So, There's No Hope. (Unhinged And Unwarranted Speculation)

[Frustration]

Okay I didn't actually finish all of this but I had to reply here

@Aliroz-The-Confused I reading this do believe that many here have been incredibly unfair to you, as I listened to your points this scene kept popping into my head

Spoiler

 

I think you go a little too far sometimes, but there's a lot of reason to what you say, and I'll try and go through the biggest points here on both sides.

 

On 6/11/2025 at 7:12 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

It is the correct reaction to Chouta, my friend.

I also genuinely think that Rosharan humans are fundamentally incapable of caring about the rest of the Cosmere as anything other than a resource to exploit.  In all of the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written on Roshar, I have not found a single instance of a Rosharan ever feeling anything about the rest of the Cosmere other than indifference, disgust, or desire.  Even Mraize's desire to "see" is a desire to explore, to know, to understand and make his own.  Everyone else, on the other hand?  They've all shown that they're able to work together and positively collaborate (the Ghostbloods... other than those who are on or from Roshar, who have clearly gone rogue or are at least starting to at the higher levels).  So, in light of this, I consider the idea that Rosharan humans can have any better-than-neutral regard for the rest of the universe to be headcanon at best, and headcanon directly contradicted by thousands of pages of evidence to the contrary at worst, in intentional and specific contrast to everyone else.

 

Note how Shallan removed Iyatil's mask after she died.  That's stripping a corpse, taking off her clothes, violating cultural and religious taboos.  This is the basic level of respect and understanding Sanderson sets up his protagonists to have.  The readers' affection for Shallan and sympathy for her trauma does a lot of heavy lifting in downplaying the horror of this and making it seem unremarkable.

I don't know what reaction the Rosharans are supposed to have for other worlds. The vast majority of them will never see one. And the ones that have the option need some reason to want to see them. I for example have no desire to visit Spain. That's just not something that interests me. That doesn't mean I'm incapable of thinking of Spaniards in a way other than to exploit them.

As for Shallan there are two things here, the first, and I will repeat it multiple times throughout this post is that yes, Brandon intentionally dials back some of the protagonists negative qualities to make them more likable, and he admits it. You are 100% right about that.

Spoiler

gingermancer

How are the main characters like with regards to homosexuality? I imagine the likes of Sazed wouldn't care, but it'd be interesting to see how much of a deviant the characters we've come to know are, when compared to their world's societies.

Brandon Sanderson

Again, you're going to see a wide variety of attitudes and impressions here. Some are very deviant from society, while others are good expressions of it.

One thing I do downplay in the books is how often characters are terribly biased. Basically all the protagonists in the Stormlight books are, for example, HORRIBLE racists. I bring it up now and then to make sure the text, at least, knows this fact--but it's also something that, if I did with a dose more realism, would be very offputting. So I try to walk a line where it's an ugly thing that rears its head now and then, but it is still possible to like the characters, acknowledging they are products of a very different society from our own.

Views on homosexuality are the same. You'll see, for instance, that Sigzil has a problem with Drehy in Bridge Four. Similarly, some characters have more progressive views than their society, as I think would be realistic for the types of people they are. So you don't see as much from the text as there might otherwise be. Ranette's relationship is not quite as accepted in Scadrian society as Wax and Marasi's viewpoints would lead you to believe, for example.

General Reddit 2017 (Jan. 3, 2017)

On the other hand Shallan doesn't know how important masks are to southern Scadrians, an example I would make is how you wouldn't blame the police for taking a superhero's mask off after they died.

On 6/12/2025 at 3:26 PM, DoctaDajman said:

He has never claimed that the planets and systems of magic were meant to be balanced either... Roshar is powercreep to the max. Roshar and the powergaps between ideals makes Blizzard Games World of Warcraft Cataclysm and Mists of Pandarea look like the poster child of balanced power progression. 

I know this is months old, but I just want to say that this is one of the best descriptions of the Rosharan magic systems I have ever seen.

On 6/12/2025 at 5:02 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I interpret the Kholins as people who benefit greatly from systems they do not put effort into maintaining or even understanding, and then, when those systems fall apart, they act like it's the system's fault, and introduce something new which just so happens to aesthetically, morally, intellectually, or in some other way have great appeal to them and allow them to take credit as creators and doers... which is what they want because they're too darn proud to value the world they grew up in and would rather be remembered as controversial changers who did important things than as maintainers who prevented disaster, and I think it's valid to interrogate that from the point of view of those who do not have the benefit of narrative representation through plot relevance or Point-of-View characterization.

Especially the Vorin churches, which have been astoundingly patient and accepting of Jasnah, all things considered.

That's actually a rather deep and searching analysis. One that the books point out occasionally, but fail to actually confront. Dalinar and his brother placed themselves in power through conquest, but when someone stronger came along they were immediately painted not only as the bad guys, but who are enforcing false claims. No one brings up the legitimacy crisis that this creates.

It would appear that the Vorin church lost a significant amount of power during the books, with about half of the ardents following Dalinar, who by working with Jasnah on Oathbringer probably softened a lot of conflict there. Though yes, the part that does not follow Dalinar is not giving her nearly the problem they could. 

On 11/12/2025 at 12:44 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

But, genuinely, the treatment of the Parshendi's bodies by Bridge Four was truly horrific and beyond the pale.

If the series ends with all of Bridge Four executed (possibly with Nightblood because it is fitting for those who do not respect the dead to miss out on an afterlife) for crimes against Listenerdom, I will retract my statement that "The protagonists of the Stormlight books casually do heinous things which the narrative never condemns them for.". 

 

Otherwise, I will persist in my assertion that the people who are most supposed to embody honor continually go around lying, breaking promises, negotiating in bad faith, putting their own desires above duty and law, and in general engaging in pragmatic and results-oriented behavior, and that "the Shards here are very strict" does not seem to apply to POV characters as much as it applies to everyone else.

Another set of examples of this WoB.

Spoiler

gingermancer

How are the main characters like with regards to homosexuality? I imagine the likes of Sazed wouldn't care, but it'd be interesting to see how much of a deviant the characters we've come to know are, when compared to their world's societies.

Brandon Sanderson

Again, you're going to see a wide variety of attitudes and impressions here. Some are very deviant from society, while others are good expressions of it.

One thing I do downplay in the books is how often characters are terribly biased. Basically all the protagonists in the Stormlight books are, for example, HORRIBLE racists. I bring it up now and then to make sure the text, at least, knows this fact--but it's also something that, if I did with a dose more realism, would be very offputting. So I try to walk a line where it's an ugly thing that rears its head now and then, but it is still possible to like the characters, acknowledging they are products of a very different society from our own.

Views on homosexuality are the same. You'll see, for instance, that Sigzil has a problem with Drehy in Bridge Four. Similarly, some characters have more progressive views than their society, as I think would be realistic for the types of people they are. So you don't see as much from the text as there might otherwise be. Ranette's relationship is not quite as accepted in Scadrian society as Wax and Marasi's viewpoints would lead you to believe, for example.

General Reddit 2017 (Jan. 3, 2017)

Though I disagree specifically with the desecration of corpses. It's an icky, and unpleasant thing to be sure but I don't see anything any more inherently wrong with it than having cadavers in an anatomy class.

On 11/13/2025 at 11:35 AM, QuantumAce said:

Slow down buddy. Understanding this would require a reader to adjust assumptions as they are presented with new information, complete entire books before coming to conclusions, and even evaluate events while considering both the specific situation and the broader context of a multi volume series. In the context of this thread, I'm not sure that is a reasonable expectation. 

I know you're trying to be funny, but that's not a very nice to @Aliroz-The-Confused I know you disagree with his opinions about the books, but we're talking about ink and paper here, we don't need to be disparaging about real people.

On 11/13/2025 at 5:50 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

• Previous Page
• Next Page I reject the idea of objectivity and subjectivity.  I reject the idea that morality and emotion are inherently "subjective" and thus "lesser" than the "objectivity" of reason.  The whole appeal of fantasy is that it allows us an escape from modernity, from the last three and a half centuries of results-obsessed thinking, from the cage of having to apply critical thought to everything rather than feeling and believing and experiencing things like children do before they're taught to behave.

The whole dang appeal of Stormlight to me is the ideals and the moral absolutism, the sense that right and wrong are things that truly matter, that a conviction can lift you above the common clay and grant you the skies, that there are Rules that don't have exceptions no matter how clever or powerful or silver-tongued you are, that the ideal and the material are not separate, that people must be honorable even when it's not reasonable, that every thing and mood and aspect of creation has its own strange little spirit so there is nothing that is truly not worth loving, the idea that even grown-ups must take seriously that burning itchy painful sense of right and wrong which children are taught to suppress.  Having exceptions and nuance and context-dependent-rather-than-inherent morality dilutes it in my opinion to just another "People are inherently flawed and cannot actually achieve the ideal and you're an idiot for imagining otherwise" story which one can find anywhere.

You're right that observing judgement without ever considering it is tyranny, and that rejecting everyone else's thoughts is unfair and unwise (those are tendencies I need to work on).

 

Mistborn is an entirely different thing than Stormlight, with an entirely different appeal.  Vin and Kelsier steal and murder because they're thieves and murderers, it's what they do.  We're never asked by the narrative to think they're not criminals breaking the law.  There's no pretense of playing fair.  Scadrial's gods in that trilogy are Preservation and Ruin, and even though they are not aware of said deities, Kelsier's crew strive to wreck an empire while preserving the memory of the world that was, it checks out remarkably well for a story that only lets us learn of Preservation and Ruin in the third book!  The ruin-type things they do lead to ruin, the preservation-type things they do lead to preservation (in Secret History Leras himself tells Kelsier that he (Kelsier) has served ruin more often than preservation, an absolutely gutting line that hits incredibly hard for a character who died before ever knowing of such gods (but who nonetheless is responsible for the horrible disaster)). 

In contrast, we get Honor and Odium from the first Stormlight book.  The characters have much more active guidance from Dalinar's visions and from the Spren, which makes their failures to live up to the ideals they strive for feel like Knowingly Making Apocalyptic Choices rather than Unknowingly Making Apocalyptic Choices.  The humans are usurpers who stole the entire world, a clear contrast to the Skaa whose world got taken over by a tyrant.

In other words, Mistborn is about Chaotic Good Rogues who violently hate slavery (and cause the apocalypse) and who surprise you by NOT choosing the pragmatic option, Stormlight is about Lawful Good Paladins who begrudgingly put up with slavery (because the apocalypse demands their full effort) and surprise you by choosing the pragmatic option.  One of those feels a lot more dissonant than the other, I think, because Stormlight is much more ambitious, and gives itself much less slack.  The closer a thing is to being perfect, the more noticeable the flaws become, the more irritating.  Because Honor is incredibly difficult to live up to.

Harmony comes off as inscrutable and so I never felt like I truly knew enough of what was going on to be disappointed.  Then again, this is probably me playing favorites and giving him slack while being salty about Stormlight's characters being given slack, so I may need to rethink a lot of stuff.  Dang, good point.  Thank/curse you.

Adolin kililng Torol Sadeas bothered me because it was a secret murder and that's not at all honorable.  It felt like a betrayal of the whole way of doing things that so many characters had sacrificed so much to keep to, like cheating on a test.  
I guess what bothers me is the sense of disappointment I feel in how the characters who most should live by ideals and honor choose to live by pragmatism and reason and then the narrative doesn't always seem to hold them to the standard it sets.  It makes the POV characters in Stormlight come off as hypocritical, like they don't really care about what's right and true, and it makes them seem rotten and hollow inside sometimes.  It's like the frustration of watching someone try so hard and do so well for so long at something just about impossible, and get so close and then toss it out the window and grab the prize anyway, or of being let down by someone who you've always been able to rely on.

So, yes, I do like the Cosmere books.  I like them very much.  That's what makes them so frustrating.

This is exactly what I'm talking about! If it doesn't restrict their actions, then they're just playing at having ideals and caring about promises and right and wrong.  They're all Amaram.

I guess you're right about them being shallow and not dealing with right vs. wrong, but I always felt like they had depth and dealt with right and wrong quite often, so maybe I'm seeing what I want to see.  Most of the books are very enjoyable for me.  It's just that Stormlight promised a moral absolutism that was wonderful and fascinating and then goes "surprise!  The Honorspren were right about Humanity!  Humanity is flawed garbage that can't stop being flawed garbage!  They're doing their best, this is the best they can do, and that'll have to be good enough for you.  Jokes on you!  You've been rooting for soulless pragmatists, war criminals, unrepentant hypocrites, and imperfect mortals the entire time!  Oaths and ideals are stupid actually and the cool kids abandon their oaths to save their spren, because sacred vows mean JACK SQUAT when Smart Grownups figure out something smarter to do than care about the rules they swore to live by!  Also they're starting to show up on your favorite setting because SCREW YOU.  You're never getting moral absolutism, this was all a freaking prank.  Also Moash isn't dead yet."

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^Based

On 11/13/2025 at 9:22 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Oh swears to you, Moash being alive is a personal attack on everyone who has feelings and everyone who doesn't, and everyone who doesn't fit either of those categories, and everyone else.

I like that he's still alive. It means I can have an even more cathartic victory when he finally get's his face ground against the stone.

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No, an oath means nothing if you renounce it.  It's not some negotiable context-dependent thing you can just abandon for *results*.  Sigzil's spren will never, can never, and should never forgive him, because he has violated that of which her spirit is made, a fundamentally Anti-Oath doing that is antithetical to her very being.

And the narrative treats it as a clever loophole to prove that Oaths are stupid nonsense actually and you should abandon them rather than live and die for them.

It's not redemptive, it's the opposite of that, and retroactively makes every Radiant a million times less trustworthy and respectable because they CANNOT BE TRUSTED even on the ONE THING that they should be expected to be trusted on.

Okay this one is interesting, because I saw it as Sigil not renouncing the commitments he had made to protect others, including those he hates. Especially true seeing his actions in SLM. I saw that as him sacrificing his Radiance in order to save her life.

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Most of all, it's a forcible injection of nuance, which has very little business being in a fantasy (which should speak to the heart more than the mind, and have the patterns of dreams, not of logic) because it's too strong a flavor and will overpower everything else if overused.

Now that's an interesting take, and the first point where I will outright disagree. Not on the point that nuance has very little place in fantasy(I'm so tired of "moral ambiguity") but the idea that fantasy should speak to the emotions more than the mind. I find fantasy to be one of the most mentally invigorating experiences I've had.

On 11/14/2025 at 2:30 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Yes, I would prefer if she had died.  As is, it's a cop-out and a cheat.  Heck, I'd prefer it if Sylphrena had died in such a situation, so that the readers could fully appreciate how thoroughly Navani messed stuff up with her innovations in understanding the Cosmere.  As-is, the readers don't have to lose any character they love in that moment, which denies a payoff to that buildup, making it seem artificial and weightless, and it really only serves to make oaths feel meaningless and to absolve Navani.

*Claps hands* Based. Plot armor is waaaaaay too think in Stormlight.

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I don't know if I agree that some cultures are better than others, I don't have a coherent answer to that question.  What I do know is that between this and Navani's treatment of the Sibling and the spren, and Shallan taking Iyatil's mask off, and my inability to find any reason to believe that Rosharan humans are capable of interacting with non-humans or non-Rosharans in good faith in the long term, I stand by my previous assertion about mister Sanderson's intentional characterization of Rosharan humans.  I will retract that assertion if you can provide a specific counterexample in which one or more Rosharan humans act in the benefit of another world with no ulterior motives or expectation of gain or reward.

Of another world, that's difficult. I also can't think of any examples of characters acting for the detriment of another world either.

As for humans acting for the benefit of non-humans:

1. Kaladin arguing in favor of the Singers during the planning meeting in Urithiru during Oathbringer

2. Kaladin sparing a Fused who didn't have enough voidlight left to fight in RoW

3. Adolin listening to and eventually succeeding in partially reviving Maya

4. Kaladin and the other Heralds being willing to endure torture again if the mind/vision protection didn't work to save the Spren

5. Navani accepting the trance state to protect the Sibling

6. Renarin and Rlain freeing Mishram

 

Okay that's mostly Kaladin being the best but still.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn act in accordance with Honor?"  The answer is also no.  They renounce oaths to get desired results when keeping them would have bad outcomes.  Jasnah leaves Queen Fen with no alternatives to joining Taravangian because Jasnah cannot be negotiated with in good faith any more than a pirate or a bandit.  Everything involving deadeyes proves that to rely on the humans inhabiting Roshar is to be disappointed.

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn coexist on a world with others without eventually taking everything from them and breaking the world?"  The answer, as far as Wind and Truth is concerned, is no.  Not in the long run.  Given how sharing a world with them has ended up for the Spren and the Singers, the evidence is clear.

1. Yes Jasnah is a bad person, based.

2. I'm not sure if I understand the spren or singers argument, and let me explain why.

With the Singers: The Singers intentionally only gave the humans a useless swath of land that they didn't want anyway and the humans could barely survive on, or else accept servitude with no way to assimilate with the larger Singer nations or leave Shinovar. I'm not surprised at all that they tried leaving. As for the whole Mishram situation, that was an unintended action that most of the humans themselves didn't want.

With the Spren the deadeyes accepted being killed, and went willingly, perhaps even suggesting that course of action. The lesser spren show no more intelligence than horses or dogs, and I see no reason they can't be treated as such.

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn maintain Odium's imprisonment, preventing the threat from spreading to other worlds?"  Wind and Truth answers this with a no.  Dalinar renounces all responsibility for Honor and abandons the shard to be claimed by Taravangian so that Taravangian will become everybody's problem.  He chose to do this.  It turns out that when the children of Ashyn say "Honor is dead; I'll see what I can do", what they choose to do is this.

To be fair the Rosharans had been begging for help with the Odium problem for thousands of years and with the exception of Sazed everyone else just shrugged and said: "That's your problem you deal with it". I don't think that gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own.

I honestly saw that as a brilliant 5D move that caught me completely off guard.

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Unrelated:  I think this will be my last post for a few years, or at least one of them, considering that when Returned compared me to Moash nobody contested that assessment.  This forum deserves better than people like Moash, that irredeemable traitor with no good qualities who is the worst thing his creator ever made and who is despised by everyone who knows him, including said creator.  As always, I'll respond to private messages.

Well please don't do that, I just got back and was looking forward to your insights.

I do indeed contest such a comparison(even if I can't find the post in question). You are loved and appreciated here.

[Through the Living Wrath he/him]

3 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

So, I have thought about it, and this is my attempted translation into reasonable-ness for what I'm trying to say.

 

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn act in accordance with honor?".  We've established that the answer is no, they act pragmatically and reasonably instead, choosing a more sophisticated sense of morality.

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn act in accordance with Honor?"  The answer is also no.  They renounce oaths to get desired results when keeping them would have bad outcomes.  Jasnah leaves Queen Fen with no alternatives to joining Taravangian because Jasnah cannot be negotiated with in good faith any more than a pirate or a bandit.  Everything involving deadeyes proves that to rely on the humans inhabiting Roshar is to be disappointed.  

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn coexist on a world with others without eventually taking everything from them and breaking the world?"  The answer, as far as Wind and Truth is concerned, is no.  Not in the long run.  Given how sharing a world with them has ended up for the Spren and the Singers, the evidence is clear.

Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn maintain Odium's imprisonment, preventing the threat from spreading to other worlds?"  Wind and Truth answers this with a no.  Dalinar renounces all responsibility for Honor and abandons the shard to be claimed by Taravangian so that Taravangian will become everybody's problem.  He chose to do this.  It turns out that when the children of Ashyn say "Honor is dead; I'll see what I can do", what they choose to do is this.

In my opinion, these are genuine grounds for everyone else in the Cosmere to distrust, fear, and want to avoid interaction with the human inhabitants of Roshar as soon as they learn what they have done.  The fact that most of the Cosmere doesn't know the things we readers know is of IMMENSE benefit to to perception of people like Shallan in negotiations with people like Kelsier.  The fact that we readers have sympathetic points-of-view, a pipeline into the intentions of people like Shallan or Jasnah, is also of immense benefit to the perception of these same people by us, the readers.  If you, like me, do not find their flaws endearing or compelling or narratively necessary or excusable, then the overall message of Wind and Truth in my opinion comes across as "there is no hope.  These people are flawed, this is the best they can do, and it's not good enough, everything is worse because of what they have done.  Honor is dead, and this is the best they can do.  It's not enough, and everybody and everything is going to suffer for it.  But that's how it is, and it is better to care and be destroyed by that caring than to not care.  It is better to love and lose than not to love.  It is better to trust and be betrayed than to not truth. It is better to lose a planet than to lose one's soul.  These people are flawed.  Please forgive them."


Unrelated:  I think this will be my last post for a few years, or at least one of them, considering that when Returned compared me to Moash nobody contested that assessment.  This forum deserves better than people like Moash, that irredeemable traitor with no good qualities who is the worst thing his creator ever made and who is despised by everyone who knows him, including said creator.  As always, I'll respond to private messages.

*squint*

Please don't go

 

by the way Ive lurked on this thread

and apparently didn't see some of the more negative posts

I think your arguments are interesting. I don't agree with them, but for many I've had to dig deep and try to actualize why I think they're wrong, and why they might be right. And that's more important than the actual point I want to make in an argument. Cuz in the end, it's a book, and saying a character is good or bad doesn't have much meaning. But framing in your mind why a character is good or bad (or anything else) can have a lot of meaning.

SO DON'T GO

(Actually, I don't hate Moash! Don't tell literally anyone else. I think I would dislike him strongly irl, but the idea of this guy who is essentially an artificial psychopath is pretty cool. DONT TELL ANYONE ELSE)

[That said, WHEN DID RETURNED COMPARE YOU TO MOASH?]

{I like chill type discussions, if you couldn't tell. I'm a vibe coder reader.}

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Apparently, Returned's post has been removed.  If it was the mods, I'll delete the text in spoilers below.  This is the content of that post:

Spoiler

It's clear that you've thought quite a bit about the things that take place in the books but it's not clear to me what organizing principles, if any, underlie the reactions you've shared here. I'm not saying that those don't exist but rather that what's in this thread is largely strong conclusions and observation of the intensity of one's own belief in those conclusions. Those aren't much use in discussion because aside from agreeing or disagreeing with a conclusion, what is there to talk about?

As an example from above (not to try to re-open discussion on it, just pulling an example), your horror at Bridge 4's treatment of the Parshendi dead. Your revulsion is clear (and sympathetic), but any explanation for why those acts obviously and inarguably should lead to the deaths of the bridgemen is entirely missing. When I tentatively asked about why the Parshendi opinion was utterly sacrosanct and the bridgemen's utterly valueless your response suggested that you reject the very concept of evaluating such matters. So there really isn't any conversation nor inquiry to be had.

Fetishizing one's own immediate, emotional response to something as morally unassailable and absolute is common but has some substantial drawbacks which are out of scope for this post. There is a character in Stormlight who behaves in exactly that way, though, refusing to reexamine anything. His name was, for a time, Moash.

Live and organize your life and mind however seems best to you, of course (as if you would need or want my permission for that, lol), but if you explicitly decline to think critically about conclusions (yours and others') then what is the point of discussion, as on this forum? Or, put another way, why would one expect another to be persuaded in the absence of any sort of argument, and what can one get from another's position besides agreeing or disagreeing, if they refuse to evaluate it?

I'm sorry that the Cosmere books have not been what you hoped. I've been there too, with Cosmere books and others. Do you have some examples handy of fantasy books that were more in the mode you prefer? If I may ask bluntly, what do you want to get/achieve/happen from a thread like this? I may just be asserting my own perspectives onto you.

 

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

With the Spren the deadeyes accepted being killed, and went willingly, perhaps even suggesting that course of action. The lesser spren show no more intelligence than horses or dogs, and I see no reason they can't be treated as such.

Yeah, if my peers accepted being killed, went willingly, and perhaps even suggested that course of action, I would be absolutely and utterly horrified and appalled at whatever 'friends' they had who let that happen, ESPECIALLY if it was for the benefit of said 'friends'.  There is, perhaps, a comparison to be made here with military recruiting, but the inherent difference is that spren, unlike humans, are not mortal and are not meant to die. Deadeyes did not exist before the Recreance.  The spren who would become deadeyes had the remaining 99.9999999999forever% of their lives ahead of them.  One could argue that what happened was merely an apparent permanent state of unresponsiveness resulting from irrevocable damage, but I'd be cheesed about that, too.

Adding to that, Ishar tortured and killed spren with his terrifying give-them-physical-forms experiments.

Adding to that, Navani invented a way to irrevocably kill spren.  If we don't count deadeyes as permanently dead (Mishram being freed seems to have maybe allowed them to resurrect), we should at least acknowledge that Phendorana was killed because the children of Ashyn innovated.  The breaking of the oathpact was only possible because Navani figured out how Raysium worked and kept her notes in plaintext.  And Navani thinks to herself that she 'won' in her interactions with Raboniel.

Mortal beings simply cannot comprehend what it is for beings originally eternal to be made temporal, what it is to grieve someone who was meant to last forever.  The closest equivalent is Nightblood destroying souls, because souls are the part of mortals which are meant to last forever.  Or, perhaps, the death of children and babies, considering that they are the mortals which have the greatest amount of life ahead of them.

As for the "lesser" spren, I don't think that intelligence is or ought to be what determines whether something deserves freedom.  There is, perhaps, a point to be made with the severely mentally handicapped needing constant care and freedom being a risk for them, but I feel that that is unfair because "lesser" spren can survive on their own in the wild, which further distinguishes them from most (though not all) types of working domesticate animals.  I would also point out that domestication is supposed to provide a survival benefit to the domesticated, and this is coin which is NOT being paid because, again, the "lesser" spren are not mortal animals.  Navani is, I believe, written as being intellectually dishonest by making the comparison, and I think mister Sanderson intends for us to be appalled.

As for the Singers, they lost everything.  Unless the last half of the series is almost exclusively Singer points of view with a few chapters of humans (including one who interacts almost exclusively with singers during his chapters while providing tiny bits of information on what's going on with the humans), the Children of Ashyn will have also taken the majority of the narrative.

If we'd had thousands of pages of Singer points-of-view, if we knew them as well as we know the Children of Ashyn, we would probably feel quite differently about the children of Ashyn.  Heck, my initial panic was that the Scadrians would end up like the Singers.

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

To be fair the Rosharans had been begging for help with the Odium problem for thousands of years and with the exception of Sazed everyone else just shrugged and said: "That's your problem you deal with it". I don't think that gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own.

The Shardholders agreed to separation.  I believe that Ati and Leras chose to occupy the same world so that they could keep each other in check (my theory is that they knew that the intents of Ruin and Preservation would, once they aligned their bearers and one of them triumphed over the other, cause him to break this leaving-everyone-alone agreement, so the only way to uphold the pact is to keep each other in check).  I think Aona and Skai may have done something similar to prevent Devotion and Dominion from being able to bring conquest and connection to anywhere except Sel.  I think Rayse and Bavadin just wanted everyone else dead because they're complete monsters (I have a theory that Autonomy and Odium killed Dominion and Devotion together).

Honor and Cultivation keeping Odium imprisoned is, though not what they intended from the beginning (in my view they broke the agreement by settling together on Roshar while Aona&Skai and Ati&Leras were maintaining the agreement in the only way possible given their shards), not entirely dissimilar in practice.  Heck, if anything, a 2v1 ought to be easier.

Nobody helped the Scadrians when the Catacendre happened.  Nobody (as far as I can tell) helped the Scadrians against Autonomy.  Nobody (as far as we know) helped the people of Sel when their gods were killed.  Heck, for all we know, Tanavast's call for help came after Leras brain-shattered himself and locked Ati away.  The Scadrians never made Ruin everybody's problem, Preservation's plan was to set up Harmony so that neither Preservation nor Ruin would become everybody's problem.  The people of Sel don't try to inflict their living-in-a-world-with-broken-shards problems on everyone else by trying to splinter every other shard.  Those are presented by the narrative as Scadrial's Responsibility and as Sel's Reponsibility, their troubles to deal with, the narrative, in my opinion, gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own.

The narrative condemns everybody else for "not my problem" when it comes to Roshar but does not treat Scadrial or Sel the same way, and I think that's deeply unfair, especially because Aona, Skai, Leras, and Ati were, if I understand the timeline correctly, entirely unable to help Koravellium Avast and Tanavast due to being dead or incapacitated.

Hoid begged Frost for help for Roshar, but never for any other world, In the letter, he says "I have never been dedicated to a more important purpose...I ask again. Support me. Do not stand aside and let disaster consume more lives. I've never begged you for something before, old friend".  Hoid, and the narrative, prioritize Roshar and the children of Ashyn over everyone else.  Evidently Hoid did not see the events of Mistborn Era 1 as a problem worth Frost's intervention.  Perhaps he was too busy stealing and eating the last material remnant of the only god who ever successfully managed to get the "prevent enemy god from becoming a cosmere-level problem" achievement in HypotheticalCosmereGame2007 <semisarcastic>.

There's also no indication that Hoid made any such calls for help when Autonomy tried to overtake Scadrial, so his ideas of who is obligated to help who, with regards to Harmony, only seem to go the one way.

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

Of another world, that's difficult. I also can't think of any examples of characters acting for the detriment of another world either.

As for humans acting for the benefit of non-humans:

1. Kaladin arguing in favor of the Singers during the planning meeting in Urithiru during Oathbringer

2. Kaladin sparing a Fused who didn't have enough voidlight left to fight in RoW

3. Adolin listening to and eventually succeeding in partially reviving Maya

4. Kaladin and the other Heralds being willing to endure torture again if the mind/vision protection didn't work to save the Spren

5. Navani accepting the trance state to protect the Sibling

6. Renarin and Rlain freeing Mishram

 

Okay that's mostly Kaladin being the best but still.

Kaladin is guilty of ordering his men to do crimes against Listenerdom.  He also nearly killed Sylphrena. I won't accept him as proof until he makes a true atonement for what he has done.

Navani's interactions with the Sibling are the most subtly horrifying things in the entire Cosmere.  The Sibling is being so helplessly, utterly subsumed by her reasoning.  I think mister Sanderson wants us to see this as a parallel to Taravangian's interactions with Gavinor and Sja-Anat's interactions with the spren she corrupts.

Renarin and Rlain freeing Mishram is, okay, yeah, you got me there, even if in my predictions, it's going to make things much, much, much worse in the future.  It proves good intent, but if we're counting that we ought to point out that "eventually lets you out of captivity after millennia of captivity" is not at all a glowing recommendation for wanting to have anything to do with the Children of Ashyn.

Okay, that leaves Adolin, and... yeah.  Ya got me.  I guess he leaves that kind of thing for poor Yanagawn (I think Adolin's friendship with Yanagawn is yet another parallel to Navani, Sja-anat, and Taravangian, a one-way influence relationship where one party becomes subsumed by the other's perspective.  The only one of Yanagawn's actual loved ones (Noura) to witness this objects to it.  We see this also with Kaladin and Szeth.), but at least he proves the capacity for... wait a minute, the whole deadeyes situation was humanity's fault in the first place!  "Eventually provides companionship and therapy after convincing you to destroy yourself" is not at all a glowing recommendation for humanity, either!

I guess I can hope for the children of Ashyn to belatedly undo some aspects of some of their atrocities.  That's a step up from my previous assessment.  I don't mean to sound sarcastic, it's a genuine relief.  Maybe if the children of Ashyn claim Scadrial they might let the last Kandra free after millennia (honestly happier than the extinction I'm predicting, I take what little hope I can get with this mister Sanderson guy).

I rescind my statement that there is no evidence for good-faith interaction, recognizing that there is evidence of eventual attempts to undo wrongs done by prior generations (even if it is for the sake of entities which are potentially useful allies against Taravangian, as opposed to "lesser" spren or any entities which are currently more useful in captivity and would require a sacrifice-with-no-benefit to free rather than use).

6 hours ago, Ookla the Ansible said:

*squint*

Please don't go

 

by the way Ive lurked on this thread

and apparently didn't see some of the more negative posts

I think your arguments are interesting. I don't agree with them, but for many I've had to dig deep and try to actualize why I think they're wrong, and why they might be right. And that's more important than the actual point I want to make in an argument. Cuz in the end, it's a book, and saying a character is good or bad doesn't have much meaning. But framing in your mind why a character is good or bad (or anything else) can have a lot of meaning.

SO DON'T GO

(Actually, I don't hate Moash! Don't tell literally anyone else. I think I would dislike him strongly irl, but the idea of this guy who is essentially an artificial psychopath is pretty cool. DONT TELL ANYONE ELSE)

[That said, WHEN DID RETURNED COMPARE YOU TO MOASH?]

{I like chill type discussions, if you couldn't tell. I'm a vibe coder reader.}

I won't tell anyone, whoever you originally were.  (Sorry, I'm having trouble telling people apart when they're all OOKLA).  If you want me to hide the evidence I can edit the quote.

Lurker buddies!  Lurker buddies!

Edited December 12, 2025 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[therunner he/him]

 

Quote

As for the "lesser" spren, I don't think that intelligence is or ought to be what determines whether something deserves freedom.  There is, perhaps, a point to be made with the severely mentally handicapped needing constant care and freedom being a risk for them, but I feel that that is unfair because "lesser" spren can survive on their own in the wild, which further distinguishes them from most (though not all) types of working domesticate animals.  I would also point out that domestication is supposed to provide a survival benefit to the domesticated, and this is coin which is NOT being paid because, again, the "lesser" spren are not mortal animals.  Navani is, I believe, written as being intellectually dishonest by making the comparison, and I think mister Sanderson intends for us to be appalled.

Do you judge Scadrians equally harshly for e.g. farming animals for food? 
They are not free, and they get killed so that Scadrians can get what they want.

Or using horses for carriages?

Animals (like lesser spren) can survive in the wild, and the animals had been domesticated in the same process you are now seeing with lesser Spren. And any benefit for the animal is only tangential, and very much not the intent of person doing domestication.

And, lesser spren do seem to enjoy e.g. being used in heating fabrials, so they are getting benefits out of it.

So again, will you judge Scadrians for kidnapping free and self-sufficient animals, and keeping them locked up just to kill them? Because that is what domestication comes down to.

3 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

The Shardholders agreed to separation.  I believe that Ati and Leras chose to occupy the same world so that they could keep each other in check (my theory is that they knew that the intents of Ruin and Preservation would, once they aligned their bearers and one of them triumphed over the other, cause him to break this leaving-everyone-alone agreement, so the only way to uphold the pact is to keep each other in check).  I think Aona and Skai may have done something similar to prevent Devotion and Dominion from being able to bring conquest and connection to anywhere except Sel.  I think Rayse and Bavadin just wanted everyone else dead because they're complete monsters (I have a theory that Autonomy and Odium killed Dominion and Devotion together).

Honor and Cultivation keeping Odium imprisoned is, though not what they intended from the beginning (in my view they broke the agreement by settling together on Roshar while Aona&Skai and Ati&Leras were maintaining the agreement in the only way possible given their shards), not entirely dissimilar in practice.  Heck, if anything, a 2v1 ought to be easier.

The shards made agreement to 'not interfere with each other', though this was not a formal Oath.

Ati and Leras went together because they wanted to create new planet, and neither could do it alone. So no, they did not want to keep each other in check.

We don't know why Aona and Skai went together, so speculation in any direction is equally valid.

And Honor and Cultivation also don't see what they did as breach of the agreement, though I would consider it as such.

So all of these duos in my opinion are equally 'guilty' of breaching the agreement, and don't have any moral high ground.

Quote

Nobody helped the Scadrians when the Catacendre happened. 
Nobody (as far as I can tell) helped the Scadrians against Autonomy. 
Nobody (as far as we know) helped the people of Sel when their gods were killed. 

Catecendre took about a year, not a lot of time to react, considering how Shards perceive time (see Tavanast accidentally losing track of decades and centuries).

Direct attack from Autonomy (what blocks Sazed future sight) is also rather quick action (months?), previously she only infiltrated via the Set to destabilize the situation and get what she wants (kinda like what Ghostbloods are doing on Roshar by the way)

Devotion and Dominion were the very first victims of Odium, that alone makes it difficult for other Shards to react (no precedence). And he first turned them against each other, so other Shards could have seen it at first as infighting between two Shards that should not have settled together. Or they didn't care as you are implying.

Conversely, Rosharans have been suffering Desolations for millenia, enough time to react even on Shard scale, and we know other Shards are aware of the situation, and choose not to care, except Sazed, but he is sadly limited in other ways.

Quote

Heck, for all we know, Tanavast's call for help came after Leras brain-shattered himself and locked Ati away.  The Scadrians never made Ruin everybody's problem, Preservation's plan was to set up Harmony so that neither Preservation nor Ruin would become everybody's problem.  The people of Sel don't try to inflict their living-in-a-world-with-broken-shards problems on everyone else by trying to splinter every other shard.  Those are presented by the narrative as Scadrial's Responsibility and as Sel's Reponsibility, their troubles to deal with, the narrative, in my opinion, gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own.

Except that Odium is not Rosharan problem, he arrived as invader and cosmere-level problem, and Tanavast bound him to the system and so protected others.


Imagine if Tanavast never bound Odium, and Odium noticed Scadrial...Ruin and Preservation would have been destroyed rather fast (one being brain-dead, the other being bound by the first one).

And yeah, Leras very well could have been brain-dead already, since Ascensions through Well happened multiple times on Scadrial, so he was brain-dead for at the very least two millennia by the time of Era 1.

Frankly, I don't blame Leras for not acting, he kinda had his hands full already with Ruin. Other Shards on the other hand...

Quote

The narrative condemns everybody else for "not my problem" when it comes to Roshar but does not treat Scadrial or Sel the same way, and I think that's deeply unfair, especially because Aona, Skai, Leras, and Ati were, if I understand the timeline correctly, entirely unable to help Koravellium Avast and Tanavast due to being dead or incapacitated.

The reason narrative does not treat it the same way, is because it is not the same.

Odium wanted to leave after relatively short time span, so he could go after easier targets, it was Tanavast that kept him bound there, and in doing so protected Cosmere (and e.g. Leras and Ati) from him.

I.e. Rosharans were sacrificed for millennia to keep other Cosmere worlds (and Shards) safe from Odium, when all they had to do was let Odium go and they would be fine. Now, after doing this was ~7 millennia, they (Dalinar) just decided to stop being a sacrifice on behalf of the rest of the Cosmere, which I think is rather fair.

Also, all of the Rosharan Shards were bound to the system up until ~Alloy of Law or so, so they themselves couldn't help anyone.
 

Quote

Perhaps he was too busy stealing and eating the last material remnant of the only god who ever successfully managed to get the "prevent enemy god from becoming a cosmere-level problem" achievement in HypotheticalCosmereGame2007 <semisarcastic>.

Tanavast literally stopped Odium from being Cosmere-level problem for ~7 millennia, and he was dead for two of those millenia. Not just brain-dead like Leras, fully dead. 

So no, Leras is not 'the only god to prevent that'.


I'll also note that so far (between Scadrial and Roshar) it was 'children of Scadrial' that interfered harmfully with the other world intending to benefit themselves (Ghostbloods).

Edited December 12, 2025 by therunner

[Frustration]

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Yeah, if my peers accepted being killed, went willingly, and perhaps even suggested that course of action, I would be absolutely and utterly horrified and appalled at whatever 'friends' they had who let that happen, ESPECIALLY if it was for the benefit of said 'friends'.  There is, perhaps, a comparison to be made here with military recruiting, but the inherent difference is that spren, unlike humans, are not mortal and are not meant to die. Deadeyes did not exist before the Recreance.  The spren who would become deadeyes had the remaining 99.9999999999forever% of their lives ahead of them.  One could argue that what happened was merely an apparent permanent state of unresponsiveness resulting from irrevocable damage, but I'd be cheesed about that, too.

Well they weren't supposed to become deadeyes. As Maya told us in RoW, they expected pain, but not death. They were probably attempting to become something like the Oathless, Shards without surges.

I think it would be disingenuous to hold them accountable for something they didn't intend to happen.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Adding to that, Ishar tortured and killed spren with his terrifying give-them-physical-forms experiments.

Adding to that, Navani invented a way to irrevocably kill spren.  If we don't count deadeyes as permanently dead (Mishram being freed seems to have maybe allowed them to resurrect), we should at least acknowledge that Phendorana was killed because the children of Ashyn innovated.  The breaking of the oathpact was only possible because Navani figured out how Raysium worked and kept her notes in plaintext.  And Navani thinks to herself that she 'won' in her interactions with Raboniel.

I think blaming all of the humans for the actions of Ishar(a man clearly not in his right mind) to be analogous to blaming all Austrians for WW2.

Navani was an idiot for that I 100% agree, though to be fair the spren-killing was the work of Raboniel, a Rosharan Native, not Navani.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

As for the "lesser" spren, I don't think that intelligence is or ought to be what determines whether something deserves freedom.  There is, perhaps, a point to be made with the severely mentally handicapped needing constant care and freedom being a risk for them, but I feel that that is unfair because "lesser" spren can survive on their own in the wild, which further distinguishes them from most (though not all) types of working domesticate animals.  I would also point out that domestication is supposed to provide a survival benefit to the domesticated, and this is coin which is NOT being paid because, again, the "lesser" spren are not mortal animals.  Navani is, I believe, written as being intellectually dishonest by making the comparison, and I think mister Sanderson intends for us to be appalled.

So I have some neighbors that have cats. They don't feed the cats, they live outside. These cats have no survival advantages over their feral cousins. Are these neighbors terrible animal abusers? I don't believe so.

While cats are living beings, and deserving some level of respect for that, they don't approach the moral value of a human being, and never can.

Indeed the ONLY individual who seems to find some objection to fabrials is the Sibling, even as Navani notes in RoW the other Radiant spren take no issue to it. In fact they use gravitation spren to pull their ships, much as we used horses to pull carts.

And I don't think Brandon has too much of an issue with it, as he's confirmed that it will be how Rosharan technology progresses.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

As for the Singers, they lost everything.  Unless the last half of the series is almost exclusively Singer points of view with a few chapters of humans (including one who interacts almost exclusively with singers during his chapters while providing tiny bits of information on what's going on with the humans), the Children of Ashyn will have also taken the majority of the narrative.

If we'd had thousands of pages of Singer points-of-view, if we knew them as well as we know the Children of Ashyn, we would probably feel quite differently about the children of Ashyn.  Heck, my initial panic was that the Scadrians would end up like the Singers.

They did lose everything, I don't deny that.

I do deny that the reason they lost everything was the sole responsibility of the Humans.

What happened to the Singers with the imprisonment of BAM was an accident. One that they were not intending. As we see from the gemstone archive they only wanted to strip the Singers of forms of power/voidlight. And not even all of the humans wanted that, just Melishi and some of his supporters. And to top that off Melishi died doing it, trapped in a phantasmal approximation of his childhood bedroom.

He in many ways got the same treatment Misharam did. The only difference is that eventually she got out.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Nobody helped the Scadrians when the Catacendre happened.  Nobody (as far as I can tell) helped the Scadrians against Autonomy.  Nobody (as far as we know) helped the people of Sel when their gods were killed.  Heck, for all we know, Tanavast's call for help came after Leras brain-shattered himself and locked Ati away.  The Scadrians never made Ruin everybody's problem, Preservation's plan was to set up Harmony so that neither Preservation nor Ruin would become everybody's problem.  The people of Sel don't try to inflict their living-in-a-world-with-broken-shards problems on everyone else by trying to splinter every other shard.  Those are presented by the narrative as Scadrial's Responsibility and as Sel's Reponsibility, their troubles to deal with, the narrative, in my opinion, gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own.

The narrative condemns everybody else for "not my problem" when it comes to Roshar but does not treat Scadrial or Sel the same way, and I think that's deeply unfair, especially because Aona, Skai, Leras, and Ati were, if I understand the timeline correctly, entirely unable to help Koravellium Avast and Tanavast due to being dead or incapacitated.

Hoid begged Frost for help for Roshar, but never for any other world, In the letter, he says "I have never been dedicated to a more important purpose...I ask again. Support me. Do not stand aside and let disaster consume more lives. I've never begged you for something before, old friend".  Hoid, and the narrative, prioritize Roshar and the children of Ashyn over everyone else.  Evidently Hoid did not see the events of Mistborn Era 1 as a problem worth Frost's intervention.  Perhaps he was too busy stealing and eating the last material remnant of the only god who ever successfully managed to get the "prevent enemy god from becoming a cosmere-level problem" achievement in HypotheticalCosmereGame2007 <semisarcastic>.

There's also no indication that Hoid made any such calls for help when Autonomy tried to overtake Scadrial, so his ideas of who is obligated to help who, with regards to Harmony, only seem to go the one way.

Well by the time Ruin and Preservation were having their throwdown 3 other Shards were dead, Mercy was wounded, and Honor and Cultivation were already dealing with Odium. In fact we know that Autonomy briefly passed through Scadrial thousands of years back. It's possible she did help, and that's part of why she feels entitled to the planet.

And just listen to Endowment talking about it.

Quote

 "As for Uli Da, it was obvious from the outset that she was going to be a problem. Good riddance."

"Regardless, this is not your concern. You turned your back on divinity. If Rayse becomes an issue, he will be dealt with. And so will you."

Or Autonomy

Quote

Did you expect anything else from us? We need not suffer the interference of another. Rayse is contained, and we care not for his prison."

And who knows it's possible Hoid did try just as hard to save Scadrial. He know he's the one who lead the remnants of the Terris to Luthadel in WoA, which was were he spent most of the book, so the only reason the Terri's still exist is because of him.

And he might very well have done more if Kelsier hadn't stopped him from meeting with Vin in HoA.

The Rosite Aether did indeed help Scadrial when the Set was doing their thing, and if they had had more time they might have sent more of their Aetherbound.

And on Sel the two Shards started off fighting each other.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Kaladin is guilty of ordering his men to do crimes against Listenerdom.  He also nearly killed Sylphrena. I won't accept him as proof until he makes a true atonement for what he has done.

And how would he do that?

He apologized to Rlain, even let him have a spear before the everstorm came.

What more does he need to do in your eyes?

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Navani's interactions with the Sibling are the most subtly horrifying things in the entire Cosmere.  The Sibling is being so helplessly, utterly subsumed by her reasoning.  I think mister Sanderson wants us to see this as a parallel to Taravangian's interactions with Gavinor and Sja-Anat's interactions with the spren she corrupts.

I agree that especially in RoW Navani's treatment of the Sibling is poor to say the least. But when Retribution was made and when the Sibling cried out for help Navani was willing to answer, which did end with her stuck in the middle of a crystal sphere.

16 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Okay, that leaves Adolin, and... yeah.  Ya got me.  I guess he leaves that kind of thing for poor Yanagawn (I think Adolin's friendship with Yanagawn is yet another parallel to Navani, Sja-anat, and Taravangian, a one-way influence relationship where one party becomes subsumed by the other's perspective.  The only one of Yanagawn's actual loved ones (Noura) to witness this objects to it.  We see this also with Kaladin and Szeth.), but at least he proves the capacity for... wait a minute, the whole deadeyes situation was humanity's fault in the first place!  "Eventually provides companionship and therapy after convincing you to destroy yourself" is not at all a glowing recommendation for humanity, either!

See point about deadeyes above.

17 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I guess I can hope for the children of Ashyn to belatedly undo some aspects of some of their atrocities.  That's a step up from my previous assessment.  I don't mean to sound sarcastic, it's a genuine relief.  Maybe if the children of Ashyn claim Scadrial they might let the last Kandra free after millennia (honestly happier than the extinction I'm predicting, I take what little hope I can get with this mister Sanderson guy).

I don't think you have to worry about an invasion Melaan is on another world, not Scadrial in the epilogue, the only thing is Chouta, but that's no more evidence of a Rosharan migration is than the unkeyed dor is evidence of a Selish migration.

 

That said I do think a deep dive into some of the twisted modalities, especially of Jasnah is very warranted, and deserves a reevaluation from us as the readers in light of WaT. I had always wondered why she was ordering Aseudan's assassination, but had assumed Jasnah knew that she was messing around with Unmade stuff or something along those lines. Apparently not, she was just a political threat.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

18 minutes ago, Frustration said:

And how would he do that?

He apologized to Rlain, even let him have a spear before the everstorm came.

What more does he need to do in your eyes?

Honestly, I don't know.  I'm biased and unfair.  Any consequence strong enough to satisfy me would be harsh enough to hurt all the people who have taken comfort from Stormlight.

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

And I don't think Brandon has too much of an issue with it, as he's confirmed that it will be how Rosharan technology progresses.

Alright, that's it, I'm dropping a theory (which will be incorrect like every single other theory I've ever made):

The shard of Reason is on Roshar, and what I have seen as characters choosing to be pragmatic rather than decent has been them aligning with Reason.  Reason's goal is to have the other shards kill each other and then be the last one standing so He or She or It can make the Cosmere "correct".  The protagonists of Stormlight, abandoned by Cultivation and without Honor, will turn to Reason, and have already begun to do so (Navani, unknowingly, has been a servant of Reason her entire life, and perhaps Raboniel was, too).

Either this is presented as good (likely, as I doubt mister Sanderson will ever interrogate the value of the concept of Reason the way he has done to Preservation and Honor), or Reason is intended to be a major problem in later books (unlikely).

Secondary Theory:  Sja-anat is somehow connected to Reason, and "Enlightenment" is a clue.

The only way I'm ever going to find the Stormlight protagonists sympathetic and accept mister Sanderson's choice to write this as being how Rosharan technology progresses as anything but soul-crushing and heartbreaking is if it's Reason corrupting the humans occupying Roshar and then they figure this out and redeem themselves by rejecting Reason.

Alternate Theory:  Invention, rather than Reason, is behind it all.  Or some combination of Invention and/or Reason and/or Virtuosity, and Hoid's anecdote about the three thinkers is foreshadowing.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Honestly, I don't know.  I'm biased and unfair.  Any consequence strong enough to satisfy me would be harsh enough to hurt all the people who have taken comfort from Stormlight.

Alright, that's it, I'm dropping a theory (which will be incorrect like every single other theory I've ever made):

The shard of Reason is on Roshar, and what I have seen as characters choosing to be pragmatic rather than decent has been them aligning with Reason.  Reason's goal is to have the other shards kill each other and then be the last one standing so He or She or It can make the Cosmere "correct".  The protagonists of Stormlight, abandoned by Cultivation and without Honor, will turn to Reason, and have already begun to do so (Navani, unknowingly, has been a servant of Reason her entire life, and perhaps Raboniel was, too).

Either this is presented as good (likely, as I doubt mister Sanderson will ever interrogate the value of the concept of Reason the way he has done to Preservation and Honor), or Reason is intended to be a major problem in later books (unlikely).

Secondary Theory:  Sja-anat is somehow connected to Reason, and "Enlightenment" is a clue.

The only way I'm ever going to find the Stormlight protagonists sympathetic and accept mister Sanderson's choice to write this as being how Rosharan technology progresses as anything but soul-crushing and heartbreaking is if it's Reason corrupting the humans occupying Roshar and then they figure this out and redeem themselves by rejecting Reason.

Alternate Theory:  Invention, rather than Reason, is behind it all.  Or some combination of Invention and/or Reason and/or Virtuosity, and Hoid's anecdote about the three thinkers is foreshadowing.

Okay that's an interesting take to me.

By chance have you seen the movie Monster Trucks, and how do you feel about said vehicles?

 

For those of you who do not know the plot is about a mechanic who finds a weird monster creature with crazy biology that he uses like an engine for his truck, which can now go way faster, drive up walls, and a whole bunch of other nonsense.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

20 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Okay that's an interesting take to me.

By chance have you seen the movie Monster Trucks, and how do you feel about said vehicles?

 

For those of you who do not know the plot is about a mechanic who finds a weird monster creature with crazy biology that he uses like an engine for his truck, which can now go way faster, drive up walls, and a whole bunch of other nonsense.

Huh.  I haven't thought about Monster Trucks for more than about ten consecutive seconds since I was a little kid.  My three-year-old nephew thinks they're really neat.

That movie sounds interesting; I haven't seen it.

[Qianweilian He/him]

15 hours ago, Frustration said:

only thing is Chouta, but that's no more evidence of a Rosharan migration is than the unkeyed dor is evidence of a Selish migration.

I agree Scadrial doesn't (currently) have to worry about an invasion, but I would disagree here. Unkeyed dor is a transportable natural resource that most Selfish don't have access to, and indeed, only the Ghostbloods and the Set have it. Chouta is an aspect of culture. It's not described as a favorite food a Ghostblood agent picked up from another planet, but as street food. This sort of thing doesn't usually happen without some migration. There are also the weird potential sky breakers who help with the boats, the Ire moving, and the camps of Unkalaki as examples of some Rosharan emigration.

[Cosmer]

Pretty normal to use whatever means necessary to escape arrows flying your way…

also pretty normal to take off a mask of your finally dead spy adversary. 
 

Jasnah stinks and should answer for her crimes & bad vibes. 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

I can't believe my amazing queen Jasnah keeps getting dumped on. She loses one argument to a guy who had limitless magical powers and now no one appreciates her as the planet's only abolitionist.

Edited December 14, 2025 by ParaTulip

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

I guess I'm coming at it from the wrong childhood, 'cause I grew up with Watership Down and Tolkien's Middle-Earth and am thus too old-fashioned to look at spiritual eternal beings, fairies, the iconic and wonderful spren that make Roshar and Stormlight so unique and contribute so much of the vibes and aesthetic and identity of the work, see them lured into becoming power sources for machinery, and not be horrified at the paving of a fairyland, 'cause when I was a kid Dr. Robotnik was the bad guy even if none of the little animals in the badniks were person-level intelligent.

[Qianweilian He/him]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I guess I'm coming at it from the wrong childhood, 'cause I grew up with Watership Down and Tolkien's Middle-Earth and am thus too old-fashioned to look at spiritual eternal beings, fairies, the iconic and wonderful spren that make Roshar and Stormlight so unique and contribute so much of the vibes and aesthetic and identity of the work, see them lured into becoming power sources for machinery

I think the reason this is such a fiery argument is that this is an argument in our world, about animal rights and ethics about industrial farming.

[AonEne he/him]

On 12/11/2025 at 1:41 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Unrelated:  I think this will be my last post for a few years, or at least one of them, considering that when Returned compared me to Moash nobody contested that assessment.  This forum deserves better than people like Moash, that irredeemable traitor with no good qualities who is the worst thing his creator ever made and who is despised by everyone who knows him, including said creator.  As always, I'll respond to private messages.

Hey Aliroz, I wanted to let you know that we staff hid the posts in question because we thought that comparison was not okay - in fact it goes against our code of conduct. You don't have to leave the forums. 

[Returned he/him]

On 12/11/2025 at 9:25 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Apparently, Returned's post has been removed.  If it was the mods, I'll delete the text in spoilers below.

I happened across this thread again and hadn't realized my post had been removed (I'm not complaining, just saying I wasn't aware). I'm not intending to shift the conversation away from where it is but wanted to clarify one thing: my comparison to Moash was specifically and only about refusing to critically think about one's own conclusions and their obvious rightness. I feel that describes Moash accurately (but not entirely, there is clearly more to him than that) as he refuses to consider any of the arguments or questions Kaladin poses to him about his moral positions, instead believing himself to be right due to his observation of how right he feels about those positions.

When a poster in this thread described an aversion to critical review and introspection of their own moral positions and the bases which informed them, as well as a very strong dislike for Moash, I thought that the (very limited) overlap was worth mentioning. The aim was "if this isn't good enough to justify Moash's positions, is it good enough to justify yours, and if so what is the difference? What are the reasons beyond "feeling right" for those positions, and can we talk about those?", and not to suggest any additional similarities. I think it is a fair statement that Moash is a bad person and is also (largely) morally uncomplicated. Lack of complication is not the same as good and I felt that (at that spot in the thread) that distinction would be helpful for discussion. Maybe I was mistaken, post removal aside.

I hope you don't leave, @Aliroz-The-Confused, or even take a hiatus from the site. I truly apologize if that post or any of my posts were upsetting to you. That wasn't my intent at all.

Edited December 14, 2025 by Returned

[Frustration]

On 12/13/2025 at 1:54 PM, ParaTulip said:

I can't believe my amazing queen Jasnah keeps getting dumped on. She loses one argument to a guy who had limitless magical powers and now no one appreciates her as the planet's only abolitionist.

As one of said individuals, I think I should clarify my stance on Jasnah, as it seems I wasn't clear before.

I'm not upset that she lost an argument. That happens to everyone, you can be the smartest person in the room, and still lose because of skill, an information disparity or simple luck.

My problem with Jasnah is that she's willing to kill both friend and foe alike if they get in her way, and when she's confronted about this behavior she has no response other than: "It's what any queen would do in my situation."

This isn't just terrible people anymore like the footpads in WoK, robbers, murderers and rapists who were in the process of attacking again, it's even good people like Fen, on the off chance that they become an inconvenience.

I was willing to offer her some leeway when she was planning on assassinating Aesudan in WoR because I thought she might know about Aesudan's dealings with secret societies/the Unmade. Which I could understand, even if I find that slightly extreme, especially for your own sister-in-law.

However WaT shows us that not only was this not the case, Aesudan was just a political inconvenience, but she was also willing to kill Fen and and of the other Coalition leaders if they got in the way.

This is exactly the kind of actions that we hate and condemn Taravangian for, and I condemn Jasnah for the same reasons.

On 12/13/2025 at 4:30 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I guess I'm coming at it from the wrong childhood, 'cause I grew up with Watership Down and Tolkien's Middle-Earth and am thus too old-fashioned to look at spiritual eternal beings, fairies, the iconic and wonderful spren that make Roshar and Stormlight so unique and contribute so much of the vibes and aesthetic and identity of the work, see them lured into becoming power sources for machinery, and not be horrified at the paving of a fairyland, 'cause when I was a kid Dr. Robotnik was the bad guy even if none of the little animals in the badniks were person-level intelligent.

Ah, I think I understand now.

You aren't just looking at at the use of one spren or even a group of spren being used for fabrials, you're worried that all of them will be, and there won't be any in the wild anymore.

It's not the treatment of the individual spren, it's the potential captivation of a species.

Am I a little closer to your worries? 

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

10 minutes ago, Frustration said:

This isn't just terrible people anymore like the footpads in WoK, robbers, murderers and rapists who were in the process of attacking again, it's even good people like Fen, on the off chance that they become an inconvenience.

 

This is a very unfair exaggeration. Sure, she is willing to assassinate a political leader if they become a problem. I think that is fair enough if the situation calls for it. I can imagine a lot of situations where one state's leader would want another dead, such as during an ongoing war between the two states. Is it permitted to send people to kill each other only when both sides are called soldiers or knights?

Sure, a flawless saint will never kill another person or give the direct command to do so, since such a person could resolve all differences without resorting to violence, but that is not the standard we use for good people.

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

This is a very unfair exaggeration. Sure, she is willing to assassinate a political leader if they become a problem. I think that is fair enough if the situation calls for it. I can imagine a lot of situations where one state's leader would want another dead, such as during an ongoing war between the two states. Is it permitted to send people to kill each other only when both sides are called soldiers or knights?

Sure, a flawless saint will never kill another person or give the direct command to do so, since such a person could resolve all differences without resorting to violence, but that is not the standard we use for good people.

I'm afraid I don't see any exaggeration.

Quote

"Why," Taravangian asked... "would you have assassin's watch your own family Jasnah?"

"Aesudan was unpredictable," Jasnah explained, turning toward him from where she stood by Fen. "And power hungry. I worried about her destabilizing the Kingdom." -WaT chapter 116, page 1064

And later on

Quote

"Did you ever explore the possibility," Taravangian asked, "of assassinating Fen?"

...

"I investigated every monarch with whom we interacted," Jasnah admitted.

...

"I..." Jasnah said. "I am known to overprepare at times. I need to know my options." WaT chapter 116 page 1065

This is Jasnah intentionally sugar coating what she's saying because one of the individuals she considered assassinating was in the room.

She even worries that Taravangian would recreate the paper trails of her assassination plans, implying that she might very well have had assassins watching Fen just as she had watching Aesudan, or at the very least contracts prepared for assassin's to do just that.

 

None of these people were threats to Jasnah physically. Her family owned more Shards and commanded almost all of the radiants. Many were her allies, and at most they were only threats to her political power.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Remember in Shallan's conversation with Kelsier (quoted from page 1321 of Wind and Truth),

Quote

"Then I demand one thing," Shallan said, "A payment for what yours did to me and mine.  For the murders Iyatil and Mraize committed in your name."
A pause.  A fuzzing.  Two words.  "What price?"

"This seon spren obeys you, works for you," Shallan said.  "I want it to join me instead, and work under my direction until I can sort through a few things."

This response took longer.  Probably hours for him.

"Ala is not a slave," he finally said, "but I've asked her.  She... agrees that we owe you something.  She will enter your employ, so long as you're willing to let her report back to me of events on Roshar as she sees them."

"Fine"

Shallan feels entitled to Ala.  "Demand."  "Thing".  "A payment." "it"  Shallan's base assumption is that other beings exist to be traded, exchanged, and owned.  This is while she is attempting to be diplomatic and negotiate peace.

There is, as far as I know, no indication that this is all that unusual or that Shallan is acting in a way that is not normative for her and hers, and it is more or less the only real diplomatic interaction we see between a Cosmere-aware child of Ashyn and a Cosmere-aware representing something outside the Roshar system.  If anything, negotiation/diplomacy behavior should skew more positively interactive than standard.

Shallan knows Ala's name and doesn't use it, only thinking it once in her point-of-view.  These tendencies continue after this conversation.   Her narration objectifies Ala (referring to her as "it", "a ball" throughout).  Shallan calls Ala "Spren".  I think these are intentional writing choices by mister Sanderson.I think it might be indicative that we see Kelsier negotiating with Shallan in good faith (volunteering information about the time dilation and even warning her, unprompted, that if she left Roshar decades might pass for her loved ones) in the same book that we establish that the coalition against Odium, lead by Jasnah, cannot do so and thereby loses Queen Fen.  I think might be indicative that the murderous scoundrel crime-boss rogue dedicated to Scadrial thinks of Ala (who is neither from the Scadrian system nor the Rosharan system) as an individual with a name and identity and an equal in a way that Shallan, a sacred knight of Honor, does not.

<joking> Not a good day when Schemey McStabbythiefdad displays better playground manners than you.  Maybe Kelsier rolled a natural twenty on his diplomacy check and Shallan rolled a 1. </notjokinganymore>Then again, given that the second half of The Stormlight Archive isn't out yet, maybe I'm assuming this is horrifying foreshadowing for a setting-wide "the red flags were there and we should have seen this coming" plot when it's supposed to be foreshadowing a single-character-wide "new experiences lead to increased self-awareness, which leads, with effort, to improvement" plot.

Edited December 15, 2025 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Frustration]

5 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Remember in Shallan's conversation with Kelsier (quoted from page 1321 of Wind and Truth),

Shallan feels entitled to Ala.  "Demand."  "Thing".  "A payment." "it"  Shallan's base assumption is that other beings exist to be traded, exchanged, and owned.  This is while she is attempting to be diplomatic and negotiate peace.

There is, as far as I know, no indication that this is all that unusual or that Shallan is acting in a way that is not normative for her and hers, and it is more or less the only real diplomatic interaction we see between a Cosmere-aware child of Ashyn and a Cosmere-aware representing something outside the Roshar system.  If anything, negotiation/diplomacy behavior should skew more positively interactive than standard.

Shallan knows Ala's name and doesn't use it, only thinking it once in her point-of-view.  These tendencies continue after this conversation.   Her narration objectifies Ala (referring to her as "it", "a ball" throughout).  Shallan calls Ala "Spren".  I think these are intentional writing choices by mister Sanderson.I think it might be indicative that we see Kelsier negotiating with Shallan in good faith (volunteering information about the time dilation and even warning her, unprompted, that if she left Roshar decades might pass for her loved ones) in the same book that we establish that the coalition against Odium, lead by Jasnah, cannot do so and thereby loses Queen Fen.  I think might be indicative that the murderous scoundrel crime-boss rogue dedicated to Scadrial thinks of Ala (who is neither from the Scadrian system nor the Rosharan system) as an individual with a name and identity and an equal in a way that Shallan, a sacred knight of Honor, does not.

<joking> Not a good day when Schemey McStabbythiefdad displays better playground manners than you.  Maybe Kelsier rolled a natural twenty on his diplomacy check and Shallan rolled a 1. </notjokinganymore>Then again, given that the second half of The Stormlight Archive isn't out yet, maybe I'm assuming this is horrifying foreshadowing for a setting-wide "the red flags were there and we should have seen this coming" plot when it's supposed to be foreshadowing a single-character-wide "new experiences lead to increased self-awareness, which leads, with effort, to improvement" plot.

I had not picked up on that. That's actually very perceptive, good eye.

[therunner he/him]

11 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Shallan feels entitled to Ala.  "Demand."  "Thing".  "A payment." "it"  Shallan's base assumption is that other beings exist to be traded, exchanged, and owned.  This is while she is attempting to be diplomatic and negotiate peace.

There is, as far as I know, no indication that this is all that unusual or that Shallan is acting in a way that is not normative for her and hers,

There is in fact indication this is unusual for Shallan, and it is in fact her very first interaction with Ala, in RoW ch 115 (roughly 10 days earlier in-world)

Quote

Adolin fell silent waiting and watching as Shallan lifter the top of Mraize's cub. With help from Kelek, they'd gotten it open without harming the thing inside: a spren in the shape of a glowing ball of light, a strange symbol in the center.

No one here recognized the variety of spren, but Wit called it a seon.

"Are you well, Ala?" Shallan asked. It was sait like A-lay.
"Yes," the spren whispered.
"You can come out of the cube. You don't need to live in there anymore."
"I'm...supposed to stay. I'm not supposed to talk. To you. To anyone."

Shallan glanced at Adolin. The odd spren resisted attempts to get it free. It acted ... like an abused child.

Another in the list of Mraize's crimes, Radiant thought.
Agreed, Shallan replied.

So Shallan

• is concerned for the (physical and emotional) well being of the spren
• considers keeping it in a box crime (due to harm it seems to have caused)
• considers abuse of spren a crime

Now, keep in mind that Ala is faking all of the above, in order to manipulate Shallan.

So later, when Shallan has learned about this, she has no reason to see her/it (some spren do prefer being called it) as anything else then enemy Ghostblood. One that can be very useful to her after the catastrophe that was WAT, so she uses her negotiating position to get her services.

Maybe Shallan does not treat her with compassion and consideration, because Ala abused those same qualities 10 days earlier? Maybe that speaks more to the situation at hand, and not to moral character of Rosharan's as whole.
 

Quote

and it is more or less the only real diplomatic interaction we see between a Cosmere-aware child of Ashyn and a Cosmere-aware representing something outside the Roshar system.  If anything, negotiation/diplomacy behavior should skew more positively interactive than standard.

Maybe Shallan would be more inclined towards positive interaction with 'child of Scadrial' if it were not for the fact that his organization tried to...you know, kill her.

Ghostbloods:

• tried to kill her in TWoK (accident, but still)
• tried to kill her in WoR (twice)
• blackmailed her in O
• used her near to breaking point in RoW
• tried to kill her in WAT (several times)

And this is not even counting the lies, the overt and implied threats, the betrayal of Radiants in Tower during RoW, and many other events.

So, maybe, if Scadrial wants pleasant diplomacy, their behavior should not be so terribly negative skewed?

Again, so far, Scadrians did more damage to Rosharns than vice versa. Nearly everything you so harshly judge Rosharans for, Scadrians did as well, if not more so in some cases.

Edited December 16, 2025 by therunner

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

16 hours ago, Frustration said:

None of these people were threats to Jasnah physically. Her family owned more Shards and commanded almost all of the radiants. Many were her allies, and at most they were only threats to her political power.

Jasnah's political projects are worth killing people for. Her efforts to end legalized slavery among humans is actually worthy of transgressions.

 

I also have zero pity for a monarch being  faced with the prospect of death. The story of Damocles always felt to me like how power should feel.

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Jasnah's political projects are worth killing people for.

Alright, I've tried multiple time to think of a proper response to that.

With the intention of avoiding an argument I've decided I'll say that such an idea is completely foreign to me, and I'm going to ask some questions to help me better understand.

Why do you believe that Jasnah simply wanting to do something good enough with power means that it's okay for her to kill in order to consolidate it?

What if these people had even better political objectives than Jasnah? Is it still okay to kill them then?

Especially considering that it isn't these individuals being threats to Jasnah's goals that they are on the chopping block, rather the fact that they MIGHT cause issues for her.

4 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Her efforts to end legalized slavery among humans is actually worthy of transgressions.

But none of these have anything to do with delegalizing slavery, other than indirectly helping her hold on to power, most don't even do that. They just allow her to get rid of someone who might cause a nuance, as Fen was not a threat to Jasnah's power over Alethkar, nor could she threaten them militarily.

All Fen could really do is allow the merchant guilds to charge higher prices, and considering that the merchant guilds have a level of control over Fen, that wouldn't even be entirely her fault.

And I think you would agree that you can't just kill someone for being forced to charge you more for goods and services.

4 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

I also have zero pity for a monarch being  faced with the prospect of death. The story of Damocles always felt to me like how power should feel.

I don't feel pity for Fen.

I feel disgusted with Jasnah.

5 hours ago, therunner said:

There is in fact indication this is unusual for Shallan, and it is in fact her very first interaction with Ala, in RoW ch 115 (roughly 10 days earlier in-world)

So Shallan

• is concerned for the (physical and emotional) well being of the spren
• considers keeping it in a box crime (due to harm it seems to have caused)
• considers abuse of spren a crime

Now, keep in mind that Ala is faking all of the above, in order to manipulate Shallan.

So later, when Shallan has learned about this, she has no reason to see her/it (some spren do prefer being called it) as anything else then enemy Ghostblood. One that can be very useful to her after the catastrophe that was WAT, so she uses her negotiating position to get her services.

Maybe Shallan does not treat her with compassion and consideration, because Ala abused those same qualities 10 days earlier? Maybe that speaks more to the situation at hand, and not to moral character of Rosharan's as whole.
 

Maybe Shallan would be more inclined towards positive interaction with 'child of Scadrial' if it were not for the fact that his organization tried to...you know, kill her.

Ghostbloods:

• tried to kill her in TWoK (accident, but still)
• tried to kill her in WoR (twice)
• blackmailed her in O
• used her near to breaking point in RoW
• tried to kill her in WAT (several times)

And this is not even counting the lies, the overt and implied threats, the betrayal of Radiants in Tower during RoW, and many other events.

So, maybe, if Scadrial wants pleasant diplomacy, their behavior should not be so terribly negative skewed?

Again, so far, Scadrians did more damage to Rosharns than vice versa. Nearly everything you so harshly judge Rosharans for, Scadrians did as well, if not more so in some cases.

Another excellent point, Ala did betray her so I suppose it's possible that she was intentionally distant to not feel that anger.

Edited December 16, 2025 by Frustration

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

10 hours ago, therunner said:

Again, so far, Scadrians did more damage to Rosharns than vice versa. Nearly everything you so harshly judge Rosharans for, Scadrians did as well, if not more so in some cases.

I can't believe you forgot the biggest damage:  Axindweth introducing Venli to Ulim and giving her the gemstone.

Still, if the balance inclines, I'd say the children of Ashyn did far more damage to Roshar than the Scadrians.

Imagine if all we ever read of Shallan was that chapter I quoted, and all we knew of Roshar was from worldhopper accounts and ghostblood reports.  What sort of assumptions would we make?  How does it all look from outside?  

Or, imagine if we got the hypothetical novel series about the Listeners that I've mentioned before.  If the Stormlight Archive was Roshar Era 2.

Or, if we got a series set on Ashyn.

Or, what if we knew the Listeners who were mutilated by Bridge Four as well as we knew Bridge Four from the published pages, and knew Bridge Four as vaguely as we knew the Listeners who were mutilated by Bridge Four in the published pages?

It seems to me that in any framing other than the specific one we get, the picture that emerges is utterly horrifying.

The reason I worry about Scadrians ending up in breeding programs is that mister Sanderson has written seven Mistborn books in which Scadrians are forced into breeding programs and zero in which they are not.  The reason I worry about the children of Ashyn taking over a third world and ruining it is because of what they have done to two worlds already.  The reason I worry that Scadrial is not going to have a happy ending is because we have a grand total of zero happy endings that stick in the Mistborn books.

None of what I propose is appreciably worse or different than what has already happened, it's just that it's harder to rationalize when we are familiar with the "before".

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Another excellent point, Ala did betray her so I suppose it's possible that she was intentionally distant to not feel that anger.

I would dispute that being betrayed makes it acceptable to demand someone as payment.  Being intentionally distant is not the same thing as seeing someone as an object that can be traded.  None of that changes the fact that Shallan operates under the understanding that (1) she can treat beings as bargaining chips and (2) the consent of said beings is irrelevant because she only needs to negotiate with their "masters".  No amount of legitimate beef with someone is going to make that okay in my eyes.

I argue that taking the "warlike/violent/scary + historical and current atrocities + the dominant faction came into power through invasion within living memory + breaking the power of religious opposition = I think these guys are supposed to come off as scary" vibe check that we apply to the worshippers of Skai/Dominion, and applying it to worshippers of Honor and Cultivation, shows just how much the sympathetic point of view of the Cosmere colors the reader's perception, that someone having thoughts we can read, a likable personality, and a sad backstory can determine whether we root for conquerors or the conquered, can determine which sins the readers forgive, can determine whether the same action comes off as heroism or villainy.

The fact that the Kholins were opposing Odium did a lot, and I mean a lot, to make them come off as good by comparison.  But Dalinar gave Honor to Taravangian and loosed him upon the Cosmere.  Dalinar rejected the previous Honor's plan and killed himself to make Retribution everyone's problem, Vin fulfilled the previous Preservation's plan and killed herself to make sure Ruin didn't become everyone's problem, and I respect the latter a heck of a lot more than the former.

Edited December 16, 2025 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

But none of these have anything to do with delegalizing slavery, other than indirectly helping her hold on to power, most don't even do that. They just allow her to get rid of someone who might cause a nuance, as Fen was not a threat to Jasnah's power over Alethkar, nor could she threaten them militarily.

All Fen could really do is allow the merchant guilds to charge higher prices, and considering that the merchant guilds have a level of control over Fen, that wouldn't even be entirely her fault.

And I think you would agree that you can't just kill someone for being forced to charge you more for goods and services.

You are thinking of this in really narrow conditions. Suppose Fen was a critical part of enabling something like the Coalition Wars or, had her reform program been met with more resistance, providing support to the opposition to her reforms via marine supply.

You are thinking that her plan to kill Fen is some immediately pending thing, that this is a "Any day now, I will kill that woman for making me pay too much for jewelry" type of situation.

It simply makes sense to have a plan and hope to not need to use it than to never plan for unfortunately possibilities.