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

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

3 hours ago, buzzbuzz said:

i think that's why the apology was done after we know about the listeners, about the singers, after we know more about them. the way i saw it, it was wrong, but the bridgemen were themselves in a death trap, and kaladin saw preserving the lives of people more important than the sensibilities of the dead. yeah, it was a difficult decision, but that was the point of it- that in war, there is no right or wrong side, that both sides lose common people, that both sides have their own story which needs to be told. the common soldier may not know why he is fighting, but he knows that he's fighting to defend his home. it's this realization kal feels when he meets the newly freed singers in OB, that these are also people he must protect. at that point of time, maybe desecrating the corpses was the only way he could protect people (which he did, iirc he diverted fire from ALL the brides to himself). like yeah, no decision is perfect, but that's the point of stormlight archive i feel. mistborn has been more black and white wrt morals, but even there you see quellion taking what kelsier preached and putting that into action, and we see why that results in a messed up society. elend too had to become a dictator in order to do good, a philosophical problem he was forced to go through in WoA. that hasn't been seen as an atrocity in the text because it wasn't- it was the right thing to do in-world, as was kal's decision to use the corpses of the listeners.

It didn't primarily preserve lives, though, it lured the listeners into a trap so they could be killed.  If someone did the same thing to Kaladin or to bridge four, you wouldn't be so forgiving.

If I had the skill, I'd write a fanfiction story about a bunch of Listeners, all with different personalities and interesting relationships and dynamics.  Some of them would be jerks, others would be nice, there'd be a lot of wholesome fluff with certain couples.  There'd be running gags, mysteries, setup for subplots that might be resolved after the war, and all that good stuff.  And the very end would be half of them getting killed and having their corpses desecrated to lure the other half to their deaths.

And I don't think that the Alethi invaders and the Listener defenders are morally equivalent.  I don't think that every war is between two sides of equivalent morality, especially in fantasy novels.\

We're not supposed to see Odium's forces and the Radiants as morally equivalent, I think.

3 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

I get the feeling that certain people are expected to be instantly perfect, e. g. Navani.

That is the opposite of the message of the Stormlight Archive, which is (First Ideal) about the journey. The story isn't that Dalinar or Kaladin or Jasnah has become an ideal person. It's that they're sincerely trying to do better.

Heck, the Sibling and Tanavast's Shadow are shown trying to be better than they were. 

The villains are people like Moash and Taravangian, who cling to their flaws.

That's the thing.  I don't see the sincerity.  I can't find it.  I want to, I look for it, and I can't find it.

Edited February 14 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[buzzbuzz she/her]

14 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

It didn't primarily preserve lives, though, it lured the listeners into a trap so they could be killed.  If someone did the same thing to Kaladin or to bridge four, you wouldn't be so forgiving.

macha tbh it just sounds like you're hate reading stormlight at this point.

i get that different people engage with media differently, but it is stated in the text that kal's intention was that the listeners only shoot him, not any other bridge. and the result was that there were no bridgemen dead.
the intention was not to lure them into a trap. and when you look at it- in all the battles before, the listeners chose to target the defenceless bridgemen as easy pickings, rather than the soldiers. the listeners are not morally absolved because of kal using their corpses. despite the honor they show later in fighting dalinar one on one rather than dogpiling, they do not show that honor to the bridgemen, a fact which sadeas makes use of. i feel like that is the point sanderson wanted to make in this series- it might not be true in all fantasy novels, but here it is clear that no side is morally absolved in a war. 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

11 hours ago, buzzbuzz said:

macha tbh it just sounds like you're hate reading stormlight at this point.

i get that different people engage with media differently, but it is stated in the text that kal's intention was that the listeners only shoot him, not any other bridge. and the result was that there were no bridgemen dead.
the intention was not to lure them into a trap. and when you look at it- in all the battles before, the listeners chose to target the defenceless bridgemen as easy pickings, rather than the soldiers. the listeners are not morally absolved because of kal using their corpses. despite the honor they show later in fighting dalinar one on one rather than dogpiling, they do not show that honor to the bridgemen, a fact which sadeas makes use of. i feel like that is the point sanderson wanted to make in this series- it might not be true in all fantasy novels, but here it is clear that no side is morally absolved in a war. 

I do not see the sides as morally equivalent.

But, I'll concede the point that atrocities, invasion, slavery, genocide, and everything else is morally acceptable in The Stormlight Archive so long as whoever it is done to isn't perfect (and since nobody is perfect, that means no rules for anybody).  See Also:  Bavadin, who is apparently a favorite of mister Sanderson and who everyone has taken great pains to explain to me isn't actually evil, just "complicated".

I'll throw this back at you all if the Scadrians start invading worlds and doing Evil Heinous Crud.

If you can root for your favorite genocidal taboo-breaking atrocity-committers in their invasions, enslavements, forcible-impositions-of-modernity, acting and negotiating in bad faith, and innovations, then I can root for mine.

 

And I'm not hate-reading, I'm reacting to the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive the same way I would react to any fantasy villains doing the same things.

The Stormlight Archive is tonally and morally inconsistent with the rest of the Cosmere (in my opinion to the detriment of the Cosmere as a whole), and this was much more acceptable when it was self-contained.

I haven't read The Sunlit Man, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, or Isles of the Emberdark yet.  I hope they provide a break from Roshar and its inhabitants.  

I also hope they provide a break from Scadrial, Autonomy, and that nightmare.  It would be really great to get a stand-alone novel set on a non-Autonomy non-Scadrial non-Roshar world again.

(spoilers for Tress Of The Emerald Sea)

Spoiler

I have a theory that Lumar is one of Autonomy's worlds.  Also, Arcanum Unbounded was a bunch of short stories (Edgedancer, though sometimes published separately, was set on Roshar).  This makes Warbreaker the most recently-published stand-alone novel set on a non-Autonomy non-Scadrial Non-Roshar world which I have read.

 

Edited February 15 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Qianweilian He/him]

38 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I hope they provide a break from Roshar and its inhabitants.

TSM: No. Main char is Rosharan

YanNP: Yes.

IotE: Yes.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

1 hour ago, Qianweilian said:

TSM: No. Main char is Rosharan

YanNP: Yes.

IotE: Yes.

Oooh, it would be really neat if TSM turned out to be a book from the Singer perspective. 

It would be doubly neat if it lacked human perspectives.

I would outright do a happy dance if the Singers got to have their own story that didn't involve the children of Ashyn, especially if it was set before Honor left for Ashyn.

I know the chances of it actually being any of these things is 0, because I'm not that lucky, but if it ever happens that the Singers get their own story I will take back at least 53% of the bad things I've said about The Stormlight Archive and the Ashynites.

Edited February 15 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

I've been thinking about it, and after talking with my cousin I think my troubles with The Stormlight Archive and its main protagonist faction are as follows.

1: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be about flawed people seeking redemption.

1a: The series is half-finished, so Wind and Truth is not a satisfactory ending because it is not meant to be an ending.

1b: The series is incredibly long, so seeing the characters go for thousands of pages while continuing to do awful things and often backsliding on the progress they make risks making it feel like they're not going to stop doing awful things or get better.  For example, after over five thousand pages, Navani is still innovating, still enslaving spren, still inventing new "abominations" (The Sibling's words).  At some point, it feels like this is just how the characters are, and how they'll always be.

1c: The series is astoundingly dark and bleak, so the things that mister Sanderson has his characters do or be a party to have to stand out against that backdrop.  Thus, the things that mister Sanderson has his characters do or be a party to have to be genuinely horrible, and this makes it extremely hard for him to write that redemption.

2: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be about the transition to modernity.

2a: This makes the work a lamentation, a funeral dirge, an elegy for Fantasy.  It's deeply depressing because the transition to modernity is deeply depressing, and the appeal of fantasy and of the "medieval stasis" is the daydream of preventing or avoiding that transition. 

2ai: In other words, the humans on Roshar continually make their world more modern and less fantastical (the most obvious example of this is the impending extinction of Chasmfiends, with another example being fabrials).  For those who love fantasy, or who love worldbuilding, having that appeal wither away is a rug-pull.

2aii: This means that the story is banking everything on its characters being compelling and sympathetic.  But mister Sanderson has made that unbelievably difficult for himself.  It also means that those who engage with worlds rather than characters are gradually alienated.  Mister Sanderson has been praised for his worldbuilding and criticized for his characterization, so he's risking a lot by using his characters, which has been considered his weaker talents, as his main tools.

3: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be a part of the larger Cosmere, and something that interacts with it.  However, he has also made it clear that The Stormlight Archive is the centerpiece, the main work, his favorite.

3a: This means that readers who prefer the other worlds/works in the Cosmere will have to see the settings and stories that they are invested in get folded into a larger story centered and focused on The Stormlight Archive.

3b: This means that, inevitably, everyone else is going to interact with the main protagonist faction of The Stormlight Archive.

3bi:  However, because of 1 and 2 (and their combination, which is that everyone who interacts for a long enough time with the humans on Roshar ends up interacting with Odium/Retribution, which means suffering a lot, if not being destroyed or enslaved), this is a worrisome prospect. 

3bii:  The situation that the Listeners/Singers are in, and the situation that the spren are in, while intentionally being at what are probably "darkest before dawn" points, provide a pattern for what happens to those who interact with the humans on Roshar, one that, if extrapolated to everyone else, is very bleak.  The readers haven't seen the "dawn" yet, and it takes hope to trust that things will get better.  In this decade, that's not the easiest thing to have.

4:  Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive in such a way as to maintain reader sympathy during the wait between setup and payoff.

4a: In order to keep the characters of The Stormlight Archive sympathetic despite the horrible things they do or are a part of, the framing is structured to support them as much as possible.  Flashback chapters, lack of Singer points-of-view relative to human points-of-view, long and thorough explorations of what makes these people tick.

4b:  This means a great deal of page-space goes to things like Kaladin's depression and Shallan's identity issues. 

4bi:  This has, perhaps, the side effect of prioritizing intimate human character studies over the perspectives of the countless Listeners, which means that the ones who need the most work to be sympathetic (the humans) get the most attention while the Listeners, who have the readers' inherent sympathy because they are being subjected to genocide and atrocities, get the least.

4cii:  This, structurally, risks making it feel as though mister Sanderson prioritizes the humans on Roshar to the exclusion of other views from relevance.  

4d: Presumably, the second half of the series will feature more Singer content (each book has more of it than the previous), but in its unfinished state, the series provides a pattern of narrative dominance for the humans on Roshar that makes it easy to assume that they will be similarly narratively dominant over everyone else in the Cosmere.

4di:  This is compounded by The Stormlight Archive being the longest work in the Cosmere, and by it being explicitly the centerpiece, main work, and favorite.

5: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to explore, question, challenge, and test its own moral framework, because, as the blurb for The Way Of Kings says "Fire and hammer forge a sword; time and neglect rust it away".

5a:  This means that, given the length and depth of the series, there must be elements of deconstruction and reconstruction.  It makes sense to put the deconstruction in the middle and the reconstruction at the end, with the beginning establishing the ideals, the world, and the characters.

5ai:  This combines with the morally complex characters and their realistically-tedious-and-bumpy path to redemption (which is never easy) in such a way that the story asks the reader to have hope in and trust the characters at the same time it asks the reader to interrogate and question the ideals. 

5aii: This risks making it seem as though the story is giving its characters a free pass and abandoning the moral framework, even if that's not the intention or what the series as a whole will be like when it's finished.

5b:  This means that some of the middle books end with the framework partially or wholly deconstructed, undermined, or damaged.  However, since the pattern of decreasing absolutism and increasing relativism exists, it makes it easy to assume that it will continue.

 

Conclusion:  Mister Sanderson may be asking his readers to make a leap of faith, knowing that this part of his masterwork will drive off some readers.  My assumptions about what patterns can be generalized, whether or not things will get better, and whether or not it is possible to write happy endings in this day and age, may be wrong, as all my theories have been.

Edited February 16 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[therunner he/him]

On 2/13/2026 at 9:36 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

That caveat is a lot of my problem with The Stormlight Archive.  That caveat means that your own physical and/or mental health is more important than the ideal, and thus more important than right or wrong.  It means that your own physical and/or mental well-being is more important than than your soul or the eternal afterlife consequences of your doings.

I think it means that pushing yourself until you break means you won't help anyone. 

It doesn't you have free pass to give up on your morals, it means that to be able to apply those morals long term, you have to remain functional, both in body and in spirit. 

Quote

Like I said, I think The Stormlight Archive does morality on easy mode, Mistborn does morality on hard mode, and the rest of the cosmere does morality on normal mode.  I feel that it's a double or possibly triple standard.

Funny, I see it exactly opposite. 

Mistborn has morality on easy mode, their foes are fully irredeemable monsters (nobles, TLR) or forces of utter destruction (Ruin) and they don't have to consider them at all. Anything the protagonists do is justified, because their opponents are so much worse. Era 2 is basically the same, enemies being people who make breeding farms.
Closest to moral complexity is Shadows of Self I would say, where Paalm is fundamentally a victim, and a perpetrator.

Stormlight doesn't have that luxury. The enemies are humanized (Singer-nerized? ) as early as book 2, and it goes much further from there. Neither side is fully in the right, both are full of both victim and perpetrators.
Individual characters can be simply antagonistic (Rayse, Taravangian), but the sides are not.

Quote

Luckily for me, this is a character point rather than the story's perspective, and The Lost Metal (in my opinion) manages to keep itself morally and tonally consistent enough with the original Mistborn trilogy to avoid being Stormlight On Scadrial, but it's a worrying sign for me that The Stormlight Archive's narrative/moral priorities might be starting to bleed into the rest of the Cosmere.  Narrative Black Hole indeed.

I think its less Stormlight Archive moral priorities, and more simply going into more complicated things than : overthrow evil immortal Tyrant / stop God of Desctruction from destroying the planet.

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Sincerity, to me, would be stopping all fabrial research and banning it.  An actual attempt to do better would be outright outlawing the creation of fabrials, at bare minimum.  Following through on this attempt by destroying as many as possible of the fabrials that exist so the spren can be free is what it would take for me to consider Navani as having had a change of heart.  Otherwise, she stays in her place as the fictional character I hate fifth-most.

I will again say that fabrials are fundamentally no different from using animal labor, and that is something even other thinking spren (with the sole exception of Sibling) agree with (themselves using lesser spren for labor in Shadesmar).

Navani is no more a monster than the person who started domestication of wild animals, or us for leveraging those animals for our comforts.

Quote

Do minor characters count?  Because I think moral inconsistency is much more of a main character thing.  If not, then I'd say that Szeth was morally consistent.  I'd also call Sarene and Raoden morally consistent. 

Szeth was anything but morally consistent. 
He literally murders people knowing it is wrong, just because someone told him to. How is that morally consistent?

Sarene and Raoden sure, though they each have page count roughly equivalent to 1/4 of one Stormlight book. On that scale, SA chars are usually morally consistent too I would say.

Edited February 17 by therunner

[Frustration]

7 hours ago, therunner said:

Szeth was anything but morally consistent. 
He literally murders people knowing it is wrong, just because someone told him to. How is that morally consistent?

Because he placed greater moral weight on obedience to the Oathstone than anything else.

Now clearly he was wrong in this, but it was moral consistency.

[listerfeend]

9 hours ago, therunner said:

Szeth was anything but morally consistent. 
He literally murders people knowing it is wrong, just because someone told him to. How is that morally consistent?

It's almost like you don't understand the indoctrination and mental status of Szeth... 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

14 hours ago, therunner said:

I will again say that fabrials are fundamentally no different from using animal labor, and that is something even other thinking spren (with the sole exception of Sibling) agree with (themselves using lesser spren for labor in Shadesmar).

Navani is no more a monster than the person who started domestication of wild animals, or us for leveraging those animals for our comforts.

When a benevolent god tells you to stop what you are doing because it is an abomination, you should stop what you are doing.

You should not argue with such, you should not try to persuade such, you should not try to justify to such, you should stop what you are doing, and have the humility to accept the rebuke.

Navani's hubris and arrogance here, her elevation of reason over devotion, her attempt at compromise, is the sin of pride.

 

Also, you seem to think that this is about reasoning/thinking ability.  I reject that framework, because I consider it to be an inherently evil framework to divide beings into "greater" and "lesser" on that basis.

If consideration and freedom are only owed to those "greater" beings who can run Reason.exe, then I am inherently lesser because my instance of that program is broken/corrupted.  I do not think like people think.

  

5 hours ago, listerfeend said:

It's almost like you don't understand the indoctrination and mental status of Szeth... 

I know what you mean here, but I'd like to point out that one could argue that Kaladin, Shallan, Adolin, and others were, in their own ways, indoctrinated (part of Kaladin's arc in Oathbringer is about realizing that his mental framework for thinking about the Singers is wrong, the Alethi are raised to see genocide as acceptable and normal, Shallan has all sorts of self-worth and identity problems from being abused the way she was).  And one could argue that Kaladin and Shallan have what one might call a "mental status".

This doesn't mean that Lirin's raising of Kaladin is in any way equivalent to Shallan's childhood, or that either of those are anywhere near what Ishar did to Szeth.  It means that mental health issues and growing-out-of-toxic-frameworks-that-you-were-taught are themes of the work that are explored in a variety of ways.  I think there's a tendency in some readers to act as though Szeth's worldview/personality is entirely the result of manipulation and abuse, which I think is reductive and does a disservice to the character.

Edited February 17 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Frustration]

11 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

When a benevolent god tells you to stop what you are doing because it is an abomination, you should stop what you are doing.

You should not argue with such, you should not try to persuade such, you should not try to justify to such, you should stop what you are doing, and have the humility to accept the rebuke.

Navani's hubris and arrogance here, her elevation of reason over devotion, her attempt at compromise, is the sin of pride.

Well neither she nor the Sibling view the Sibling as a god. Nor would I.

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Also, you seem to think that this is about reasoning/thinking ability.  I reject that framework, because I consider it to be an inherently evil framework to divide beings into "greater" and "lesser" on that basis.

If consideration and freedom are only owed to those "greater" beings who can run Reason.exe, then I am inherently lesser because my instance of that program is broken/corrupted.  I do not think like people think.

Personally(and I know this is unpopular) I view all spren(including greater spren like the Sibling or Syl) to not be living things worthy of any moral consideration. I see nothing wrong with killing them as there was nothing alive in the first place. No more wrong than killing a rock or a piece of paper.

Now Ishar's experiment might change that for me, but for now I stand by that.

Now for others who look at spren as simply being cognitive forms of life, lesser spren are equal to animals, and Higher-spren the equivalent of people. They therefore see nothing wrong with treating them like animals or people respectively.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

57 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Well neither she nor the Sibling view the Sibling as a god. Nor would I.

Given that The Sibling is the offspring of Honor and Cultivation, it's the closest thing to a god that Navani can reasonably communicate with regularly.  With Adonalsium shattered, the Shards are the next closest thing.  With Honor dead and Cultivation mostly inscrutable and uncommunicative, that leaves the Stormfather, The Sibling, and the Nightwatcher.  With The Nightwatcher all mysterious and inscrutable (a real momma's girl, that one, adorable!), that leaves The Stormfather and The Sibling as the legitimate acting interim moral authority.  Dalinar and Navani bullying them into compliance with their own desires is, to me, genuinely evil.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Personally(and I know this is unpopular) I view all spren(including greater spren like the Sibling or Syl) to not be living things worthy of any moral consideration. I see nothing wrong with killing them as there was nothing alive in the first place. No more wrong than killing a rock or a piece of paper.

Now Ishar's experiment might change that for me, but for now I stand by that.

Now for others who look at spren as simply being cognitive forms of life, lesser spren are equal to animals, and Higher-spren the equivalent of people. They therefore see nothing wrong with treating them like animals or people respectively.

I don't like frameworks where personhood is a requirement for moral consideration (I believe that the rest of creation deserves moral consideration, even if people deserve more consideration than things).  I do not like frameworks where the ones who decide who or what deserves moral consideration do so on the basis of logos (I do not believe that logos is the best framework for confronting moral issues, or, at least, I do not believe that logos without other things (some of which, like pathos and ethos, are orthogonal to reason and logic) is more appropriate for confronting moral issues than an alloy of logos, pathos, and ethos, with other things).

I don't like drawing the line between "people, and thus deserving moral consideration" and "not-people, and thus not" because I think that when such a line is drawn, I may end on the not-a-person side of it.  I always related more to alien, robot, or fairy/fae/sprite characters than to human characters whenever both were in the same story, and I always connected more to the simpler side characters than to the main characters in just about everything, especially when said side characters serve the role of "understandable but incorrect, to be proven wrong and either 1) learn a lesson or 2) persist in error and provide a warning to the audience about being stubbornly wrong".

Basically, I'm risk-averse to the kind of frameworks that I feel have been (ab)used (by intellectually dishonest people, against the actual intent) to justify eugenics, "cures" for neurodivergence, and hierarchical categorization of humans.  For me, if the balance inclines, it inclines towards extending the "deserves moral consideration" category too much rather than not enough.

My views on the requirement to be the equivalent of people are heavily weighted by my fear that I am not equivalent to people. 

[Frustration]

4 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Given that The Sibling is the offspring of Honor and Cultivation, it's the closest thing to a god that Navani can reasonably communicate with regularly.  With Adonalsium shattered, the Shards are the next closest thing.  With Honor dead and Cultivation mostly inscrutable and uncommunicative, that leaves the Stormfather, The Sibling, and the Nightwatcher.  With The Nightwatcher all mysterious and inscrutable (a real momma's girl, that one, adorable!), that leaves The Stormfather and The Sibling as the legitimate acting interim moral authority.  Dalinar and Navani bullying them into compliance with their own desires is, to me, genuinely evil.

Neither Dalinar or Navani accept Honor as God. With Dalinar going past Adonaliusm altogether to worship the God Beyond.

I fall in the same camp with Dalinar on that one, though if you don't that's fine.

However I find it odd to judge someone for not listening to a being that they do not consider to be a god.

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I don't like frameworks where personhood is a requirement for moral consideration (I believe that the rest of creation deserves moral consideration, even if people deserve more consideration than things).  I do not like frameworks where the ones who decide who or what deserves moral consideration do so on the basis of logos (I do not believe that logos is the best framework for confronting moral issues, or, at least, I do not believe that logos without other things (some of which, like pathos and ethos, are orthogonal to reason and logic) is more appropriate for confronting moral issues than an alloy of logos, pathos, and ethos, with other things).

I don't like drawing the line between "people, and thus deserving moral consideration" and "not-people, and thus not" because I think that when such a line is drawn, I may end on the not-a-person side of it.  I always related more to alien, robot, or fairy/fae/sprite characters than to human characters whenever both were in the same story, and I always connected more to the simpler side characters than to the main characters in just about everything, especially when said side characters serve the role of "understandable but incorrect, to be proven wrong and either 1) learn a lesson or 2) persist in error and provide a warning to the audience about being stubbornly wrong".

Basically, I'm risk-averse to the kind of frameworks that I feel have been (ab)used (by intellectually dishonest people, against the actual intent) to justify eugenics, "cures" for neurodivergence, and hierarchical categorization of humans.  For me, if the balance inclines, it inclines towards extending the "deserves moral consideration" category too much rather than not enough.

My views on the requirement to be the equivalent of people are heavily weighted by my fear that I am not equivalent to people. 

I'll let someone who holds to the spren being living beings respond to that part.

On spren not deserving moral consideration, my basis has nothing to do with their ability to reason, or their intelligence. It's entirely based upon souls.

I do not believe that Spren go to the Beyond when they die. I therefore consider them to be some advanced form of ChatGPT, and deserving of the same status.

Now we'll see if that ends up being the case. I believe that Brandon is going that direction, but for now that's how I look at it.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Neither Dalinar or Navani accept Honor as God. With Dalinar going past Adonaliusm altogether to worship the God Beyond.

I fall in the same camp with Dalinar on that one, though if you don't that's fine.

However I find it odd to judge someone for not listening to a being that they do not consider to be a god.

If it was a being that somebody else regarded as a god, I'd listen to it.  And we know the horneaters regard spren as gods.

I'd rather be like Eshonai and end up like Eshonai than be like Navani or Dalinar.  Better to have trusted and been wrong than to not have trusted.  And if I couldn't bring myself to trust The Stormfather or The Sibling enough to stop when told that I'm doing an abomination, I'd do like Szeth and free the being from the bond.

I absolutely do not trust Navani's moral judgement any more than I trust Taravangian's or Jasnah's.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

On spren not deserving moral consideration, my basis has nothing to do with their ability to reason, or their intelligence. It's entirely based upon souls.

I do not believe that Spren go to the Beyond when they die. I therefore consider them to be some advanced form of ChatGPT, and deserving of the same status.

Now we'll see if that ends up being the case. I believe that Brandon is going that direction, but for now that's how I look at it.

We have completely opposite readings of the books, then.  I think spren are souls.  Little itty bitty ones.  I see skazes and seons the same way.  I think they go to the Beyond when they die unless killed in specific ways (same as people, who don't go to the Beyond if killed via Nightblood as far as we know).

The Stormlight Archive is an entirely different series if spren don't deserve moral consideration than it is if spren deserve moral consideration.  It's not even recognizable, really, on an emotional engagement level.

This difference may be irreconcilable to our understanding of the work.

Unfortunately for everyone who cares about the spren, or got emotionally invested in them, or connected to them more than to the humans on Roshar, the odds of Frustration predicting Cosmere stuff correctly are pretty much 1, and the odds of me predicting Cosmere stuff correctly are always 0.

I might have to swap sides and agree with you just to force mister Sanderson to not go that direction.

Edited February 18 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Frustration]

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If it was a being that somebody else regarded as a god, I'd listen to it.  And we know the horneaters regard spren as gods.

The Egyptians and Persians also considered their kings to be gods. Most cultures did the same thing. We can even see this with the Singers treating the Fused as gods. I wouldn't listen to any of the aforementioned anymore than I would someone I meet on my day to day.

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I absolutely do not trust Navani's moral judgement any more than I trust Taravangian's or Jasnah's.

I agree, she has proven to be a terrible judge of morality.

Putting a sticker on Raboniel's body and calling her a hero is just too far.

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

We have completely opposite readings of the books, then.  I think spren are souls.  Little itty bitty ones.  I see skazes and seons the same way.

I suppose that comes down to your definition of a soul. I personally take anything other than whatever goes to the Beyond is misnamed when called a soul, and thus don't count. If you take everything the Cosmere calls a soul as one the line between living and non-living things gets really blurry.

12 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

The Stormlight Archive is an entirely different series if spren don't deserve moral consideration than it is if spren deserve moral consideration.  It's not even recognizable, really, on an emotional engagement level.

This difference may be irreconcilable to our understanding of the work.

Probably, though I'm open to having a different interpretation should my understanding change.

Edited February 18 by Frustration

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

The Egyptians and Persians also considered their kings to be gods. Most cultures did the same thing.

I don't know about "most" (I'd go with "many", because I'm not 100% certain that the numerical majority of human cultures actually were monarchical and my old stats professors used to get on my case for imprecision about that kind of stuff), but yeah, you're right that a lot of cultures did that.  I was more thinking of "spooky immortal entity from before your earliest historical records" than "person-aged person"

Even so, I wouldn't try to lecture a Pharaoh on morality unless I had the kind of backup/being-told-to-do-so that Moses had, you know (or if I was about to die and it was one last defiance)?  Stuff's way above my pay grade.  You'd need to get the nine-year-old me from all those years ago if you want that kind of boldness.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

We can even see this with the Singers treating the Fused as gods. I wouldn't listen to any of the aforementioned anymore than I would someone I meet on my day to day.

Part of this is that, as readers, we have context, information, and perspective not available to these Singers, and another part of this is we don't live in the context we're reading about.  If I was a singer and didn't have the religious beliefs I have in real life, I don't know how I'd react to something like the Fused.

I hope I would tend towards something like Sazed's "trying to find the truth, giving everything a shot until I find it, attempt to respect and honor all sincere faith".

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I agree, she has proven to be a terrible judge of morality.

Putting a sticker on Raboniel's body and calling her a hero is just too far.

Yeah, that's an "old lady saying that the serial killer is 'such a nice and polite young man'" moment there.

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I suppose that comes down to your definition of a soul. I personally take anything other than whatever goes to the Beyond is misnamed when called a soul, and thus don't count. If you take everything the Cosmere calls a soul as one the line between living and non-living things gets really blurry.

Probably, though I'm open to having a different interpretation should my understanding change.

Oh, I edited my earlier post to add this, but I think (probably inaccurately) that spren go to the Beyond when they die.  Your reading has them as something more like the mermaids in Hans Christian Andersen' The Little Mermaid.

I don't actually have a coherent definition for soul in the context of the Cosmere.

 

EDIT:  WOOT WOOT 108th post in this thread!

Edited February 18 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Immortal Platypus]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

If it was a being that somebody else regarded as a god, I'd listen to it.  And we know the horneaters regard spren as gods.

if a voice in your head said "I am [insert-x-god-that-others-believe-in-that-you-don't-believe-to-be-the-true-God-here (ie, Zeus, Odin, Osiris, Brahma, Allah, etc.)], go kill all your friends and family," would you do so? I struggle to believe that you would. Now, there are different circumstances between you and Navani, but I dislike the logic of "someone else think's it's true, so I have to respect it"

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

31 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

if a voice in your head said "I am [insert-x-god-that-others-believe-in-that-you-don't-believe-to-be-the-true-God-here (ie, Zeus, Odin, Osiris, Brahma, Allah, etc.)], go kill all your friends and family," would you do so? I struggle to believe that you would. Now, there are different circumstances between you and Navani, but I dislike the logic of "someone else think's it's true, so I have to respect it"

I think "go kill all your friends and family" and "stop enslaving these beings" are very different things.

The logic of "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it", is basically my entire relationship with how most of society works.  Humanity, especially the society I live in, is inexplicable, inscrutable, and utterly bewildering to me.  And I can't coherently express my thoughts the way I wish I could, so across this gulf of mutual incomprehension, mutual respect seems to be the healthiest way to engage.

I can't afford to reject "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" entirely, or I'd be completely alone.

And, well, since I can't persuade people of things or win arguments, and since everybody has an incredibly strong urge to prove me wrong at all times, it's not like I can find like-minded people because those don't exist.  Without "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" logic, I don't think anybody would respect what I think is true.

Edited February 18 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Immortal Platypus]

59 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I think "go kill all your friends and family" and "stop enslaving these beings" are very different things.

True, but I used the example as a proof of concept to show that there are situations where I wouldn't do what a "deity" that someone else believes in says. I also reject the framing of spren in fabrials (especially modern ones) as slavery, but I expect we will simply continue to disagree on that, and I'm ok with that. Although, to your point, I did find a WOB that says some spren do consider the Nahel bond slaveryish (I forget exactly what it said), so that's evidence for your point. It does also say that many don't consider it to be slavery though, so kind of like us in a way.

Quote

The logic of "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it", is basically my entire relationship with how most of society works.  Humanity, especially the society I live in, is inexplicable, inscrutable, and utterly bewildering to me.  And I can't coherently express my thoughts the way I wish I could, so across this gulf of mutual incomprehension, mutual respect seems to be the healthiest way to engage.

I can't afford to reject "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" entirely, or I'd be completely alone.

I'm sorry to hear that. I don't have a problem with mutual respect, but I do have a problem with saying that because someone has a differing belief to me, I need to respect theirs over mine (which is basically what you are wanting Navani to do with the Sibling's view). Are there situations where the other person is right, and I should yield? absolutely. But, it's not every situation, and I think this is one where that isn't the case.

Quote

And, well, since I can't persuade people of things or win arguments, and since everybody has an incredibly strong urge to prove me wrong at all times, it's not like I can find like-minded people because those don't exist. Without "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" logic, I don't think anybody would respect what I think is true.

I phrased it poorly, what I meant was "someone else thinks it's true, so that belief supersedes my own", which I don't think is a healthy attitude. Again, nothing wrong with mutual respect, I whole-heartedly support it. But, compromising on your beliefs simply because others disagree seems wrong to me.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

 

10 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

True, but I used the example as a proof of concept to show that there are situations where I wouldn't do what a "deity" that someone else believes in says.

That's fair, but "stop enslaving these beings" is, in general, the morally correct thing to do.

It bugs me that the Kholin monarchy has enslaved spren, humans, and singers, and that in the same book we get Jasnah doing things to get rid of that, we get Navani expanding it.  Dern it, the moral complexity gives me anxiety because it's genuinely unclear from the published text whether we're supposed to just accept fabrials going forward or if I'm allowed to hope for freedom in the future.

And, with the whole "parshendi being magically-mind-broken singers" thing, any "oh, but these aren't intelligent like people, they're more like animals" arguments set off "but what if a future plot twist reveals that they're not..." alarm bells.  Pivoting from "we must not split humans in this hierarchical way and enslave them" and "we must not split singers in this hierarchical way and enslave them" to "Actually, it's entirely okay to do split spren in this hierarchical way and enslave the ones that aren't people-equivalent" feels tonally messy.
 

12 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

I also reject the framing of spren in fabrials (especially modern ones) as slavery, but I expect we will simply continue to disagree on that, and I'm ok with that. Although, to your point, I did find a WOB that says some spren do consider the Nahel bond slaveryish (I forget exactly what it said), so that's evidence for your point. It does also say that many don't consider it to be slavery though, so kind of like us in a way.

A rare instance of Brandon Sanderson not invalidating my read on his work.  

But yes, I don't think either of us is ever going to change positions on this.

25 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

I'm sorry to hear that. I don't have a problem with mutual respect, but I do have a problem with saying that because someone has a differing belief to me, I need to respect theirs over mine (which is basically what you are wanting Navani to do with the Sibling's view). Are there situations where the other person is right, and I should yield? absolutely. But, it's not every situation, and I think this is one where that isn't the case.

I think that this is one where it is the case.

  

26 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said:

I phrased it poorly, what I meant was "someone else thinks it's true, so that belief supersedes my own", which I don't think is a healthy attitude. Again, nothing wrong with mutual respect, I whole-heartedly support it. But, compromising on your beliefs simply because others disagree seems wrong to me.

My problem is that The Sibling compromises on all its convictions.  I don't think we'll see The Sibling raising any significant objections from here on out, only minor quibbles that will be quickly addressed.

My other problem is that I genuinely regard fabrials as slavery, and I will not root for the humans on Roshar inasmuch as they innovate with, study, use, or create new fabrials.

My third problem is that I regard The Sibling as having been subsumed by Navani's reasoning and essentially Sja-anattified or mind-controlled through a relationship I consider nightmarishly abusive because it reminds me of things I don't want to talk about.
 

Edited February 18 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[buzzbuzz she/her]

3 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I think spren are souls.  Little itty bitty ones.  I see skazes and seons the same way.  I think they go to the Beyond when they die unless killed in specific ways

 

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

On spren not deserving moral consideration, my basis has nothing to do with their ability to reason, or their intelligence. It's entirely based upon souls.

From what I understood from the text was that spren slowly grow more self aware as they exist in the physical realm- so chatgpt wasn't my first thought for them (especially with the ickiness of gen ai)

They do deserve moral consideration, and are seen to make decisions for themselves, as seen in wind and truth, one of them even becoming an unoathed.

I don't think they deserve the consideration of being gods though- by the logic of "they are tiny bits of investiture made self aware hence they are a god", all of scadrial would be dieties. Iirc  the lesser spren already existed on roshar before the death of adonalsium- so lesser spren have only started becoming self aware now in the timeline, when navani changed the way fabrials are created because of her changed world view now that she has bonded to the sibling. Again, they became self aware because navani treated them as self aware and tried to (and succeeded) in giving them a choice to being in a fabrial. It's not very different from how you use ox in a field, in my view. 

Also, navani still believes in vorinism, so sibling isn't a god to her, just a higher spren

Quote

My problem is that The Sibling compromises on all its convictions.

 

My other problem is that I genuinely regard fabrials as slavery, and I will not root for the humans on Roshar inasmuch as they innovate with, study, use, or create new fabrials.

Quotes from wind and truth:

Quote

You’ve said our practices are cruel, Navani said, trying to soften her tone. I’m attempting to do something about that. We keep chulls as beasts of burden; can we not do the same for spren? If being in a fabrial is uncomfortable for a spren … well, so is pulling a cart for a chull. But assuming it’s not too bad, we should be able to train them to do it willingly, with rewards. We can … cultivate them, Sibling. Isn’t this a better way? To have spren take shifts in the fabrials, with training to get in and out willingly?

Quote

I see, the Sibling said. Rushu jolted and looked around, as did the other ardents, indicating the Sibling had chosen to be audible to them as well. This is a good thing you attempt. All spren being free would be preferable. But … if this works … perhaps I can see a compromise. Thank you. For listening and changing. I had forgotten that people are capable of that.

The text does show that yhe sibling initially rejected fabrials because they seemed unnatural to them. However, upon seeing the way the fabrials are now being constructed, the sibling sees that it is not inhumane(insprenane?) 

When the text itself shows it as giving the spren agency, I fear I do not understand where it seems like slavery. Would you call going to work to earn money for sustenance slavery? The lesser spren seem to require attention to remain longer in the physical realm the same way I think.

 

Edited February 18 by buzzbuzz

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

19 minutes ago, buzzbuzz said:

I don't think they deserve the consideration of being gods though- by the logic of "they are tiny bits of investiture made self aware hence they are a god", all of scadrial would be dieties.

[Frustration]

47 minutes ago, buzzbuzz said:

From what I understood from the text was that spren slowly grow more self aware as they exist in the physical realm- so chatgpt wasn't my first thought for them (especially with the ickiness of gen ai)

They grow and develop based off of the collective sum of human thought, while being stated by Cultivation herself to almost entirely exist inside of that dynamic.

I see them as almost exactly the same thing.

47 minutes ago, buzzbuzz said:

They do deserve moral consideration, and are seen to make decisions for themselves, as seen in wind and truth, one of them even becoming an unoathed.

I don't consider being an unoathed to be a qualifier for moral consideration.

Even things like sticks, rocks, and ships can make decisions in the Cosmere, I don't think that entitles them to moral value.

47 minutes ago, buzzbuzz said:

by the logic of "they are tiny bits of investiture made self aware hence they are a god", all of scadrial would be dieties. Iirc 

Everything in the Cosmere has some level of investiture. Scadrians are actually pretty low on that list. Rosharans, Nalthians, and Threnodites all come in above them in investiture.

Edited February 18 by Frustration

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

  

28 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Even things like sticks, rocks, and ships can make decisions in the Cosmere, I don't think that entitles them to moral value.

Everything in the Cosmere has some level of investiture. Scadrians are actually pretty low on that list. Rosharans, Nalthians, and Threnodites all come in above them in investiture.

This is actually one of my favorite things about the Cosmere, though.  I love the idea that everything, even rocks, ships, and sticks, has its own little divine spark of being, that there is no part of creation that is without its own identity.  It's very animist, and it resonates hard with me, who loves sticks and stones and cinderblocks, who used to smile at the bricks of an empty shed as a kid because their color and constancy made me happy.  It resonates with going on hikes and knowing the wildflowers and birds, with learning all the different kinds of rocks.

It pleases my dumb ol' lizard brain in a "pretending that a bit of plywood is a spaceship" kind of way.

That Preservation preserves not just Scadrians but Scadrial, and that Ruin threatens not just the Scadrians but Scadrial, and that Rashek has kept not just the Scadrians but Scadrial itself in an ash-blanketed misery, unites the getting-invested-in-the-world with the getting-invested-in-the-characters in a way that is just spiffy.  That the ghostbloods didn't just kill all those good people on the Wind's Pleasure, but they also burned the lovely ship that wanted to hard to be a good ship, does the same, and having spren for ink, for emotions, for flame, pain, death, rot, does the same, giving The Stormlight Archive something of a "Where's Waldo" or "what do you see on the hike?" layer of depth and color to the world (one of my favorite things on my first read of each book of The Stormlight Archive was learning new varieties of spren), which makes it all the more horrifying when Odium wants to take over and do horrible things all over the place.

Edited February 18 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Immortal Platypus]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

 

That's fair, but "stop enslaving these beings" is, in general, the morally correct thing to do.

yes, obviously I used an exaggerated example, but again, we disagree on the "slavery" concept, and there are also times when killing your friends and family would be the moral thing to do IMO. 

Quote

It bugs me that the Kholin monarchy has enslaved spren, humans, and singers, and that in the same book we get Jasnah doing things to get rid of that, we get Navani expanding it.  Dern it, the moral complexity gives me anxiety because it's genuinely unclear from the published text whether we're supposed to just accept fabrials going forward or if I'm allowed to hope for freedom in the future.

for the record, not all the blame lies with the Kholins for this. Slavery seems to have been a thing since loooong before the Kholins rose to power. In fact, as you mentioned, Jasnah makes efforts to reduce slavery. Dalinar gives up his priceless artifact, worth more than small kingdoms (IIRC) in order to save 30ish slaves' lives. I don't think that accepting fabrials going forward and hoping for freedom are contradictory. Obviously, I don't see it as slavery, but I do think that you could accept fabrials as a reality while hoping for freedom.

US slavery was terribly wrong, but that doesn't mean I now hate the Founding Fathers who had slaves. I recognize that, like me, they did some things right and some things wrong. I think the same principle can apply to the Kholins. 

Quote

And, with the whole "parshendi being magically-mind-broken singers" thing, any "oh, but these aren't intelligent like people, they're more like animals" arguments set off "but what if a future plot twist reveals that they're not..." alarm bells.  Pivoting from "we must not split humans in this hierarchical way and enslave them" and "we must not split singers in this hierarchical way and enslave them" to "Actually, it's entirely okay to do split spren in this hierarchical way and enslave the ones that aren't people-equivalent" feels tonally messy.

the message you portray is certainly tonally messy, but I don't think that's the message being conveyed. Obviously, I don't think the spren are enslaved, but I also tend to lean more toward Frustration's side of spren rights than yours. I think the message is more "each life is valuable, whether it be human, singer, or spren, but each must work and provide value." To say otherwise strikes me as communistic, something to which I am dramatically opposed. humans work and provide value in the form of food, labor, etc. Singers work and provide value in nearly identical ways. Spren cannot work and provide value in such ways, so they must work differently, similarly to how chull cannot work like man or singers, so they provide value in other ways.

Quote

My problem is that The Sibling compromises on all its convictions.  I don't think we'll see The Sibling raising any significant objections from here on out, only minor quibbles that will be quickly addressed.

I don't see it as compromising on convictions, I see it as changing their opinion when something new is introduced. Changing your opinion when new information becomes available is something I value, and see as good. The Sibling compromises, but they don't totally accept fabrials. That's also something I value. I do think that they will continue to object to things, and that they and Navani will work together to continue to improve the experiences of spren in fabrials.

Quote

My other problem is that I genuinely regard fabrials as slavery, and I will not root for the humans on Roshar inasmuch as they innovate with, study, use, or create new fabrials.

That's not the stance I take. Again, the Founding Fathers had slaves. Does that make everything they did bad? No. Does it mean I cannot or will not root for our current system of government to prevail over oligarchy or dictatorships? No. It means that I must recognize that good people can do bad things, and that I can separate the crimes from the person. It means I still need to root for the good things they do while being against the bad things.

Quote

My third problem is that I regard The Sibling as having been subsumed by Navani's reasoning and essentially Sja-anattified or mind-controlled through a relationship I consider nightmarishly abusive because it reminds me of things I don't want to talk about.

I'm afraid that we simply have different views on this, and I don't think there's any evidence I could provide to change your mind. If the Sibling said that they weren't subsumed, you could say it's because of basically Stockholm Syndrome, and that's a valid position. At the end of the day, we have different views, and I don't think that yours can truly be proven wrong. 

I guess my basic question is this: What would it take to get you to change your mind about spren being subsumed by humans in the Nahel bond?

You can also replace the last part of that question with any other position you hold. I think it's important to consider what it would take to move you from your position, it's something I make certain that I do. For example, if we see that many of Dalinar's good deeds were motivated by bad intents, I think that could make me change my mind on his morality. If he saved Bridge 4 simply to spite Sadeas instead of because he valued their lives and they helped him, that would make me start to question him. It doesn't need to be an exact "this is all the evidence I'd need", just a general concept. If there's nothing that could change your mind, I think that's a dangerous place to be in, for anyone.