How Stormlight archive treats the (former) parshmen.

[Shaukan-son-Hasweth he/him]

Sometimes despite it's noble intentions, a work of fiction can unintentionally agree with the points it tries to fight

Very minor spoiler for A Song of Ice and fire:

Spoiler

The story tires to tell us that the true sufferers are the common folk.

But we never get a viewpoint character that is not in some way related to nobility, nor do they play a huge role. As far as the books go, the minds, actions and lives kind of are less important than those of nobles.

I feel something similar is happening to the former parshmen in SA.

If there is anyone who suffered the most in this conflict, it's them.

We get a lot of emphasis on how the war affected the heralds even the unmade.

But the parchment were not only lobotomised and enslaved, but bread like animals for millenia.

Now even adult parshmen awaken to a world they never had any agency in, only to immediately be ruled by the voidbringers and forced into battle.

They are still treated as a commodity. 

And I feel how the story is told kind of agrees in some way. Even if the text doesn't. 

The most prominent role a parshman has in this story is either slave, dead body to accommodate a fused or faceless warrior in scary form that the heroes have to overcome.

We never really get a viewpoint from them. Except for that group Kaladin finds in Oathbringer. And there they exist to help his story.

They have no agency at all. It fits their them well.

I generally think we get to few singer viewpoints, considering this is a story about the conflict between singers and humans.

But even when we do, we get the listeners. That the story is more interested in telling their story than that of a parshmen really drives this home for me.

This is weird, because dealing with what happened to the parchment could be such an interesting character arc.

I really hope the story of the last 5 books changes this.

While it is a fantasy book, the analogy of the parshmen to real world issues is really important to what will be the message of this story in the end.

I think the reveal that the parchment are the voidbringers in book one was a stroke of genius. Because we at some point come to accept them like the furniture around. 

The reveal that they are the true natives of roshar was kind of obvious to me because of their biology. But it's also a good part of the story. 

But after that I think the story kind of failed to make the former parshmen key characters and players in this story, in a way that makes sense for them. I'm interested in their experiences, thoughts and actions.

We have characters who are former slaves. We have the theme of radiants coming from anywhere. 

I really hope this changes in the second arc.

[Raven Wilder]

It's interesting to imagine what the POV of a former parshman would be like. They've only been fully sapient for a little over a year, and their ability to function in a normal manner is largely due to some mystical filling-in-the-cracks-in-the-soul stuff. Brandon's written POVs of ordinary people whose minds take on bizarre dimensions thanks to magic, but this would be basically the reverse of that.

[Ahriman he/him]

I feel like the whole Parshmen thing has gotten swept up in other issues, which is disappointing. In previous books, it felt like one of the driving forces in the book was much of humanity reckoning with its imperialist past, discovering and accepting that what land they have was taken from others so forcefully that the old occupants nearly ceased to exist. Given the relevance of that concept to North American societies, I hoped that would continue to be explored. But instead of making them important characters in their own right, they've just been snapped up by the other imperial power of Odium. That's a shame, since I found that much more compelling than the mental health angle.

8 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

I think the reveal that the parchment are the voidbringers in book one was a stroke of genius.

Also, this is my favourite typo ever.

[PanicPug]

I 100% agree with the OP and hope that there'll be more of a focus on and perspectives of Singers in the back half of TSA.

It feels like a missed chance so far and I was hoping for more of the Singers perspectives when the SR visions started in WAT, but instead the focus was almost exclusively on the human side.

I would really hope that we get more of a focus on new viewpoint characters and less on the ones from the first arc. Instead of another five books mainly through the eyes of the human and 2-3 Listener characters it would be fantastic to see more of the story through the eyes of some regular Singer and Fused characters. 

On a somewhat related noteI 'm also interested in how Isles Of The Emberdark will be in this regard, since Sixth Of The Dusk mainly deals with the topic of colonialisation and iirc that story will make up some of the backstory for the IOTE.

Though arguably TSA feels more like a mix of colonialisation by humans mixed with a proxy war by Honor and Odium in which the Singers are just pawns.

[Raven Wilder]

I think the proxy war thing is the message the story's more focused on. Singers and humans should be able to make peace, especially since they've literally forgotten what they were even fighting about, but the beings in power have too much to gain from continued warfare to let them.

[Shaukan-son-Hasweth he/him]

3 hours ago, Ahriman said:

Given the relevance of that concept to North American societies, I hoped that would continue to be explored.

Yes! Exactly. 

 

These books explicitly deal with colonialism, and the extermination of a native people. What happend to the parshmen is unspeakable. 

I was really interested in what Brandon would make of that in the coming books.

Especially since he's a white American, so firmly one of the ashynites in this analogy. 

I liked that the injustice that happend to them is treated like a tragedy. I worried it would be portrayed as them somehow deserving it for serving odium.

I never knew how I felt about the singers/natives being portrayed as less human and more in tune with nature. Which plays into some stereotypes.

But the story explicitly shows them as having had their own culture technology civilisation and also importantly flaws.

The singers having injustices among them should not make them less deserving of preservation. 

I think not getting into the parshmen more is a huge oversight for this theme.

3 hours ago, Ahriman said:

Also, this is my favourite typo ever.

It's the damn autocorrect. 

 

9 minutes ago, Raven Wilder said:

I think the proxy war thing is the message the story's more focused on. Singers and humans should be able to make peace, especially since they've literally forgotten what they were even fighting about, but the beings in power have too much to gain from continued warfare to let them.

Yes. And that is done well. But why don't any part of the story revolve around the parshmen. If and how the singers make peace should focus more on them. Not just the listeners and fused.

Edited January 10, 2025 by Shaukan-son-Hasweth

[coolsnow7]

11 hours ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

They are still treated as a commodity. 

I mean this is a stretch to say the least. (I do think what you mean is “they are treated as objects rather than subjects”.) Brandon deciding not to feature viewpoints from the Singers doesn’t mean anything, and doesn’t bear on the “message” of the books.

I think there’s an interesting question here of “hey Brandon don’t you think there’s at least some interesting ground to cover by telling some stories from the perspective of a Singer?” But I’m perfectly satisfied to trust him saying (via his decisions) “no there isn’t”.

[Returned he/him]

I think that that kind of was the point. The singers were used by everyone, almost entirely losing their agency at some point after Odium really pressed his influence into them. The few that broke free during the time of the novels had almost no ability to determine things for themselves because they had few resources and were caught between groups that didn't mind using them further. We got a little bit of their perspective, sometimes, but their ability to act for themselves was still really constrained by circumstance.

Now that a group has the Shattered Plains for themselves and are free from Odium's domination (with a pretty big asterisk, I think) things might actually change. I look forward to that in the later books, and I hope that they will be stronger players in the story.

[Ahriman he/him]

14 minutes ago, Shaukan-son-Hasweth said:

Yes! Exactly. 

 

These books explicitly deal with colonialism, and the extermination of a native people. What happend to the parshmen is unspeakable. 

I was really interested in what Brandon would make of that in the coming books.

Especially since he's a white American, so firmly one of the ashynites in this analogy. 

I liked that the injustice that happend to them is treated like a tragedy. I worried it would be portrayed as them somehow deserving it for serving odium.

I never knew how I felt about the singers/natives being portrayed as less human and more in tune with nature. Which plays into some stereotypes.

But the story explicitly shows them as having had their own culture technology civilisation and also importantly flaws.

The singers having injustices among them should not make them less deserving of preservation.

Given the amount of discussion and reflection among many white Americans and Canadians over their history, me being one of them, I was really invested in finding ways for them to understand their national identities and value their herirage while also trying to find a way forward for both humans and parsh, some form of justice. And maybe that will happen but I feel like it's been dropped for now.

And I completely agree about the less human/in tune with nature stuff, I've seen plenty of things where humans are colonial and greedy while nonhumans are the opposite, and it rubs me the wrong way. All the victims of colonial societies are just as human, and colonialism isn't an inherent part of being human. But I think Sanderson did pretty well with having the singers being their own complete society with its own history. Their kind of relationship with the land works, I think. 

8 minutes ago, Returned said:

Now that a group has the Shattered Plains for themselves and are free from Odium's domination (with a pretty big asterisk, I think) things might actually change. I look forward to that in the later books, and I hope that they will be stronger players in the story.

Yes, that was the most satisfying part of the book for me. Lots of potential there and I'm curious how any humans who find their way there will be treated.

[coolsnow7]

25 minutes ago, Returned said:

We got a little bit of their perspective, sometimes, but their ability to act for themselves was still really constrained by circumstance

I believe this is correct, and I would not be surprised if this is where Brandon goes when he finally does feature a Singer viewpoint in the backhalf. The little we’ve heard from them has set the stage for their struggle to figure out their identity and goals for themselves. And indeed, that’s not a reasonable expectation to have of people who were essentially revived from an infant-like existence and were promptly thrusted into total war all of a year or two earlier. 

Edited January 10, 2025 by coolsnow7

[Isilel]

To be honest, the singers  in general are severely marginalized in SA. Like, I hoped since the end of WoR that Rlain would go undercover among the newly awakened singers, since he fluently speaks Alethi, and we would learn about them through him, while Eshonai/Venli would interact more with the Fused.

We were treated to  Kaladin's and Moash's PoV's among the  new singers instead, and the focus lay more on the internal struggles of these characters than on the ex-parshmen themselves, who merely provided a background and tools to explore internal turmoil of said humans.

Which is another reason why I am annoyed that Moash is still around - it is like in  Hollywood movies like "The Last Samurai" et. al., where a certain type of protagonist was shoehorned in to make them more "relatable" to the public.

And yes, due to certain RL historical parallels it is particularly jarring that the portrayal of the conflicting parties in SA is so one-sided.

RoW, too, could have provided an excellent opportunity for Rlain to give us  a window into new singers if he had gone underground and managed to fake being one of them... But we got Kaladin Die Harding it in a somewhat video game-y manner instead...

[+Oltux72 he/him]

The culture of the Singers is dead. The Parshendi themselves are not, but the only ones who have a trace of their genuine culture left are the Fused and the Listeners. Picking them as PoV charcters makes sense. Otherwise Brandon would have had to deal with an alien mind in an even more alien situation for no gain in the story.

[Raven Wilder]

On 1/10/2025 at 11:19 AM, Ahriman said:

And I completely agree about the less human/in tune with nature stuff, I've seen plenty of things where humans are colonial and greedy while nonhumans are the opposite, and it rubs me the wrong way.

Though there's also plenty of stuff that has those roles reversed - a.k.a. the typical alien invasion story.