The Shard of Cap-Ita-Lism

[VirtuousTraveller]

Journey before destination.

This is a core message of The Stormlight Archive.

But having finished Wind and Truth, as a culmination of my fourth reread of The Stormlight Archive, I am sad to say that it seems the journey no longer seems as important as certain destinations that have emerged as gospel (Shards-pel?) in the stories of the cosmere.

The destinations I see as taking over are Production, Product, and Pandering - and these three Intents are all part of (in my opinion) Brandon taking up the Shard of Cap-Ita-Lism (and being sucked in by these Intents hard).

• Production - It's like the "brand" of Brandon being a high volume author has become more important than the quality of the work he produces.  There has been a distinct shift in quality as we've seen so. many. books. being pumped out over the last couple of years.  This has led to The Lost Metal reading like poorly written fan fiction, and Wind and Truth reading like a bloated middle school self-help book.  We have a release schedule and so WOW LOOK HOW MANY seems to be the target rather than WOW THIS IS SO GOOD.  Wind and Truth being so long seemed a more important destination than the journey we take from the first to the last page.
• Product - Dragonsteel is pumping out more than books; we've got MERCH and EVENTS now.  We've got socks.  We've got coins.  We've got tabletop games and miniature figurines.  We've got letter openers and bandaids.  We've got crowdfunding that crashes websites and scalpers reselling items at huge markups.  The cosmere has been commercialized and as if leatherbound rereleases of his own books wasn't enough, now we learn that Dragonsteel will be rereleasing leatherbound editions of The Wheel of Time.  Listen, this is all neat - but considering the decline in writing quality as all of this has increased, it's like the destination of sales is more important than the destination of quality stories.
• Pandering - So. Much. Pandering.  The Lost Metal.  The Sunlit Man.  Wind and Truth.  So many sections of these books read like fan fiction.  Brandon's prose has always been "accessible," but now we're throwing in swear words?  It isn't "damnation" - now we're throwing out "d*mn" and "horses**t" and "Brightness Navani would never spend so much time staring at my a**".  We've got they/them.  We've got edgy tattoos and black fingernails.  We've got "filled out the proper forms to be a man instead of a woman." "Adolin, were you a SLUT?"  Check it out the greatest hits reappear - "Honor is dead but I'll see what I can do" makes a comeback (just like "the next step" and "a hypocrite is just a man in the process of changing" and "the sun isn't shining today but that doesn't mean it won't shine again and there's a bit difference").  He he more Lift poop jokes ha ha oh she's HORNY now tee hee.  LOOK MENTAL HEALTH SEE (the amount of cringe I experienced in reading the exchange between Kaladin and Ishar, in what was supposed to be a climax moment, is almost impossible to capture in words:

Spoiler

"What are you?  Are you...are you his spren?  His god?"

"No," Kaladin said. "I'm his therapist."

SOOOO CRINGEY HOW DID THIS GET PAST EDITING AND BETA READERS

I don't post this to hate on Brandon, but I also think it's important that the fandom call things out when we experience them.  Wind and Truth was not a fun journey, and the destination was alright - I'm just sad it took 1,000 pages until the book started reading like Stormlight 5 (and not a bunch of never-ending Adolin internal dialogues playing an imaginary board game that I'm SURE will be sold by Dragonsteel at some point in the future). 

The destination was alright - I'm not unhappy with the story/plot/character end points at the conclusion of this book, but getting there?  This was a hard book to finish.  I'll praise Brandon for so many things, and his stories have truly had a significant impact on my life.  That said, I can't get behind much positive praise for Wind and Truth.  It felt like all of the capitalism with a side of the cosmere.  That's coming from someone who owns the leatherbounds and stood in line to meet Brandon years ago at a bookstore.

In looking at the State of the Sanderson, I am so relieved that no (substantial) cosmere work is slotted to release for several years.  I really hope this pause will give the writing more time to percolate, and for the quality to return to what Brandon gave us in Mistborn Era 1, and the first three Stormlight books, and in Warbreaker, and The Emperor's Soul.

[Jakobus]

As someone who has been a Sanderfan since (almost) the beginning, wtf? I logged in to reply to this. I get trolls, but this is qualifies as a sad attempt. You purposefully ignore the context of the quoted text. You ignore the fact that this is a halfway book, which can be excused if you're a new fan of epic fantasy. Just wow. Try again.

[Velsii]

Your complaint about your fatigue about the never-ending stream of products has merit. I understand that a lot of these items and releases can be seen as pandering. But I personally don't believe that Brandon NEEDS to pander. He is one of the most commercially successful fantasy authors of our time, and I don't think he is as greedy as you portray him as. Maybe I am wrong, but these items seem in response to fan wishes. The Sunlit Man was HIS project, where he got to dive into Cosmere mechanics that he couldn't in standalone novels.

I agree that some parts of W&T felt cringey, but I don't think this was because of a focus on speed-writing. Additonally, it was not long for the sake of being long. There was so much to wrap up, and Brandon cut a lot of the book. Tor had to reinvent ways to bind books because this was too big. Brandon even cut the Ars Arcanum, which would pad pages if that was really his intent, to make room for more story.

 

The time I've devoted to these arguments is probably pointless, as this seems like a bot. However, I appreciate some valid critques of Dragonsteel.

[Treamayne]

6 hours ago, Jakobus said:

6 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

The destination was alright - I'm not unhappy with the story/plot/character end points at the conclusion of this book, but getting there?  This was a hard book to finish.  I'll praise Brandon for so many things, and his stories have truly had a significant impact on my life.  That said, I can't get behind much positive praise for Wind and Truth.  It felt like all of the capitalism with a side of the cosmere.  That's coming from someone who owns the leatherbounds and stood in line to meet Brandon years ago at a bookstore.

As someone who has been a Sanderfan since (almost) the beginning, wtf? I logged in to reply to this. I get trolls, but this is qualifies as a sad attempt. You purposefully ignore the context of the quoted text. You ignore the fact that this is a halfway book, which can be excused if you're a new fan of epic fantasy. Just wow. Try again.

Please don't attack somebody for expressing their opinion. It's fine to disagree with that opinion but attacking the person rather than disagreeing with the arguements just causes bad feelings and should not be what this forum is about (it's about discussion and sharing our thoughts on something we all enjoy enough to be in this forum in the first place).

I agree with much of what VT said, though I concur that I do not think the motivations are as extreme as they beleive them to be. To me, SA5 did read more like a MG/YA novel than a normal Stormlight book. The Stormlight Lexicon was avoided frequently for more "modern" terms and phrases, but without a real reason being expressed for the changes. It was very offputting. For example:

Spoiler

Wat CH 4:

Quote

Kaladin nodded slowly. “There might be something to that.”

“Kid,” Wit said, leaning down over Kaladin on the couch, “the Passions are absolute horseshit.”

“What? It’s good to be hopeful! The Passions sound nice.”

“The wrong people get far too much mileage out of things that sound nice,” Wit said.

I can understand why Wit - whose personal Lexicon does not derive from Roshar - would say something like this. But in earlier books, terms like this would get confusion and a raised eyebrow, because the Rosharans would not immediately understand the connotation derived from teh term. That element was lacking. Then we get: Ch 29:

Quote

“It’s just a term I’ve heard girls say. Somethin’ about words’n’rust, right?”

Wyndle sighed. “Mistress, please don’t use such crude terminology.”

“That sword ardent does it.”

“Zahel is not a role model.” Wyndle drew himself up tall.

and Ch 33:

Quote

She nodded, then the two of them looked—slowly—toward the bare portion of stone where the portal had been.

“Well, rust,” Lift said.

“You heard that from Zahel, haven’t you?” Wit said, his eyes growing distant.

“Why do people keep saying that?”

“Rosharans don’t use that particular word as an epithet,” Wit said

Except, the given explanation also does nto make sense because Zahel (Vasher) is a Nalthian Returned - who also do not use those terms, especially in that context and connotation (they swear by the Colors and Tones). So, it feels (at least to me - and likely VT above) that this was a change for we-the-audience and not a change that is happeneing in-world due to Worldhopper proliferation. Now, if the supposed origin of these terms had been Felt (or other Scadrian Worldhoppers where these terms are used in-world) then it may have made more sense.

However, the culmination of so-many modern terms and phrases (my Ex, etc.) makes the whole feel like it was written down to the audience, rather than written with a purpose (which was much better done in RoW with Ulim and Kalak - written with more modern sounding phrases for the purpose of foreshadowing that Ashyn, where they originated, was a different common lexicon than Roshar).

WaT was good, not great. And many of these anachronisms really were jarring to a large number of readers. This was a Stormlight book in Content, but it did not feel like a Stormlight book to many readers (me included) in Execution. I don't think time or merchandising were the causes - but something happened to cause these changes and without a valid in-world explanation it really does feel like Brandon was writing down to a younger audience than making a purposeful change to setting.

Just my opinion, of course.

[Nitpicking]

I agree with several Shardcasters that this book needed one more full draft, full rewrite. And Brandon just didn't have time to do it, because of the aggressive deadline. It isn't bad, it's actually better than RoW, but it could be so much more than it is. Large parts of it drag--not as badly as part 1 of RoW, but they drag.

Kaladin-invents-psychotherapy was just silly, as he completes centuries of progress by hundreds or thousands of practitioners in our world, by himself in a few months. Only he's better than any real-world therapist could possibly be.

It's as if Navani invented the light bulb and steam engine, and developed titanium alloys, all alone, just during the events of Rhythm of War. And built a flying laser-armed tank in WaT.

[FollowYourMuse she/her]

I agree with much of the opinions expressed, though not specifically the reasons. The merch, and events are fan driven, and I only wish more of my favorite Authors had similar focus on their fans. 

The cross language bleed over did not bother me as much. It is a good example of how language, ideas and culture are influenced and appropriated by other cultures, one more part of what makes his worldbuilding feel realistic.  
 

[a Faceless Immortal he/him]

Feeling drained is fine, but I really just cannot agree with most of your points, especially your third one;

8 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

but now we're throwing in swear words?

We've been doing this since Way of Kings, two that stand out to me include

Quote

"I point out truths when I see them, Brightlord Sadeas. Each man has his place. Mine is to make insults. Yours is to be in-sluts."

Quote

“So yes, I, Adolin Kholin—cousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedom—have sh*t myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.” He downed the rest of his wine. “You are a very strange woman.” 

 

8 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

LOOK MENTAL HEALTH SEE

We've also been doing this since Way of Kings, a book that is famously about the saddest man alive, a woman who is exceptionally sad but pretends she isn't, and a man who would be the saddest man alive if he hadn't forgotten it all.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, a Faceless Immortal said:

We've been doing this since Way of Kings, two that stand out to me include

WoR Ch 49:

Quote

“So yes, I, Adolin Kholin—cousin to the king, heir to the Kholin princedom—have sh*t myself in my Shardplate. Three times, all on purpose.” He downed the rest of his wine. “You are a very strange woman.”

 

But that was Wit's point in the section quoted above (reposted here):

WaT Ch 33:

Spoiler

“Rosharans don’t use that particular word as an epithet,” Wit said

We knew they had the word - but on Roshar it had (so far) only been used for it's normal, physical definition (Excrement, or the act of expelling it from the body).

Though, personally, my problem was not the words, but the false-justification (blame Zahel - except - Nalthians also do not use that word in those contexts. . . ?). I was much more confised by the other, normal modern speaking patterns randomly inserted in the text (kind of, sort of, my ex, etc.). The more I think about it, my personal discontent has less to do with the modernity than it does with it's absence prior to this. If these things had been in RoW, then it would probably not be nearly as jarring (1 year time-jump - we can expect lexicons from across Roshar to mingle in Urithiru) but this starts immediately after RoW and it was absent there (except Ulim, Heralds, Wit, etc. - where it was used to highlight a personal vocabulry separate from "modern" Roshar). The anachronisms just detracted from the story for me.

[VirtuousTraveller]

While I stand by my comments, I think my post could have benefited from some editing to better articulate my thoughts.

Wind and Truth did not feel like a polished book.  Because Brandon has an expansive bibliography of high quality work over a decade plus of published books, the distinct differences in polish are easier to notice in recent releases.

Because these differences seem less based on intentional, creative purpose (the volume of modern phrases and non-Rosharan swear words, as an example), we have to ask “why?” How does it make the story/worldbuilding better to go from in world swear words like “damnation” and “storms” and…not replace it, but randomly throw in “holy h**l” and “the Passions are absolute horses**t?” Every instance of swear words in this book took me out of the immersion of the story, and it sounded like a kid who doesn’t swear trying to swear to sound cool.

The lack of subtext is also disorienting in Wind and Truth - everything is over (or unnecessarily) described.  For a series that used themes like mental health with such nuance at the start (think of the windrunner ideals and the moments leading up to their reveal in Kaladin’s story), the polish is absent.  

The plot line is “Kaladin is going to be a therapist” and so the story is written as “go and talk to Szeth to make him better, wow talking to Szeth is hard, but here’s some surface level generalizations about life” - and in ten days of “talking and stew” this heals a lifetime of trauma in Szeth, it heals thousands of years of trauma in Nale, and in the climax of this “Kaladin as therapist” story, the dialogue between he and Ishar is downright awkward and cringey.

There is no subtext.  The concept isn’t “wounded warrior as healer” - that would imply a depth that isn’t present in this story as written.  It starts as Kaladin “becoming the world’s first therapist” (WaT page 51) and ends with “I’m his therapist” (WaT page 1256).

Ishar’s reaction in that moment - “Ishar blinked” - was how I reacted.  The moment was clearly building to be “something,” but ended with “…what is that?” and “I honestly have no idea.” Exactly what I thought.

If you cut that dialogue out entirely, the scene almost works BETTER.  Just leave it at that “seeing someone else resist helped.” We didn’t need a cheesy “You can’t have my pain” styled moment that tells us nothing new - we all knew Kaladin was trying to help Szeth.  This moment didn’t spark goosebumps like polished Brandon has done in the past - I rolled my eyes  hard.  I don’t even know who this dialogue was written for - it’s maybe(?) an attempt at humor, and all it does is dampen the confrontation (and makes it even more cringey when it isn’t talk therapy that helps - but magic infused 5th Ideal Connection surging that “heals” the Heralds).

I’m a huge fan of the cosmere, I’ve preordered every book since Oathbringer, and I’ve backed the crowdfunding every time.  I’m not coming from a cynical troll perspective - I’m a Yankees fan watching Aaron Judge drop a routine fly ball in the World Series. It just doesn’t make sense.  WaT needed more editing, and as a super fan, I would have been perfectly happy to wait another 6 months for a more polished product to release.

In my opinion, the shift to “Brand”on Sanderson(TM) is contributing to editorial laxness.  Either WaT was rushed through editing, the editing wasn’t taken seriously, or a sense of “it doesn’t matter they’ll buy it anyway” has leaked in as Dragonsteel is caught up trying to fulfill tens of thousands of orders of fans who will pay top dollar for next product (still waiting for my WoR learherbound).

My hope is that the next cosmere releases will return to a more polished final product.  I say that respectfully, with great appreciation for an author who has helped inspire not just my own love of reading, but so many other people too.

Edited December 22, 2024 by VirtuousTraveller

[Qianweilian He/him]

Why did you make the text so big?

 

[Ripheus23]

I don't understand what the problem with the they/them, filling-out-a-form-to-live-as, etc. stuff is. Sanderson has done a great job of GSRM representation ever since frickin' Sazed (who can be interpreted as ace-adjacent, I think, maybe asexual specifically if not aromantic). If you think some of it sounds like ideological pandering, well, I don't know what to tell you but if you have talked with LDS missionaries enough (among other things...), you would be able to tell how much of the ending of The Hero of Ages might come off like ideological pandering, too, if you were disposed to read it in an unnecessarily hostile way.

I'd even venture to say that the Kasbal/Jasnah dialectic in WoK might sound kinda "cringey" in its own way. But you know what? A lot of fantasy authors love to write out the Logon Agon in their own way, we had Miyazaki do it with the weird, out-of-tune debate between Nausicaa and the Heart of the Graveyard, for example, which was inspired by one of the Earthsea books which had a zany philosophical speech at the end, etc. It's a thing that happens. Sanderson had to do it before, with Rand vs. the Dark One, by the way, and depending on how bad a case of Sayre's law you're infected with, you might think that some of Rand's reasoning is "cringey" too.

As a gay guy with certain, let's say "aesthetic," applications of the sentiment in play, I can say that I would've loved seeing Drehy's arc be the one that Sanderson fleshed out in these books, for that kind of reason/in that kind of context. Drehy's in principle the hot-action-packed dude on this "spectrum." (To be even more honest, a lot of us would never have objected had Adolin ended up being given over to bi/pan representation, like a Rosharan Fiyero so to say. However, I do appreciate that Sanderson did not do such a thing, and I have no belief that there was any "need" for him to do so. Would Kaladin and Adolin be "cute" or whatever, together? Sure. But I myself have no problem with the romance arc Adolin and Shallan have been given.) But Sanderson has emphatically stated that he wants to be precisely respectful about how he does GSRM representation.

And, he had a thematic reason to look towards human-singer romance as relevant to the reconciliation super-plotline. I voted for shipping Kaladin and Venli years back, that didn't happen, so Rlain and Renarin being the ones Sanderson went with was, I thought, a really smooth move. He'd already fleshed out a lot of Renarin's neurodivergence representation status, Rlain was a good ethnicity rep in context, so while pairing them up and giving them a hell of an Elphaba-wants-to-free-the-animals endgame to boot, Sanderson had more character details to work with than w.r.t. Drehy.

Pandering to the GSRM community would've meant doing something silly with Adolin, or inflating Drehy's role inexplicably, or whatever. Instead, a very good argument can be made that Sanderson figured out one of the ideal options for the narrative problem he set himself in this case, that he optimally solved the problem with the Rlain-Renarin pairing and their fateful decision-making in W&T.

I would also like to add that the total number of explicit/overt references to GSRM issues/representation, not only in W&T but the entirety of the SA and the Cosmere saga moreover, is a microscopic % of the total number of words per this book, those books, and those other books. Take a book with 400,000 words. If 1000 words were spent on GSRM stuff, that'd be 1/400 words, which would be what, 1/4 out of 100? So like 0.25% or something? (Sorry if that's not right, I have a slight headache and I'm not gonna provoke it by being overly precise about microscopic fractions.) Then, out of the millions of words in all the books/sagas together, well...

(This would be my reply to the issue of anachronistic wording: even Tolkien simulated the act of translating e.g. The Lord of Rings from material where Sam and Frodo had less English-sounding names, among other things. A writer who is writing in a real language, yet to simulate alien and fantastical languages, has only so many words, usually, to choose from, in writing this or that scene. Sanderson isn't Donaldson, for example, so he's not given to wacky let's-eat-the-thesaurus mode, and he's not me for sure, either, so he doesn't get possessed by the ghost of Dante every other sentence he writes. He doesn't try to use abstract philosophical metaphors so much, when describing physical reality. Hell, he uses more physical descriptiveness to describe spiritual reality, than the other way around. So anyway, there's no moral requirement in world-building/conlanging, that mythologically translated texts and dialogue have to conform to overly rigid patterns of word usage. People do not swear the same way all the time, people notice differences in word usage to different extents, to different degrees, at different times. For a flippant justification: earlier in the SA, people on Roshar would've cared more about odd swear words because those would've been breaches of etiquette twice over, and they didn't know that multiple corrupted gods were vying for dominion of their world, etc. By W&T, if someone swears in an offworld way and no local character points this out, so what? They have way more important things to worry about!)

Another gap in the presentation: if W&T were so gravely distorted by pandering or whatever, yet why does Sanderson display the obviously intricate structure of the book from the get-go? He made a super-precise pacing decision, to set the book up as a sequence of parts corresponding very particularly (and hence thematically) to the concept of the Final Ten Days. He does a super-complicated move with the epigraphs, cycling through the sources from the previous books a lot in a way he didn't do as much in any of the others, IIRC. So, a very nice, very subtle full-circle kind of thing. The scene with the Ryshadium and the spren? Do you know how long Sanderson probably had been waiting to do a scene like that? A very, very, very long time. I don't know if he foresaw the need/value of it as soon as he read the books, long ago, that inspired the concept of the Ryshadium and therefore this specific scene most of all, but having read the same books and being comparably inspired for a separate reason/in a rather different way (I exploited the inspiration for fanfiction), I wouldn't be surprised at all if Sanderson has wanted to play the theme of the musicspren-Ryshadium connection for at least ten to twenty years.

Adolin and Co. becoming the Unoathed Shardbearers? I don't think he envisioned that one for quite as long, except I do think he knows how to apply the Rule of Cool in terms of his super-duper Magic A is Magic A mode, so he knows what he did with Elend and the magic system in The Hero of Ages, and what would be that kind of scene but in Rosharan terms? (Is it "repetitive," then? Yes and no. Yes, because he's repeating a chord in the song of the Cosmere saga: what happens when the dashing, daring prince of goodness democratizes the local magic power base in a certain way? At least in the military-bro sense, here: Sanderson does the civilian democratization of magic in Elantris, however, if I remember correctly.) Anyway, great scene. A great Sanderlanche. Not so OP as, like, Sazed Ascending. But it didn't have to be, and it wasn't.

My final counterargument: there are a zillion well-written fantasy stories in the world, have been for ages. Expecting every author, new or established, to literally come up with extremely original and universally compelling content on every page in a multi-million-word superstory, seems like a terribly, even unfairly, tall order. My takeaway from W&T is that regardless of what I might or might not feel like are random weaknesses/deficiencies here or there, in the text, yet the vision of this novel as a whole was so powerful and well-executed that the dominant merit of the text is either completely dominant in fact (and there are no "serious" errors in Sanderson's presentation at all) or sufficiently dominant that those deficits don't affect my overall judgment of the book's total merit. Like, I could analyze questions of consistency and mathematical triviality w.r.t. the magic system, and find "holes in the plot," yadayadayada; or not; or it doesn't matter much, if at all, to me, in the end, because I don't expect any author to be perfect enough to make no "mistakes" as such, and I've seen worse, for all that, to boot. If his editorial team seems lax, this could be explained, in part, by the fact that if Sanderson can't figure out how to write his books correctly, there's no way that team would be able to figure it out either. For one, really, there's nothing really to figure out; Sanderson can't magically compute the only perfect phrasing of everything possible, and there probably isn't always an absolute perfect phrasing of things anyway. So secondly, he's the only one who would be able to "compute" that even if it was available for being "computed." The willingness of Jordan and his wife to involve Sanderson so outstandingly in the outcome of their own popular saga is a stark testament to this, I think. For better or worse, Sanderson is the only one who really seems capable of knowing how to make the Cosmere meta-series concept work correctly. He knew how to step in to Jordan's shoes, but I don't think that anyone knows how to step into Sanderson's in turn. Or not in the same way. Even if they had all his notes and stuff, then, I don't think they could fill in the gaps and balance the possible inconsistencies in the "correct" way. I mean, I know that there are recognizable techniques for emulating style/voice, etc., but otherwise, I think that if you look at literature from a logic/mathematics angle, sort of, then Sanderson is to the genre what someone like Euler or Einstein were to those kinds of fields. Not beyond criticism, of course, and he does have a huge team helping him. So he's doing his best, and he's not doing it "all by himself." So I'm not sure how "serious" the problems with W&T really are, neither do I know that having a longer delay in processing the drafts of the book, or some kind of stricter editorial oversight, or whatever, would have done much good. Arguably, there would have been potential weaknesses in the book as produced in that way instead, other weaknesses that is, and so it wasn't like Sanderson could have written an utterly "perfect" book no matter how hard he and his teams tried. Having tried many times to write books that take up even a few hundred pages, I can hardly do more than imagine what it must be like to have the talent to see thousand-page books through over and over and over again, so I myself am not in a very good position almost at all, to negatively judge W&T. Not just because of what I've lacked in accomplishments, but because when I have managed to write extensively about a specific story or topic, I can see that the process of trying to make sure that I've written all these things well is a difficult process, but it's a process that Sanderson has consistently demonstrated his ability to handle very well.

[DiePie]

I agree that parts of WaT felt unpolished. I agree that the book was rushed. I will agree that sections felt out of character. But I disagree that's because Brandon Sanderson is selling out. I think it's a good thing to be worried about, especially with the recent growth of his brand and the new attention powerful figures in publishing and Hollywood are now paying him. But listen to his livestreams: he's still down-to-earth. Taking suggestions and fielding questions like that's why he does all this. He understands that the quality of his writing is what allows for the volume to be viable, that people buy books because of their substance, not just because of callbacks and nostalgia-bait. But perhaps that's because I didn't have as an extreme reaction to WaT as you did.

 

First of all: Production. I don't think the money is what's rushing Brandon. I don't know his financial situation, but as you said previously the man is signing product deals and releasing books and merch left, right and center. If his goal was money we'd have that globe-trotting adventure of a Emperor's Soul movie he shot down because it wasn't the story he wanted to tell. I don't see a reason for his writing to have a different motive than himself now (he's talked before about how he would write if he made nothing off of it), so what gives? Well, after outlining RoW and WaT, Brandon realized he needed to figure out what he would write between the front and back halves (now more commonly called the first and second arcs, I think). He ended up figuring out not only that, but a rough idea of how many books he'd need to write to finish off the story of the Cosmere, how long each book would take, and therefore how long he'd be writing for until his Magnum Opus is complete. My theory is that the crux of his rush is that he's got 20 years of books left to write, and God-knows-how-long left to write it. He want's to get to the Cosmere-scale Sanderlanche at the end.

Second of all: Product. Included more for completions sake since I want to address everything here. I think Velsii hits it on the head with:

11 hours ago, Velsii said:

Maybe I am wrong, but these items seem in response to fan wishes. The Sunlit Man was HIS project, where he got to dive into Cosmere mechanics that he couldn't in standalone novels.

Like obviously spending more of his time overseeing merch and less time writing is going to influence his worldview. But I don't think it's a major problem rn. I'd also like to point out that Isaac (basically Brandon's 2nd hand man iirc) handles the vast majority of the merch stuff. I don't think Brandon does much more than sign off on it, and give feedback, now.

Third of all: Pandering. I don't think it's as bad as you think, nor do I think Brandon is doing it for us. The three examples you gave were the Lost Metal, The Sunlit Man, and this. I agree that tLM and WaT have serious problems with characterization (I'll get back to that), but the Sunlit Man? I'd love to know what you consider pandering in that, since it wasn't really written to be published (I'll admit that's arguable), and (imo) most of the issues stem from tSM's breakneck pace, which isn't a product of pandering, it's a product of Brandon writing tSM because he wanted to practicing writing at a fast pace before writing WaT. I'm assuming that's why it's including, since the writing style seems similar to the current issue. The Last metal introduces a band of likeable misfits, and forgets to give them anything more. I agree that section reads like fan-fiction. But I don't think I'd call that pandering. Brandon wrote them in as a way of introducing (and maybe practicing) how he's going to write later cosmere books (probably the planned Ghostblood trilogy, in retrospect), and talked mostly about how readers less in-the-know would take people from other planets, with other magic systems. In fact, I think a big reason their characters got flattened was that instead of acting how they would act, they spent their time turning to the camera and monologing about their powers. Introducing the powers became more important than introducing the characters, which lead to bad writing but I'd call it worse if a reader who really liked W&W (which is supposed to be accessible) was suddenly unable to understand half of the book.

Before I talk about WaT itself, I want to make another important point: Tor is no longer editing Brandon's books. After he gave them Shadows of Self and the Bands of Mourning, and they just published both immediately, Dragonsteel has been giving Tor books at the last possible moment and otherwise editing them in house. That, thankfully, means that the editing will naturally get better as the editors read feedback and grow their craft, but for the time being, they're definitely less experienced than whoever was doing the same job at Tor. There was one scene where the text implies that Kaladin takes a bundle of swords Szeth is giving him twice, the first time Szeth "gives" the bundle to Kaladin, and the second time he "takes" them. I hope you can imagine how a copy-editor who edits 50 books/year for their job (and has experience editing for clarity) might replace "give" with "offer", especially as the two actions frame Kaladin accepting Szeth's statement that he will do the next challenge alone (which could also be considered an offer); where someone who edits 1 book a year, has less experience with editing, and is far more familiar with the way Brandon thinks and writes would be more likely to nod along and continue reading.

So finally, on to WaT itself: I don't think anything you've said is actually an example of pandering to the audience. Swearwords is a good argument, but there's like 5 in the entire book. Also, I think most of the language choices are due to the time crunch, and Brandon not really thinking about every word he wrote (which, as I've said above I think is primarily for reasons other than money), rather than pandering. During the Kaladin scenes, there's a lot of lines that just switch to him talking like a therapist. I don't think that's pandering, I think that's just Brandon understanding what Kaladin is trying to do (be a therapist), but forgetting that Kaladin doesn't actually know how a therapist talks; a mistake he wouldn't have included in the final draft if either he had more time or a better editor. The trans/nonbinary inclusion has been Brandon's goal for a long time, and I don't think you can really argue it impacted the quality of the book, expect maybe that he spent more time making sure Renarin/Rlain's love story felt natural, which it did. To drive home the inclusion point, Mistborn (one of the books you cited for being good) has a strong female protagonist for that same reason; and Brandon's biggest regret is that his supposedly gender-inclusive society has like 2 strong female characters, a regret he (iirc) had during the writing of the series. Elantris has an autistic character (who is such a bad representation that Brandon waited until SA to start writing them again) also for the same reason. Actually the edgy tattoos might be pandering, I genuinely can't remember who had those. Lift being horny feels like a natural extension of her character becoming a teenager, which she is, and shows a small amount of character growth, as her problem is that she doesn't want to grow up, and now she's accepting that she is a little. The fact that you find her annoying (which is fair, she is), allows you to ignore the fact that a lot of people do. Brandon has a habit of writing annoying comic relief characters (cough Wayne). He puts them in the book because he thinks it will improve the book, not because they're popular. And really? Are you saying mental health in a Stormlight book is pandering?

 

You've identified important issues with WaT. But instead of looking for the root psychological reasons Brandon made those mistakes, you attribute them to the easy boogeyman: Capitalism. You didn't come to that conclusion because it best fits the facts, and let me explain that, because I'm not trying to insult you. Like I started this reply with (sorry it's so long, WaT is bleeding by a thousand cuts and I'm trying to show those were done with an obsidian dagger rather than a bronze sword), the point you're making is an important one regardless of whether it's the foremost reason.

I don't think Brandon Sanderson is pandering. Not enough to be a concern at the moment. And I think you'll agree with me, because you ignored the biggest example of pandering in the book (the on-page gay romance between two "outsider" characters), and instead closed off that paragraph with Kaladin and Ishar's talk about health and how it was "cringe". I think it makes sense for Kaladin, soldier and surgeon, notorious for saying what he thinks and not thinking about the consequences, would be a little cringe when trying to delicately confront the root of a being millennia old's issues. I hope we can agree that the issue isn't cringe (or pandering), it's that it's badly written. In fact, that's the consistent throughline in your pandering paragraph. Characters not talking the way they would in-world (using modern English swears, or Kaladin being a therapist), callbacks that don't make sense in-context, lack of subtext or nuance when dealing with certain topics. And before I stop talking about your post specifically I'd like to point out that you almost reached the same conclusion I did. These problems appeal to no-one better than a better written scene without them would've, and I think Brandon still understands that.

3 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

This moment didn’t spark goosebumps like polished Brandon has done in the past - I rolled my eyes  hard.  I don’t even know who this dialogue was written for - it’s maybe(?) an attempt at humor, and all it does is dampen the confrontation (and makes it even more cringey when it isn’t talk therapy that helps - but magic infused 5th Ideal Connection surging that “heals” the Heralds).

 

Since you brought up capitalism, I assume the arguments you're making here are influence by (right wing -- I don't have a better label for it) film discourse on the internet. The most recent MCU movies are bad for a variety of reasons, (I think) stemming from execs' inability to understand what makes a movie good. So when they interfere with a script they make a lot of bad suggestions, including ones intended on pandering. But the pandering is easiest to point out, and so videos trying to get as many clicks as possible start with that, and so people are most familiar with that. So it's easy to label it as the cause, and the bad writing quality as a symptom. My theory is that you saw the poor writing quality, saw the callbacks, and defaulted to Brandon Sanderson pandering to people (I would like to know if I'm right with that). But both are symptoms of interfering execs.

Another reason that properties like this are bad all of a sudden is that in order to save cost, writers are hired for shorter periods of time. On an older TV show (one with 20-40 episodes), you'd hire multiple writers and have each of them write episodes more or less independently. They'd often be writing later episodes while their earlier episodes were being filmed and edited, and could give feedback or take criticism to improve their writing for later episodes. Now, often times they'll be given a couple of weeks to write the script, and then kicked out so the studio doesn't have to pay for them. Shows are bad because the writers have a time crunch, and the producers don't get that feedback. As you may have noticed, I have detailed above how Brandon Sanderson (who is both the writer and producer), has had both a time crunch and less feedback, both for reasons other than him selling out.

 

TL;DR: The issue with WaT isn't pandering, it's its lack of polish. Which I believe is due to a combination of personal motivations and reasons outside of his control.

[VirtuousTraveller]

1 hour ago, Qianweilian said:

Why did you make the text so big?

 

Oh man you’re right - it must be because I’m using my phone for some of these posts!  I’ll try to edit when I’m on my laptop

33 minutes ago, DiePie said:

TL;DR: The issue with WaT isn't pandering, it's its lack of polish. Which I believe is due to a combination of personal motivations and reasons outside of his control.

My friend, your post is beautifully written, and I want to respond more when I’m not on my phone, but I think you’re helping me to fine tune my reactions to WaT.  I truly love this author and his creations and have enjoyed being a part of the fandom because of conversations like this I don’t take a respectful back and forth as insulting at all @DiePie, and I appreciate your thoughts and the time you spent responding!

[drunkenbotanist]

1 hour ago, DiePie said:

 

Before I talk about WaT itself, I want to make another important point: Tor is no longer editing Brandon's books. After he gave them Shadows of Self and the Bands of Mourning, and they just published both immediately, Dragonsteel has been giving Tor books at the last possible moment and otherwise editing them in house. That, thankfully, means that the editing will naturally get better as the editors read feedback and grow their craft, but for the time being, they're definitely less experienced than whoever was doing the same job at Tor. There was one scene where the text implies that Kaladin takes a bundle of swords Szeth is giving him twice, the first time Szeth "gives" the bundle to Kaladin, and the second time he "takes" them. I hope you can imagine how a copy-editor who edits 50 books/year for their job (and has experience editing for clarity) might replace "give" with "offer", especially as the two actions frame Kaladin accepting Szeth's statement that he will do the next challenge alone (which could also be considered an offer); where someone who edits 1 book a year, has less experience with editing, and is far more familiar with the way Brandon thinks and writes would be more likely to nod along and continue reading.

 

I swear I think this explains 90% of my feelings about this book and TLM, both of which I enjoyed. I haven't seen this pointed out yet and it makes so much sense, thank you. 

 

 

 

Also, regarding the first post here, pandering I feel is a useless term for Brandon's behavior, which I do not believe has changed, only that the size of the audience has grown.

 

Brandon has a great track record for the motives of his writing if not always the execution. He talks about his thoughts and goals years in advance publicly and in detail. Even the most cynical reading of his motives I wouldn't call pandering. Even if he doesn't actually care about the different types of people and stories he brings into the fold, he's been very clear that he approaches his job differently than a lot of authors... "here is the timeline for YOUR book", and because he has a huge audience with a large reach, and he has growing number of constituencies to please. I don't think it's cynical. But I think if you were to approach it cynically, him including xyz characters in his books is no more pandering than any other action he's taken throughout his career, which has always had an oversized amount of "author as service" instead of "book as product". 

 

[Nitpicking]

I agree with @VirtuousTraveller that I'd have been glad to wait longer for a book that was properly edited. I'm distressed that they're cutting Tor editorial out of the process, because those people are very good and they would have most certainly improved this book.

I don't think Brandon is selling out. I think he has more power than is good in this context. Some writers can self-publish and produce good stuff. Some ... just cannot. I'm worried. And yes, self-publish. This would seem to be a Dragonsteel production that outsourced promotion and printing to Tor, not a Tor book.

[VirtuousTraveller]

3 hours ago, DiePie said:

He understands that the quality of his writing is what allows for the volume to be viable, that people buy books because of their substance, not just because of callbacks and nostalgia-bait.

 

I think that’s the pandering I’m reacting to - not so much "nostalgia-baiting," but what I would define as more of a “fan service” that comes across like “fan fiction” and less as well-executed literature.

 

Kaladin saying “Honor’s dead, but I’ll see what I can do” again in WaT is an example of this - it was meant more as a nod to the fans than it was executed as part of the story.  The execution of “easter eggs” in The Lost Metal like "he he Moonlight and her friend Code-Names-Are-Stupid wink did you notice it’s the girl from The Emperor’s Soul nudge nudge." These aren’t allusions to what came before, or subtext, or subtle mystery-building like was executed well, for example, with Azure in Oathbringer.  It feels like cheap or poorly executed “hey look see I referenced another cosmere work!” that, to me, feels like "pandering" fan service.

 

Another example of this is the leaning into “humor” that has become more pronounced in characters like Lift and Wayne and Design.  Lines like “Adolin were you a slut?” or describing a character as having “edgy tattoos and black fingernails” come across to me as “pandering” to the fans, and not in a way that fit the worldbuilding or story. “Look you can see yourself in my writing!” to me, doesn’t feel genuine when it exists in these throw away one off lines.

 

3 hours ago, DiePie said:

And I think you'll agree with me, because you ignored the biggest example of pandering in the book (the on-page gay romance between two "outsider" characters), and instead closed off that paragraph with Kaladin and Ishar's talk about health and how it was "cringe".

I do think some of the "look you can see yourself in my writing!" is coming from a good place, but I just don't think it's executed well.  While R&R was a little juvenile of a romance (let's be honest, I wouldn't say romance in general is Brandon's strongest tool in his toolbelt), I felt this was less pandering than the forced fan service.  R&R's relationship felt less pandering in my opinion than the image of Shallan "hopping up and down, squealing in excitement" seeing them together.  That broke the immersion of the moment in an immature way for a character who is in the midst of assassinating two assassins who are trying to release a demigod from thousands of years of imprisonment, while also grappling with remembering...she killed her mother...who triggered the start of this entire conflict/True Desolation....but yes, squealing in excitement.  ::shaking my head::

4 hours ago, DiePie said:

Since you brought up capitalism, I assume the arguments you're making here are influence by (right wing -- I don't have a better label for it) film discourse on the internet.

I don't think that's where my observations are coming from.  Like I said, I think Brandon is trying to be inclusive from a far more sincere place than how recent MCU productions for example have been executing inclusivity.  I don't think he executes it well, but I wouldn't say his efforts of inclusion is pandering (which I admit is a word that is probably ideologically charged these days, and maybe isn't the perfect fit as a result of that ideological charge for what I'm trying to capture with these comments). 

Since I just referenced Rlain, consider two examples:

Rlain telling people he likes to play towers in RoW to show he’s an individual, not just whatever stereotype people see him as, was a nice piece of both worldbuilding, and tapped into the story themes like being your authentic self.  That felt relatable to anyone who has been judged for something surface level.

In WaT, however, there were SO many repetitive references to "towers" that, while it COULD have just been a lack of editing (which I think in many ways it was, to your point), felt like a set up for the eventual Dragonsteel release of an official set of Towers(TM) rules and products for the fan base so they can play Towers(TM) too.  To me, that’s what I mean by the influences of the Shard of Capitalism.

Is it what the fans want?  Maybe some of them.  I love that Brandon is trying to be so responsive to his fans (I cherish my personalized books from days gone by, since that’s just not a thing anymore). But I feel like all the “stuff/merch” is coming at the same time as he’s Ascending into a larger audience/market, and the quality of writing hasn’t been as solid as that’s happened.  I as a fan want quality writing more than I do all the other stuff that's been coming along with it.  That doesn't mean I don't think it's cool that some of this stuff exists - I just don't want to see the quality of writing fall off as the rest of this stuff becomes more prominent.

3 hours ago, DiePie said:

I hope we can agree that the issue isn't cringe (or pandering), it's that it's badly written. In fact, that's the consistent throughline in your pandering paragraph. Characters not talking the way they would in-world (using modern English swears, or Kaladin being a therapist), callbacks that don't make sense in-context, lack of subtext or nuance when dealing with certain topics.

I certainly hope this is true.  I didn't realize Tor wasn't providing editorial support anymore - that provides some meaningful context to the quality of writing we've seen lately (Dragonsteel is doing A LOT of things in house these days).  I've seen other folks agree that the increased humor (which is admittedly subjective) just doesn't land for them either, and to me, that isn't exclusively a matter of editing.  I stand by some of these examples being cringey.  That said, getting feedback from beyond the most dedicated fans who will eat it up no matter what it is would benefit the final product (no matter who the author is).

So, all that said - "pandering" meaning Brandon is incorporating more "badly written easter eggs/fan fiction quality execution" in the name of fan service in recent works, and coupled with the lack of editing, this has led to a less than enjoyable experience for me.

[DiePie]

14 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

I don't think that's where my observations are coming from.  Like I said, I think Brandon is trying to be inclusive from a far more sincere place than how recent MCU productions for example have been executing inclusivity.  I don't think he executes it well, but I wouldn't say his efforts of inclusion is pandering (which I admit is a word that is probably ideologically charged these days, and maybe isn't the perfect fit as a result of that ideological charge for what I'm trying to capture with these comments).

my apologies, I thought the points I was making lead naturally into a comment I've been wanting to make on that specific criticism I've seen in other places, rather than addressing you personally. I find the ideological charge of the word interesting, since in a lot of cases it's correctly identified in movies that rely on fan-service, and even the fan-fiction-y type writing in many places. It's just treated as the root when it's really the symptom of a larger institutional rot (that excecs no longer trust the people actually making the movies -- for reasons often of their own devising but I feel like I've talked about this too much here) in Hollywood. The way you're using pandering is good for the problem you're describing, and perhaps I forget too easily that in a well-written book it becomes easier to ignore -- but still not adding value for you. In fact, I think there's a hole in my argument that Brandon could be said to be pandering to himself with lines like this.

 

14 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

I as a fan want quality writing more than I do all the other stuff that's been coming along with it.  That doesn't mean I don't think it's cool that some of this stuff exists - I just don't want to see the quality of writing fall off as the rest of this stuff becomes more prominent.

This is the version of your argument I respect most. It's definitely concerning that Brandon's quality has dropped while he's capitalizing on it more than ever, but I think a bit of nuance needs to be added where Brandon is not destined to fall into this trap if he doesn't make changes. It's hard to tell what's on his mind, and I'm glad we can respectfully disagree on that.

 

19 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

My friend, your post is beautifully written, and I want to respond more when I’m not on my phone, but I think you’re helping me to fine tune my reactions to WaT.  I truly love this author and his creations and have enjoyed being a part of the fandom because of conversations like this I don’t take a respectful back and forth as insulting at all @DiePie, and I appreciate your thoughts and the time you spent responding!

[L8rG8r]

I was discussing the book with a buddy of mine who also loves all things Cosmere...and this post articulates my thoughts perfectly.  It reminds me a little of Terry Brooks WAY back in the 90s.  He just started pumping out books.  But even that is a bad comparison.  This books seems to have a LOT of pandering to one side of the zeitgeist.  Kaladin went from being my favorite character in all of fantasy to a Shallan chapter.