with her.

[Singer]

I suspect being essentially raised by Wiznik (sp?) has made Brade more like him: power hungry, ambitious, lacking in empathy, with a hearty dose of self loathing. 

He's taught her that loyalty doesn't matter, power matters. I'm not sure if we'll see Brade grow or develop, if she will want to change. There are so many ways the next book could go!

We haven't seen the last of Brade, I'm pretty sure, though I've proven myself terrible at predicting what Sanderson will do in a next book!

[Angsos]

Brade is a human villain so we'll see her again. If we get interludes from her POV, then she might be redeemable because we find out that Ironsides isn't evil just warped by what happened with Chaser.

[+robardin]

On 12/4/2019 at 0:50 PM, dayman said:

I would prefer if future books just left Brade alone and refrain from giving her a redemption arch or exploring her phsyc too much. Some people are just ruined and you don't always know exactly why ... That's what Brade is to me and I'm not interested in going deeper with her.

Yeah, it would be way too Standard Trope for my liking (YA audience notwithstanding) for Skyward 3 to feature a cytonic mind-meld between Spensa and Brade that ultimately gets her a Darth Vader Turns On The Emperor type of climactic redemption scene.

As she herself said at the end of Starlight, Brade doesn’t consider what Winzik was setting up to be eliminating humanity... Just the group on Detritus. There are multiple other human “preserves”, including wherever she herself originated, that will continue. Meanwhile, she’s being offered a position of power by Winzik.

Who knows, maybe part of that plan is to free up more human cytonics like herself as a kind of Praetorian Guard to him, and that Brade considers that a huge step up for humans in the Superiority social structure that it’s worth the sacrifice of one minor human colony that nobody will miss (though she did seem to flinch/regret it a bit now that she knows someone from that world in Spensa, it didn’t stop her).

Edited December 12, 2019 by robardin

[Karger]

I really hatted Brade both as a person and as a character.  She is so full of herself.  She has probably not met another human since she was 7 and despite that she thinks she knows what it is to be human and that she gets other humans and that all other humans are like her?  I really can't stand being around people who have so little confidence in their own identity.  I recognize that many people have no choice in who they are and have to surrender certain parts of themselves for self preservation purposes but Brade claims to be unshakable in her self image. 

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

19 hours ago, Ookla the Prolific said:

I really hatted Brade both as a person and as a character.  She is so full of herself.  She has probably not met another human since she was 7 and despite that she thinks she knows what it is to be human and that she gets other humans and that all other humans are like her?  I really can't stand being around people who have so little confidence in their own identity.  I recognize that many people have no choice in who they are and have to surrender certain parts of themselves for self preservation purposes but Brade claims to be unshakable in her self image. 

Brade is a Human that wants to be a Dyon (sp) . She see Dyon as Superiortp humans and hates herself . In real life I have people of my own nationality who hate themselves and act and behave as though they are from another nationality . This is a familiar occurance for me . I applaud  Brandon for touching on it . It’s an elephant that’s often in the room and ignored .

[king of nowhere]

she is just a bad person. whether it was upbringing from her "parent", growing up as a reviled minority having to prove herself, or something else, she is just bad, and beyond deserving redemption of any kind.

spensa should have shot her in the final scene. she should have recognized. when someone summons a delver, the time to reason with them is well and gone.

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

she is just a bad person. whether it was upbringing from her "parent", growing up as a reviled minority having to prove herself, or something else, she is just bad, and beyond deserving redemption of any kind.

spensa should have shot her in the final scene. she should have recognized. when someone summons a delver, the time to reason with them is well and gone.

I’m of mixed opinions on this . On one end I could see how dangerous she is . After calling a Delver she might be dangerous enough not to risk trying to redeem her , so if Spensa did shoot her I could live with that . On the other hand Brade has never been around humans . So she could have a complete change of heart as soon as she saw how the humans of detritus love and care for each other. She truly believes humans are barbarian cave men who live just to fight and kill other races . Boy will she be shocked if she ever met gran gran. Cytonics are rare and maybe one is to valuable to kill without trying to redeem I don’t know . 

[Karger]

9 hours ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

Brade is a Human that wants to be a Dyon (sp) . She see Dyon as Superiortp humans and hates herself . In real life I have people of my own nationality who hate themselves and act and behave as though they are from another nationality . This is a familiar occurance for me . I applaud  Brandon for touching on it . It’s an elephant that’s often in the room and ignored .

I agree that she is realistic.  I still can't stand her and I hope Spensa kills her in a few books.

[ecohansen]

She was betrayed by her parents.  They surrendered her to Wiznik, and they never rescued her.  The flipside to Stockholm Syndrome, and a person's growing empathy for their captor, is that they grow to hate the loved ones who betray them by failing to stop their suffering.  This is especially true for a child: a child won't understand the geopolitics of the situation--they'll just know that the people who should be protecting them, aren't.  Of COURSE she'll begin to hate her parents.  Since they are the only humans she knows, of COURSE she will hate all humans, to the extent of becoming genocidal.. The only humans she'll sympathize with, and work to help, are other children in her situation.  Wiznik didn't brainwash her with propaganda: he created a situation in which her own foundational emotional drives aligned with his own.  She has even more incentive to destroy humanity than he does.  The central, foundational sin of almost every religion and ideology is betrayal, and she had been betrayed by her own species, and her own parents, as a young child.

[Darksaber]

I think her background story is made up, and she is actually a mind-swapped Krell/Varvax. I haven't read Defending Elysium yet, but it's a major plot from what I can gather.

[Karger]

6 hours ago, Darksaber said:

I think her background story is made up, and she is actually a mind-swapped Krell/Varvax. I haven't read Defending Elysium yet, but it's a major plot from what I can gather.

OOOh.  But no she has far too many human mannerisms and I don't see that being something that even a government official could get away with.

[kaellok]

So much callous hate for Brade in this thread!  I'm actually, honestly shocked.  Szeth, from the Stormlight Archive series, never seemed to provoke this level of 'he is irredeemable' to the fans, despite having what I feel to be a much worse reason for acting the way that he does.  

@dayman, Brade isn't 'ruined'.  She's been brutalized by galactic society on what is likely to be a near-daily basis for almost her entire life.  We know exactly why she turned out the way that she did.  In real life, the US has caused people to turn to monstrous methods and means because of similar actions.  I'm certainly okay with not needing to explore her character any deeper, as I tend to not believe redemption is possible for people who actively set about attempting to destroy the galaxy without even once stopping to think what those consequences would be or seeming to even once think about not doing the thing.  But that doesn't make her ruined.

@Karger, as a person, Brade is certainly despicable.  As a character, though?  Nah.  Just take into account what we know about her upbringing.  Constantly being told what humans are like by outside sources, ever since she was a child.  Then she will naturally begin to feel those things.  Which corroborates what the outside sources say.  Which creates an endless loop.  She is so sure about how every human feels and acts because she has essentially been programmed that way over decades.

@king of nowhere, @Karger, @everyone_wanting_Brade_to_just_die, I leave you the words of Gandalf to Frodo.
Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity?  It's pity that stayed Bilbo's hand.  Many that live deserve death.  Some die that deserve life.  Can you give it to them, Frodo?  Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.  Even the very wise cannot see all ends.  My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over.
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me.  I wish none of this had ever happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.  Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought.

Brade is a person who has been brutalized and emotionally tortured for effectively her entire life, in order to shape her into a weapon to be wielded by someone who is happy to betray all that he professes to believe in for the sake of power.  She is to be pitied.  It may be that she needs to be killed in order to stop her from committing a great evil (again), but in such a case it should be with mournfulness, rather than glee.  Mourn her, for the life that she was never allowed to live.  Save your rage for the one who used her so poorly, for the one who desires above all things power over others.  Rage against Winzik, for he is the one who would burn the galaxy to the ground so that he might rule over the ashes, and be content with this so long as he is the one who rules.

[Karger]

9 minutes ago, kaellok said:

 

@Karger, as a person, Brade is certainly despicable.  As a character, though?  Nah.  Just take into account what we know about her upbringing.  Constantly being told what humans are like by outside sources, ever since she was a child.  Then she will naturally begin to feel those things.  Which corroborates what the outside sources say.  Which creates an endless loop.  She is so sure about how every human feels and acts because she has essentially been programmed that way over decades.

I don't think she is badly written I just really don't like her.

[king of nowhere]

57 minutes ago, kaellok said:

@king of nowhere, @Karger, @everyone_wanting_Brade_to_just_die, I leave you the words of Gandalf to Frodo.
Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity?  It's pity that stayed Bilbo's hand.  Many that live deserve death.  Some die that deserve life.  Can you give it to them, Frodo?  Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.  Even the very wise cannot see all ends.  My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over.
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me.  I wish none of this had ever happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil.  Bilbo was meant to find the ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought.

 

a classic speech.

but perhaps we should apply it to hitler too? I don't think so.

i said if i were there i'd have shoot. who would i be to give the judgment? what moral or legal autorithy?

None but the simple fact that I'm the only one there with the gun and the capacity to pull the trigger, and so I must choose. pity may spare an innocent. it may even turn her into a precious ally. on the other hand, pity may doom many others who would be killed by her. any decision may be wrong, and even the wise cannot see all ends. and for this reason it is generally best to stay on the side of caution.

but we are talking about a woman who unleashed an horror capable of destroying entire planets. she's not even upholding superiority values - those would forbid what she did - she's taking part in a megalomaniac coup.

I do believe, when you are in such a situation, you cannot avoid judgment. if you shoot and you are wrong, you are guilty, but if you don't shoot and the bad guy goes on to hurt more people, you are equally guilty. not deciding is a decision itself. especially you can't try to keep your hands clean; i see that as very selfish. Lives are at stake, and what you care for is your own moral high ground? what the hell hero?

that's not how you keep a moral high ground. you do it by doing your best with what you have. and granted, most of the times that's not shooting, because you don't know enough. because if you don't shoot someone may die but if you do shoot someone will die for sure, so if you are not certain you are avoiding more death, you should not shoot. this applies to virtually every instance in real life. the only exceptions i can see are judges judging dangerous murderers and presidents deciding whether to try to assassinate terrorists, and both are things that do not happen to normal people. and that's why we're told that we should not take judgment in our own hands, and why it's a good idea in real life.

But when you have witnessed beyond doubt that this person has been calling a planet eater? if that doesn't tip the balance, what would?

(and may i point out that just after spensa did not shoot, brade blew up a shuttle full of civilians? those are all lives i'd have saved, though of course i could not choose in advance)

 

as for her being brainwashed, it doesn't factor in for several reasons.

first of all is that this is an emergency judgment in a combat situation. it is not a trial on brade's persona, how bad she is, whether she deserves redemption. no, when so many lives are at stake, the only thing that matters is, "will killing her save more lives?". I shoot her not for being a darker or lighter shade of grey, but because she was endangering everyone else, everywhere.

the second is that there are limits to what we can accept with a crappy background excuse. many nazis were equally brainwashed, but they were still held liable for their crimes

and the third is that her society wouldn't even have brainwashed her that way. she grew up in a perfectly pacifist society, where even shouting at someone who bumped your car in the traffic would be heavily frowned upon. You can't tell me this society has pointed her towards summoning a planet-exterminator monstruosity. No, if she was the perfect lotus-eating child, then she would have reported winzik treasonous intentions to some higher authority, as would be her duty.

And this is where i don't accept that she's just a product of her upbringing. I would be more forgiving of her if she was raised by a family of genocidal nazis (mind you, I'd still pull the trigger, as discussed above); then at least she would not be doing something that is glaringly against everything she's been taught.

[kaellok]

49 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

a classic speech.

but perhaps we should apply it to hitler too? I don't think so.

Absolutely no, it would not apply to Hitler, especially given the full reasoning in my post.  Winzik would be a better character comparison to Hitler, for they are doing all that they can to gain and keep power (and by doing so in part by denying person-hood to others).  Execute him on the spot, no problem from me.

53 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

i said if i were there i'd have shoot. who would i be to give the judgment? what moral or legal autorithy?

None but the simple fact that I'm the only one there with the gun and the capacity to pull the trigger, and so I must choose. pity may spare an innocent. it may even turn her into a precious ally. on the other hand, pity may doom many others who would be killed by her. any decision may be wrong, and even the wise cannot see all ends. and for this reason it is generally best to stay on the side of caution.

but we are talking about a woman who unleashed an horror capable of destroying entire planets. she's not even upholding superiority values - those would forbid what she did - she's taking part in a megalomaniac coup.

It seemed to me, and maybe I was wrong, that you and others were saying it would have been good to kill Brade, in a moment when it wasn't fighting for your life or fighting for the lives of others.  In the spacefighter dogfight when Brade was trying to call the Delver?  Shoot to kill.  When she's not posing an active threat to you or anyone that you know, so far as you are aware?  Then don't.  In pretty much every case, killing someone should be the last resort because it cannot be undone.  And, as I tried to make clear at the end (but maybe did not do so great a job) if you have to kill someone to stop them, it should never be with glee, or happiness, or any sort of positive emotion.  If you have a wicked glee in your heart when condemning someone to death, you're the wrong person to make that call, full-stop.  (Just because you're sad about it doesn't mean you're the right person to do so, though.)

Brade has gone all-in with Winzik because to her, he encapsulates all that is good, worthy, and just in the Superiority.  Read again how she talks about him--it's a lot closer to worship than should be comfortable for a living person.  It is more than exceedingly likely that he has acted as a primary filter of how she is able to interact with the outside world, by limiting certain sorts of information that she has easy access to.  And it would make sense in the context of the world for that to happen--they wouldn't want barbaric humans who are doomed to lives of violence to have full access to their entire information network, would they?  At the end of the day, Winzik's values are Brade's values, because that's how she's been created.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

as for her being brainwashed, it doesn't factor in for several reasons.

first of all is that this is an emergency judgment in a combat situation. it is not a trial on brade's persona, how bad she is, whether she deserves redemption. no, when so many lives are at stake, the only thing that matters is, "will killing her save more lives?". I shoot her not for being a darker or lighter shade of grey, but because she was endangering everyone else, everywhere.

the second is that there are limits to what we can accept with a crappy background excuse. many nazis were equally brainwashed, but they were still held liable for their crimes

and the third is that her society wouldn't even have brainwashed her that way. she grew up in a perfectly pacifist society, where even shouting at someone who bumped your car in the traffic would be heavily frowned upon. You can't tell me this society has pointed her towards summoning a planet-exterminator monstruosity. No, if she was the perfect lotus-eating child, then she would have reported winzik treasonous intentions to some higher authority, as would be her duty.

First: In that moment, Spin has no reason to believe that killing Brade will save anyone's life, including her own.  Nor does she have any reason to believe that the coup won't still be successful.  She'd simply be killing a human.  Which, by the way, would provide hard, physical evidence to point to about how barbaric, evil, and violent humans in general are; there's a large amount of manufactured evidence against the humans from Winzik, but her going on a 'rampage' would provide enough real, physical evidence to convince even those leery of accepting what he is saying.  It would make the case for him, and silence opposition.

Second: Hold criminals responsible for their crimes.  Don't cheer for their deaths.  

Third: Winzik brainwashed Brade that way.  Superiority society convinced her that humans are predestined to violent outbursts.  Spin experiences this second-hand, hearing from so many different species in a short period of time about how doomed humans were to their violence.  She hears about how her assumed species must be similar due to such long exposure to the humans.  The fact that humans will go crazy violent is embedded in their society, which only helped Winzik's ability to shape and mold Brade.  He is, seemingly, the only person in the galaxy who places value and worth in her from a very young age; the unfortunate thing is that it is largely to leverage that supposed proclivity for violence towards his own ends.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

And this is where i don't accept that she's just a product of her upbringing. I would be more forgiving of her if she was raised by a family of genocidal nazis (mind you, I'd still pull the trigger, as discussed above); then at least she would not be doing something that is glaringly against everything she's been taught.

If we're going to continue using the scenario of Nazis and Hitler as you do, then make sure you get it right.  Winzik is Hitler.  And when Winzik told Brade's family to give her to him, they did.  From that moment on, as a young child, she was raised by space-Hitler.  The access to information she had was controlled by space-Hitler.  The training she received was by space-Hitler.  She was raised to worship space-Hitler, and at the end of the book she flat-out says that she's more than okay with space-Hitler dismantling the Superiority.  

Kill her if you must, if you don't see that her life has never been her own.  The second largest difference between M-Bot and Brade (aside from the whole AI vs. Human thing) is that M-Bot is continually fighting against his programming, while Brade seems to have embraced it.  But the programming on each of them remains, is nearly impossible to fight against, and was written and embedded in them quite deliberately.

If you must, kill her.  But mourn for what she could have been when you do.  Do not cheer the destruction of a person who was never once allowed to be herself.

[Iarwainiel I]

Back to the original post - -

I think Brandon's purpose in the Brade character was to give Spensa an opportunity to learn some things - like, in Skyward Spensa learned to let others in, with Brade she learned that that's not always the best thing to do. Just as it's not accurate to see everyone as an enemy, it's (unfortunately) not accurate to think that someone will be your friend regardless of how much you have in common. Spensa learned a lot of different perspectives on this same lesson in Starsight, IMO.

That said, I'm sure we will see Brade again in future books in this series. Then maybe it will be Brade's turn to learn some things, if she can. Hmmmm.......

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

19 hours ago, Lump-wing said:

books in this series. Then maybe it will be Brade's turn to learn some things, if she can. Hmmmm....

Omg I hated this idiom or speach pattern . I listeh on audio books and I wanted to slap that character every time he said “ hmmmmm” that and stop being so agreesice after they killed 10 pilots in a test . The Superiority is such a frustrating race . 

[Iarwainiel I]

53 minutes ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

Omg I hated this idiom or speach pattern . I listeh on audio books and I wanted to slap that character every time he said “ hmmmmm” that and stop being so agreesice after they killed 10 pilots in a test . The Superiority is such a frustrating race . 

Oh wow, @S-I-B-A-H (which he is!) - I apologize!! I've read 4-5 books since Starsight and I TOTALLY FORGOT that that was a thing that was said in the book - gaaah!! Agree that it was annoying, even just to read! Looks like I need to find a new thing to type when I want to say "I'm mulling it over".

[MapEffects]

I think Brade is a classic case of taking on the identity of what you’ve been told you’re entire life. A real life example of this is the child who is regularly told by the people around them that they are a bad...therefore they take that as an identity and start acting out even more to develop that reputation. 
 

Not that we shouldn’t confront when a child does something wrong. But usually it’s the cutting remarks in parting that provide no hope or loving correction that do the damage. In this case with Brade, it’s not surprising that she has been told all her life how dangerous her species is...so that is how she is expected to behave.

[MCrockett]

In a way, Brade is less human than the aliens around her. That's the irony of this character. I think there's a lesson to be learned here: the more you think something about yourself (whether good or bad), the more likely that's the way you'll become.

[Draginon]

I’m not sure if Brade could be redeemed. Every time Spensa shows her empathy or any human emotion that isn’t aggression and hate she hesitates like she’s confused or trying to figure out what Spensa’s true motive is since she believes humans are basically animals.

I can see her breaking down in the sequels if she meets more nice humans because it would break her psyche too much to match what she’s been indoctrinated to believe how her race behaves versus how they truly are.