we need a pro-superiority point of view

[king of nowhere]

I'm comparing starshight with warbreaker.

in warbreaker, brandon tried hard to represent everyone's viewpoint about the conflict. he had jewels give a irade about the hallandren religion because someone had to defend it. he said in the annotation that he considers important to give space to all opinions in his books, even if they are fictional opinions on fictional topics.

then we have starshight, where absolutely nobody defends the supremacy. which - minus the random executions of dissidents - is probably worth defending more than most people realize.

having recently read the old man war saga from john scalzi, it influenced how i perceive a galactic community. in that saga, every race is enemy with everyone else. the humans have contacted 600 other races, and for 550 of those the policy is "fire on sight". the other races are no better.

so I'm thinking, what if breeding people to be excessively mild and polite - quaranteening everyone else - is actually the only way to avoid that scenario? what if the supremacy is the only thing standing between a peaceful universe and total war?

I didn't expect the point to be explored, but I would expect that someone would at least raise it.

[Karger]

On 1/24/2020 at 8:08 PM, king of nowhere said:

then we have starshight, where absolutely nobody defends the supremacy. which - minus the random executions of dissidents - is probably worth defending more than most people realize.

I think Culla is clearly being groomed for that role.

[classicalkhlennium]

On 1/24/2020 at 5:08 PM, king of nowhere said:

then we have starshight, where absolutely nobody defends the supremacy. which - minus the random executions of dissidents - is probably worth defending more than most people realize.

The entirety of Chapter 28 is Morriumur presenting the pro-Superiority point of view. The whole point of that chapter is to show Spensa that the Superiority has good in it and it has done marvelous things for millions of people. Spensa even accepts this

 

Also can't tell if Starshight was intentional or not lol

[MapEffects]

I felt that the whole reason Spensa returned to saved the Superiority from the delver was because she had seen the good in the everyday people and some of the fruit of a stable civilization. I don’t know that you needed a whole character viewpoint as you were really being convinced that there are a lot of unjust prejudices on all sides. 
 

I also think there is a lot Brandon still intend to develop. It’s always hard to say if something like this is done well when you don’t know how the series will wrap up. This feels like something that needs to just play out. Unjust prejudices was definitely a theme in this book, and I’m sure it will continue to be explored. 

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, I agree that was the point of Spensa returning to save Starsight... If she saw all of them as all-bad she would just have let the delver eat them.

OTOH, I guess there is a difference between the worth of individuals (who may or may not have a say in their government) and the question of whether the Superiority government has any redeeming value.

But from Defending Elysium it's pretty clear that it has been a happy shiny facade on top of tyranny for centuries, since before humans got off-Earth. There doesn't really seem to be much hope for

And as for total war as an alternative... dunno. In an universe with basically instantaneous FTL it seems like it would always be easy just to go somewhere else, find new worlds. But the implication is that humanity "lost" thoroughly enough that the Superiority actually believes the human threat is essentially over.

You'd think that there would be colonies somewhere out way beyond the Superiority's known range that would not have been involved in the war at all. But maybe there are and they will show up in the next book...

[Starborn42]

On 25/01/2020 at 9:08 AM, king of nowhere said:

I'm comparing starshight with warbreaker.

in warbreaker, brandon tried hard to represent everyone's viewpoint about the conflict. he had jewels give a irade about the hallandren religion because someone had to defend it. he said in the annotation that he considers important to give space to all opinions in his books, even if they are fictional opinions on fictional topics.

then we have starshight, where absolutely nobody defends the supremacy. which - minus the random executions of dissidents - is probably worth defending more than most people realize.

having recently read the old man war saga from john scalzi, it influenced how i perceive a galactic community. in that saga, every race is enemy with everyone else. the humans have contacted 600 other races, and for 550 of those the policy is "fire on sight". the other races are no better.

so I'm thinking, what if breeding people to be excessively mild and polite - quaranteening everyone else - is actually the only way to avoid that scenario? what if the supremacy is the only thing standing between a peaceful universe and total war?

I didn't expect the point to be explored, but I would expect that someone would at least raise it.

Well, we did get Morriumur’s PoV.

[Yvainnie]

On 27. 10. 2020 at 1:52 AM, Starborn42 said:

Well, we did get Morriumur’s PoV.

But it was super short. 

 

Nevertheless if Brandon writes as usual, he will let us see the otherpoint of view. He did it in all his previous book like Mistborn or SA.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Yvainnie

[king of nowhere]

6 hours ago, Yvainnie said:

Nevertheless if Brandon writes as usual, he will let us see the otherpoint of view. He did it in all his previous book like Mistborn or SA.

he did not do it in his other ya novels, like alcatraz or reckoners.

though, admittedly, those had a more black and white morality

[MGershone]

With Cuna and the scene at the end of Starsight where Spensa sends the delver to Starsight, it's definitely at least hinting that the Superiority isn't totally evil, that there are lots of innocents and also some good leaders. 

Plus, Brandon specifically said that he felt there weren't quite enough alternative viewpoint chapters in Starsight, and that he's going to both do more chapters with other characters and release audio novellas from other viewpoints. (This was in State of the Sanderson)