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

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

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

The Parshendi are ever bit as guilty of the chasmfiend hunting as the humans are.

Well, no. The humans arrived, they increased the rate of hunting and made hunting into a competitive process with an exclusive winner, and this destabilized thing a lot. Again, Chasmfiends are going extinct as a result of this. No one is going to get to use them to eat food anymore. The Listerner hunting and agriculture practice seemed to do this for hundreds if not over a thousand years and it was not the end of Chasmfiends, but 6 years of the War of Reckoning conditions and it seems humans have done their truest ecological role of dooming megafauna.

Edited January 11 by ParaTulip
Idk why, but the post doubled itself.

[Immortal Platypus]

4 hours ago, ParaTulip said:

Well, no. The humans arrived, they increased the rate of hunting and made hunting into a competitive process with an exclusive winner, and this destabilized thing a lot. Again, Chasmfiends are going extinct as a result of this. No one is going to get to use them to eat food anymore. The Listerner hunting and agriculture practice seemed to do this for hundreds if not over a thousand years and it was not the end of Chasmfiends, but 6 years of the War of Reckoning conditions and it seems humans have done their truest ecological role of dooming megafauna.

the rate of extinction could also be caused by the fact that two societies are depending on Chasmfiends for food now, not just one, which is not entirely the Alethi's fault. We don't know if the Alethi would hunt the Chasmfiends to extinction if the Listeners weren't also hunting them. 

[Returned he/him]

On 1/10/2026 at 4:34 PM, Frustration said:

Well you answered your own question there

Too glib, this time. My question was "how do the Alethi operationally define vengeance in this case", which is key when you are suggesting that vengeance as the Alethi justification/reason/motivation for their war against the Parshendi is evidence that they are not pursuing wiping the Parshendi out. Put another way, why does claiming vengeance as their goal mean that they definitely aren't trying to kill all the Parshendi, even when maximum Parshendi casualties is the only Parshendi-related thing they ever do?

You yourself marked vengeance out separately from the gemhearts in their reasoning, so vengeance doesn't equal gemhearts. So, what is vengeance to the Alethi here?

On 1/10/2026 at 4:34 PM, Frustration said:

I wouldn't say kill then all so much as possibly conquer them.

Yes there are no clear objectives but that's because it was emotionally not logically driven.

The hitch is that they didn't make any efforts to do anything like that; only Dalinar mentions it (in WoR), and only years and years into the war, and most of the Alethi were surprised at the idea. Elhokar was responsive to the argument but it was clearly novel to him to imagine explicitly ending the war. The shift to focusing only on securing gemhearts is significant mostly in how it shows that the Alethi don't care so much about the vengeance, which in turn undermines it as reasoning or excuse.

"Emotionally but not logically driven" doesn't work so well as an explanation when they spent years at the Shattered Plains and don't even care very much about the thing they're ostensibly there to do. The Vengeance Pact, in operation, had as step 1 was kill as many Parshendi as possible. There were no additional steps, as far as we know, including any imagining of how many Parshendi dead would be enough to count as vengeance and allow the war to end.

This is what my request for you to define vengeance in this context was meant to clarify. The only Parshendi-related actions the Alethi took were to pursue maximum casualties, and as they had no other considerations or criteria I am not confident that the Alethi defined maximum as anything less than 100%. For what it's worth I don't think that the Alethi had a specific goal to wipe out the Parshendi people, and they were (unevenly) rallied to a different goal when Dalinar pushed for one. But incidental extinction, as a direct consequence of the Alethi war doctrine on the Plains, while applying maximum violence and with no efforts towards anything else is a lot closer to extermination than some other goal with ancillary killing.

Prior to Dalinar receiving the Stormfather's visions "kill them all" was the only tactic, strategy, and objective the Alethi pursued. Slouching directly into extermination because they couldn't be bothered to think about what vengeance even means to them doesn't seem all that morally distinct from explicit goals of extermination to me. Though if the argument is that the Alethi were not specifically, explicitly seeking to eliminate the Parshendi people I think we're in agreement.

Edited January 11 by Returned

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

 

21 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

And I have to say, the continued use of the term "children of Ashyn" bugs me a lot. 

I'm sorry.  I'll call them Rosharans (or the humans on Roshar, or the Rosharan humans) from now on.  I didn't mean to bother you.

21 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Two Mistborn eras showed that the greatest threat of breeding programs and eugenics will always come from other Scadrians, not outsiders. It's the central problem of their magic systems, and we'll see them attempt to deal with it throughout the books and eras. In a similar way to how Rosharan magic naturally presents questions similar to animal rights. 

To be fair, no outsiders have ever had the power to do such things yet.  And the Set serves Autonomy.  For all we know, some of the missing women/babies/children could have been taken to one of Autonomy's worlds.  If the Set counts as Scadrian than the ghostbloods on Roshar ought to count as at least mostly Rosharan (those who were born on Roshar, such as Mraize, as opposed to those who were not, such as Iyatil, seem to compose most of the ghostbloods on Roshar).

21 hours ago, Frustration said:

I've mostly ignored your attempts at condemning an entire species for the crimes of a few, but I'll try something else.

The ultimate perpetrators behind the crimes you so despise are not Ashynite, but Yolish.

Ashyn was destroyed because of the meddling of two of the Yolish.

The humans moved to Roshar at the bidding of the Yolish vessels.

The desolations occurred because of the Yolish Shards.

BAM was imprisoned in a power play of those same Yolish acters.

Spren are used in fabrials because the Yolish taught the humans how to do it.

The Ashynites you so hate, are the victims of their Yolish overlords.

Wait, wait, Yolish?  Is that the demonym for whatever the origin world is for Rayse, Tanavast, (almost certainly, but I could be wrong about this) the other 14 who shattered Adonalsium, (presumably... I guess I'd assumed that they all came from different worlds and never thought about it) Hoid, (also presumably) whoever the "old reptile" is that wrote the letter telling Hoid to stop meddling?

That was probably revealed somewhere in Tanavast's chapters.  My bad for missing that (to be fair, the Cosmere is a remarkably long and complicated series).  Or maybe it was in one of the books I haven't been able to get yet (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Isles Of The Emberdark) or in a Word of Brandon.

If I'm understanding you right, it is, and that's a remarkably compelling case you've made there.

I mean, assuming Leras and Ati were Yolish, the fact that the happy ending of the original Mistborn trilogy is both of them gone, and the way that Leras's most positive contribution was in sealing his and Ati's minds...

And Tanavast and Koravellium Avast's best contribution was imprisoning Rayse...

And considering the shattering of Adonalsium...

And considering that the "old reptile" looked at what the rest were doing and said "Nah, I'm not doing any of that...".

And considering how much of what the Rosharan humans have forgotten is stuff that Hoid (who I'm not sure is Yolish.  I've assumed that he was born on Ashyn since he's so attached to the Rosharan descendants of those who were born there) was around for and clearly knows but is not telling...

Incredible points.  Hmm.  This doesn't exonerate the humans of Roshar for me (it's possible to be both victim and perpetrator without either of those things meaning the other doesn't count) any more than being manipulated by Odium exonerates Moash for me or being manipulated by Autonomy exonerates the Set for me, though, because doing evil heinous crud is still doing evil heinous crud and free will is a thing.

I mean, the Rosharans could have rejected the use of Fabrials.  And I think Ashyn was destroyed by its mortal inhabitants (I'm not certain, as far as I can tell it's somewhat ambiguous).

You can be evil or do evil without being the final boss, I guess, is how I see it.  

Edited January 12 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Immortal Platypus]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Wait, wait, Yolish?  Is that the demonym for whatever the origin world is for Rayse, Tanavast, (almost certainly, but I could be wrong about this) the other 14 who shattered Adonalsium, (presumably... I guess I'd assumed that they all came from different worlds and never thought about it) Hoid, (also presumably) whoever the "old reptile" is that wrote the letter telling Hoid to stop meddling?

they are all Yolish (except maybe the "old reptile", I don't recall if he's Yolish), correct. They are all from Yolen.

Also, would you like to know who the "old reptile" is (at least his name), or no? He has been named, at least in a WOB, but if you don't want to know, I won't spoil it.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

5 hours ago, Immortal Platypus said:

they are all Yolish (except maybe the "old reptile", I don't recall if he's Yolish), correct. They are all from Yolen.

Also, would you like to know who the "old reptile" is (at least his name), or no? He has been named, at least in a WOB, but if you don't want to know, I won't spoil it.

I always called him Sir Biffington Crankyscales Snowball III, Sun-Basking Prince of Eternal Exasperation in my notebooks, because of his dignified grumpy-old-man-who-wants-you-to-get-off-his-lawn-but-secretly-cares manner, him being a reptile whom Hoid is comfortable enough with to talk smack to but whom Hoid seems to sincerely respect (so he's clearly someone of significance but is also enough of a doofus to call Hoid a friend), and, as for "Snowball", he accuses Hoid with "You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow." and his chief concern seems to be that doing things will snowball out of control, also, reptiles are cold blooded.

[ScadrianTank he/him]

7 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I'm sorry.  I'll call them Rosharans (or the humans on Roshar, or the Rosharan humans) from now on.  I didn't mean to bother you.

Feel free to call whom you want, however you want. And certainly don't stop on my behalf. It's your read of the story, and it's no less valid than what anyone else here said. I just find it frustrating to disagree about what I used to believe was such a straightforward section of text.

To be clear, I'm not challenging this position here. You've had this argument for 5~ish pages of this topic, and I doubt anyone wants to restart it. It's just my brain can't fully grok it, and that's why I say it bugs me. 

[therunner he/him]

10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

To be fair, no outsiders have ever had the power to do such things yet.  And the Set serves Autonomy.  For all we know, some of the missing women/babies/children could have been taken to one of Autonomy's worlds.  If the Set counts as Scadrian than the ghostbloods on Roshar ought to count as at least mostly Rosharan (those who were born on Roshar, such as Mraize, as opposed to those who were not, such as Iyatil, seem to compose most of the ghostbloods on Roshar).

The Set count as Scadrian, because (while provided power by foreign Shard), their methods and goals are largely set by themselves. In TLM we see that there is large amount of infighting and jostling for power, where you can depose the leadesrhip if you prove your goals/methods are the better way (i.e. Telsin and her rockets vs breeding experiments vs Hemalurgic experiments). Outside of providing power to the leader, Autonomy seems relatively hands-off with them, and the goals and methodology are set by Scadrians.

The Ghostbloods on the other hand are explicitly controlled by someone of Scadrian heritage (Iyatil), under frequent supervision by Scadrian (Kelsier, up until RoW giving them direct orders on what to achieve, such as seizing Oathgates or kidnapping Kalak), so both their goals and their methods are frequently decided by Scadrians.

I.e. Ghostbloods would likely not choose to kidnap Kalak by themselves, if Kelsier didn't explicitly want him.

Quote

And I think Ashyn was destroyed by its mortal inhabitants (I'm not certain, as far as I can tell it's somewhat ambiguous).

Ashyn was destroyed after two Shards turned it into their battle ground. 
First Odium arrived and started providing them with Surges and formenting conflict, and then Tanavast joined in to oppose Rayse. Then Ashyn was destroyed, as the Shards provided the people with ever escalating amounts of power. 

Notably, what happened on Ashyn lead to Tanavast and Rayse making a deal that limited the amount of power they can provide their mortal servants, so that this doesn't happen again.

[Immortal Platypus]

12 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I always called him Sir Biffington Crankyscales Snowball III, Sun-Basking Prince of Eternal Exasperation in my notebooks, because of his dignified grumpy-old-man-who-wants-you-to-get-off-his-lawn-but-secretly-cares manner, him being a reptile whom Hoid is comfortable enough with to talk smack to but whom Hoid seems to sincerely respect (so he's clearly someone of significance but is also enough of a doofus to call Hoid a friend), and, as for "Snowball", he accuses Hoid with "You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow." and his chief concern seems to be that doing things will snowball out of control, also, reptiles are cold blooded.

absolutely valid name, but not quite what he's named. you're kinda close on some parts though. do you want to know?

Also, reading that name the first time made me laugh, especially picturing you writing it all the way out in your notebooks every time you mention him  

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Sure, drop the name on me, buddy, unless it's a character we've met before and it's a massive spoiler (for example: if it turns out that Aanden or Clubs or Llarimar were secretly him despite that not being in any way guessable).

[Qianweilian He/him]

19 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Sure, drop the name on me, buddy

His name is Frost, and he is a dragon like Cultivation.

[Nitpicking]

2 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

His name is Frost, and he is a dragon like Cultivation.

Spoilers for Dragonsteel Prime and Isles of the Emberdark:

Spoiler

Frost appears in the non-canon Dragonsteel Prime and an unpublished story that I can't recall the title of on Brandon's web site, and is mentioned in Emberdark.

 

[Immortal Platypus]

2 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Sure, drop the name on me, buddy, unless it's a character we've met before and it's a massive spoiler (for example: if it turns out that Aanden or Clubs or Llarimar were secretly him despite that not being in any way guessable).

Like they said, it's Frost, so Snowball was pretty close. 

[redundant]

3 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Spoilers for Dragonsteel Prime and Isles of the Emberdark:

  Hide contents

Frost appears in the non-canon Dragonsteel Prime and an unpublished story that I can't recall the title of on Brandon's web site, and is mentioned in Emberdark.

 

To nitpick you Nitpicking.

Spoiler

Frost appears in Emberdark at the beginning with baby Starling and in the flashback to Cakoban.

 

[Frustration]

On 1/11/2026 at 6:05 AM, ParaTulip said:

Well, no. The humans arrived, they increased the rate of hunting and made hunting into a competitive process with an exclusive winner, and this destabilized thing a lot. Again, Chasmfiends are going extinct as a result of this. No one is going to get to use them to eat food anymore. The Listerner hunting and agriculture practice seemed to do this for hundreds if not over a thousand years and it was not the end of Chasmfiends, but 6 years of the War of Reckoning conditions and it seems humans have done their truest ecological role of dooming megafauna.

It's not the human hunting it's the fact that between the humans and the singers they are taking every single one. The pupating chasmfiends the humans don't take the Parshendi do and vice versa. They share equal guilt.

On 1/11/2026 at 11:36 AM, Returned said:

Too glib, this time. My question was "how do the Alethi operationally define vengeance in this case", which is key when you are suggesting that vengeance as the Alethi justification/reason/motivation for their war against the Parshendi is evidence that they are not pursuing wiping the Parshendi out. Put another way, why does claiming vengeance as their goal mean that they definitely aren't trying to kill all the Parshendi, even when maximum Parshendi casualties is the only Parshendi-related thing they ever do?

You yourself marked vengeance out separately from the gemhearts in their reasoning, so vengeance doesn't equal gemhearts. So, what is vengeance to the Alethi here?

You misinterpret what I was saying. When the war started it was about vengeance, before gemhearts and the shattered plains even came into the equation. Back when they would have (based on the Sunmaker) walked in, torched the capital and taken over.

By the time of WoK(and probably within the first year of the war) vengeance is no longer a part of the equations and they only care about the gemhearts.

That's why when the Parshendi stopped coming to fight in WoR only Dalinar really sees an issue.

On 1/11/2026 at 12:13 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Wait, wait, Yolish?  Is that the demonym for whatever the origin world is for Rayse, Tanavast, (almost certainly, but I could be wrong about this) the other 14 who shattered Adonalsium, (presumably... I guess I'd assumed that they all came from different worlds and never thought about it) Hoid, (also presumably) whoever the "old reptile" is that wrote the letter telling Hoid to stop meddling?

That was probably revealed somewhere in Tanavast's chapters.  My bad for missing that (to be fair, the Cosmere is a remarkably long and complicated series).  Or maybe it was in one of the books I haven't been able to get yet (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Isles Of The Emberdark) or in a Word of Brandon.

If I'm understanding you right, it is, and that's a remarkably compelling case you've made there.

I mean, assuming Leras and Ati were Yolish, the fact that the happy ending of the original Mistborn trilogy is both of them gone, and the way that Leras's most positive contribution was in sealing his and Ati's minds...

And Tanavast and Koravellium Avast's best contribution was imprisoning Rayse...

And considering the shattering of Adonalsium...

And considering that the "old reptile" looked at what the rest were doing and said "Nah, I'm not doing any of that...".

And considering how much of what the Rosharan humans have forgotten is stuff that Hoid (who I'm not sure is Yolish.  I've assumed that he was born on Ashyn since he's so attached to the Rosharan descendants of those who were born there) was around for and clearly knows but is not telling...

Incredible points.  Hmm.  This doesn't exonerate the humans of Roshar for me (it's possible to be both victim and perpetrator without either of those things meaning the other doesn't count) any more than being manipulated by Odium exonerates Moash for me or being manipulated by Autonomy exonerates the Set for me, though, because doing evil heinous crud is still doing evil heinous crud and free will is a thing.

I mean, the Rosharans could have rejected the use of Fabrials.  And I think Ashyn was destroyed by its mortal inhabitants (I'm not certain, as far as I can tell it's somewhat ambiguous).

You can be evil or do evil without being the final boss, I guess, is how I see it.  

Hoid is also Yollish.

All the original vessels, Hoid, Frost, they're all Yolish so far as Brandon has revealed.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Quoted from The Way of Kings, page 226, chapter twelve

Quote

Parshendi raids had grown less bold during the years of fighting--Alethi scribes guessed their numbers were three-quarters their prior strength, though it was difficult to judge--but the king's presence might be enough to entice them into a reckless attack. 

 

Quoted from The Way Of Kings, page 269, chapter 15

Quote

Dalinar left the fallen chasmfiend behind.  He understood each step in the process of what had happened during those six years.  He'd even hastened some of them.  Only now did he worry.  They were making headway in cutting down the Parshendi numbers, but the original goal of vengeance for Gavilar's murder had been forgotten.  The Alethi lounged, they played, and they idled.

Even though they'd killed plenty of Parshendi--as many as a quarter of their originally estimated forces were dead--this was just taking so long.  The siege had lasted six years and could easily last another six.  That troubled him.  Obviously the Parshendi had expected to be besieged here.  They'd prepared supply dumps and had been ready to move their entire population to the Shattered Plains, where they could use these Heralds-forsaken chasms and plateaus like hundreds of moats and fortifications.

 

I think these may be relevant to this discussion.

 

 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

I guess I killed the thread.

I'll pose a comparison and a question, then.

In The Lost Metal, it is established that the Harmonium-Trellium bomb would have destroyed or made uninhabitable the Elendel Basin.  In the same book, it's established that the Elendel Basin contains at least half the population of Scadrial's northern continent (which we can assume is the more populous of the two continents, given that the Southern Scadrians experienced Harmony's fixing of Scadrial as a sudden climactic shift that almost drove them to extinction), and thus, we can assume that the Harmonium-Trellium bomb would have killed a quarter of Scadrial's population.

Considering that the children of Ashyn killed a quarter of the Listeners in six years (while maintaining both reader sympathy and author sympathy!), and Dalinar was complaining that it was taking too long...

What would the Kholins have done with something like the Harmonium-Trellium bomb?

Edited January 19 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Qianweilian He/him]

19 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I guess I killed the thread.

I don't think you killed it, so much as everyone got bored and tired. It was already slowing down somewhat, and people lost interest. While it was certainly a somewhat engaging discussion, the nine pages of back-and-forth were starting to exhausting. Also, most issues relevant to the discussion have been made, and a lot of the discourse was just reiterating and reframing the same talking points. I wouldn't take it too personally, it lasted pretty long as far as discussions go, at least it's not as long as the Scadrial vs Roshar thread post RoW.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Well then, I guess, if this thread is over, I might as well sum up everything I've been trying to say so it's all in one place, one massive tantrum for all my salt so I can be chill and reasonable from here on out and still be the official Number One Hater Of Ashynites.  Here goes... 

I'm unreasonable, and prefer idealism and absolutism to nuance and pragmatism.  The Lost Metal and Wind and Truth left me without hope for Scadrial.

Scadrial always had by far the weakest magic system, and that was before it was nerfed into the ground.  Scadrial has the smallest population of any shardworld.  Its Shard is paralyzed and unable to effectively act.  There are zero Mistborn books in which scadrians aren't being trapped into horrifying breeding programs, and zero Mistborn books with happy endings that aren't revealed to be false later.
Its only "advantage" is "technological progress", which just means any any enemies can easily reverse-engineer their technology (Invention is an entirely different Shard, I do not trust technology to end up being any sort of actual advantage in the long run).  Furthermore, in this field it is behind Autonomy's worlds and presumably behind Invention's worlds.
One bomb could kill a quarter of Scadrial's population.

Meanwhile, the Rosharans have teleportation, matter conversion, instant communication, telepathy/mind-control in the Nahel bond, antigravity, control over friction, implements to cut on the level of fundamental particles, perfect hologram-type illusions, and can casually violate thermodynamics.  In addition to this they are learning the secrets of the fundamental forces of the universe so whatever parts of the previous are limited will soon be commonplace for them.  But none of this is "technology", it's all magic that can't be reverse-engineered.  Also Windrunners are always right and everyone ends up agreeing with them or being wrong so that's like emotional allomancy times infinity.

Furthermore, Scadrial is themed around Preservation and Ruin, which essentially means it's about getting wrecked and enduring it.  The moral structure of the Mistborn books is idealistic and absolutist, which makes it an anachronism in the framework of mister Sanderson's writing and a threat to the consequentialist, pragmatic, oaths-are-stupid-and-ideals-are-meaningless-nonsense be-reasonable-don't-be-fanatic kill-your-conscience the-ends-justify-the-means there-are-no-consequences ethos of The Stormlight Archive (exemplified by notorious atrocity-committer and taboo-breaker Dalinar Kholin giving Honor to Taravangian, breaking oaths, committing genocidal acts, rejecting Tanavast's plan for his own, and then getting off entirely without eternal or spiritual consequence--the gods themselves are helpless before mortal chicanery--there are no consequences for oathbreaking (no law, no meaning, only a cold nihilism without justice), and even more exemplified by Navani's subsuming of The Sibling and enslavement of the spren).

The protagonists of The Stormlight Archive are heartless, soulless pragmatists who, at the moment of truth, choose reason over all other virtue and then act as though the ideal failed them when what truly happened was them choosing a different ideal (reason rather than honor); but who come off as the good guys because of their sad backstories, likable personalities, and an unearned resonance with the notions of idealism and honor which turns out to be mere aesthetics covering a fundamentally amoral, casually heinous, and exploitative core.  The protagonists of Mistborn are zealous, uncompromising, sincere idealists and absolutists who, at the moment of truth, embody the purposes of their gods; but who come off as scoundrels and rogues because the narrative prioritizes the viewpoints of those they most oppose over those they most help, because the Mistborn novels' focus on intrigue and secrets primes readers to be suspicious, and because of the Mistborn series' general aesthetics.  In other words, while The Stormlight Archive appears to be about Lawful Good Paladins and Mistborn appears to be about Chaotic Good Thieves, in practice the Radiants are unrestricted by their oaths and fail to act in good faith where the heroes of Scadrial act in the way opposite of that.

The children of Ashyn destroyed their own world, came as refugees to a second, eradicated and enslaved the natives after convincing the gods and spren to betray said natives for them, killed spren and lobotomized a species by imprisoning Mishram at a parlay, and took over said second world.  When they eventually found the last remaining free natives, they went from first contact to having killed one fourth of them in six years.  Then they invented a new way to kill spren and shared it with Odium's forces.  They also enslaved the spren in fabrials and mind-controlled their only advocate into compliance.  And, at the end of the last we saw of them, Dalinar more or less gave Honor to Taravangian, pointed him at Scadrial, and said "Sic 'em, boy".  

Notable Jerkface Kaladin orders an atrocity for the purposes of survival, nearly kills Sylphrena, keeps Rlain as a slave, tells Sigzil to kill his conscience, and "corrects" Szeth's thoughts until he breaks down and accepts a "healthy" conception of reality (especially upsetting, as this is the last absolutist on Roshar finally submitting to reason).  Shallan "I murdered both my parents and caused the apocalypse" Davar murders Iyatil and takes her clothes off.  Jasnah "so freaking creepy they had to lock her up as a child to protect the world from her bad vibes" Kholin loses a decency-off to the final boss, making it impossible for the coalition to be negotiated with and leaving Fen with no choice but to accept Odium's rule.  Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor puts POOPIES in people's FOOD.  Navani "suck-empress of Garbage" Kholin is number five on my Fictional Hate List and the top three are all dead.  And all of them maintain both reader and author sympathy throughout.

Also none of these people have killed Moash (number four on my Fictional Hate List), which suuuuuuuuucks.

When Honor and Odium merge, the honorspren choose the children of Ashyn over their own god.  Sure, he would have destroyed them, but the prospect of being ended never stopped the Honorspren from serving Honor before.  The narrative doesn't portray this as betrayal because the honorspren are consistent with what is, in the end, the one and only moral rule of The Stormlight Archive:  Good is defined as whatever is best for / desired by the children of Ashyn.

We get almost no Singer points of view compared to human points of view because having any more Singer points of view would have shifted the moral "center of gravity" away from the humans.  If we cared about those slaughtered Parshendi as dozens of individual and named characters with personalities and hundreds of pages of characterization, if we knew their names and stories, if the books let them be main characters, it would be much harder to get invested in the anxieties and love triangles of the Kholin family and those in their orbit.

In short, the children of Ashyn are a narrative black hole that warps everything around them, who always get what they want through sheer main character energy and author favoritism, and now that they're on Scadrial which has more "fated for bad things" flags than a veteran cop two weeks from retirement going on one last case to finally get the evidence to put that corrupt senator he's been chasing for decades behind bars teaming up with a young rookie main character and showing said rookie a picture of his wife and kids while promising to explain the mysterious past of his adopted child as soon as he gets back... I'm sensing a future clash between Roshar's cynical realism and Scadrial's idealist absolutism, and I might have hope for the latter if mister Sanderson hadn't spent several thousand pages teaching me not to hope, if every WOB about magic systems didn't favor Roshar's magic systems over Scadrial's, and if we hadn't gone the ENTIRE MISTBORN SERIES SINCE 2008 without any actual Mistborn doing Mistborn things (for crying out loud, the upcoming Ghostbloods series will probably nerf Allomancy and Feruchemy AGAIN until we have only one type of Ferring and only one type of Misting), if we didn't have a WOB confirming that mister Sanderson's author-avatar Hoid thinks Scadrial should have Taldain instant noodles AND the presence of chouta on Scadrial implying that other cultures can, should, and will replace what already exists on Scadrial, if every "Scadrial/Scadrial-related-thing vs Roshar/Roshar-related-thing" thread didn't end with the latter roflstomping the former, or if things weren't such that Retribution, Bavadin, Hoid, and certain of the children of Ashyn all have decided that Scadrial should be their new stomping grounds.

Gosh-dang it, mister Sanderson, please throw the world of mists and metal a bone!  Let Sazed finally have his crash-out!  Let his name be Discord and let us love him for it.

(Also I think Autonomy helped Odium kill Devotion and Dominion and maybe Ambition; and I think Reason might be on Roshar messing with things and that's why everyone on Roshar acts all reasonable instead of honorable but zero of my theories have ever turned out to be true so I won't be surprised if neither turns out to be the case.)

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

I don't think you killed it, so much as everyone got bored and tired. It was already slowing down somewhat, and people lost interest. While it was certainly a somewhat engaging discussion, the nine pages of back-and-forth were starting to exhausting. Also, most issues relevant to the discussion have been made, and a lot of the discourse was just reiterating and reframing the same talking points. I wouldn't take it too personally, it lasted pretty long as far as discussions go, at least it's not as long as the Scadrial vs Roshar thread post RoW.

As one of the individuals behind that madness I am glad someone else brings this up now and again.

 

@Aliroz-The-Confused I just want to say that your post had me dying from laughter, please make more threads like this.

4 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I guess I killed the thread.

I'll pose a comparison and a question, then.

In The Lost Metal, it is established that the Harmonium-Trellium bomb would have destroyed or made uninhabitable the Elendel Basin.  In the same book, it's established that the Elendel Basin contains at least half the population of Scadrial's northern continent (which we can assume is the more populous of the two continents, given that the Southern Scadrians experienced Harmony's fixing of Scadrial as a sudden climactic shift that almost drove them to extinction), and thus, we can assume that the Harmonium-Trellium bomb would have killed a quarter of Scadrial's population.

Considering that the children of Ashyn killed a quarter of the Listeners in six years (while maintaining both reader sympathy and author sympathy!), and Dalinar was complaining that it was taking too long...

What would the Kholins have done with something like the Harmonium-Trellium bomb?

Small point here, mostly because I have spent probably more time than anybody on these threads calculating the potential yield of the bomb

Spoiler

 

And it wouldn't have taken out the whole basin, though they might have felt it.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I'm unreasonable, and prefer idealism and absolutism to nuance and pragmatism

Based

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Scadrial always had by far the weakest magic system, and that was before it was nerfed into the ground.  Scadrial has the smallest population of any shardworld.  Its Shard is paralyzed and unable to effectively act.  There are zero Mistborn books in which scadrians aren't being trapped into horrifying breeding programs, and zero Mistborn books with happy endings that aren't revealed to be false later.
Its only "advantage" is "technological progress", which just means any any enemies can easily reverse-engineer their technology (Invention is an entirely different Shard, I do not trust technology to end up being any sort of actual advantage in the long run).  Furthermore, in this field it is behind Autonomy's worlds and presumably behind Invention's worlds.
One bomb could kill a quarter of Scadrial's population.

Meanwhile, the Rosharans have teleportation, matter conversion, instant communication, telepathy/mind-control in the Nahel bond, antigravity, control over friction, implements to cut on the level of fundamental particles, perfect hologram-type illusions, and can casually violate thermodynamics.  In addition to this they are learning the secrets of the fundamental forces of the universe so whatever parts of the previous are limited will soon be commonplace for them.  But none of this is "technology", it's all magic that can't be reverse-engineered.  Also Windrunners are always right and everyone ends up agreeing with them or being wrong so that's like emotional allomancy times infinity.

That's actually hilarious, and also a lot of my personal thoughts.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

 The protagonists of Mistborn are zealous, uncompromising, sincere idealists and absolutists who, at the moment of truth, embody the purposes of their gods; but who come off as scoundrels and rogues because the narrative prioritizes the viewpoints of those they most oppose over those they most help, because the Mistborn novels' focus on intrigue and secrets primes readers to be suspicious, and because of the Mistborn series' general aesthetics.  In other words, while The Stormlight Archive appears to be about Lawful Good Paladins and Mistborn appears to be about Chaotic Good Thieves, in practice the Radiants are unrestricted by their oaths and fail to act in good faith where the heroes of Scadrial act in the way opposite of that.

That is an interesting observation on narative expectations and how they shape reader perceptions. I am still confused about this part though:  but who come off as scoundrels and rogues because the narrative prioritizes the viewpoints of those they most oppose over those they most help,

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Jasnah "so freaking creepy they had to lock her up as a child to protect the world from her bad vibes" Kholin loses a decency-off to the final boss, making it impossible for the coalition to be negotiated with and leaving Fen with no choice but to accept Odium's rule.  Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor puts POOPIES in people's FOOD.  Navani "suck-empress of Garbage" Kholin is number five on my Fictional Hate List and the top three are all dead.  And all of them maintain both reader and author sympathy throughout.

Stop I'm dying. That's too funny.

Also I too hate Jasnah and Navani.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor puts POOPIES in people's FOOD. 

Okay but:

1. That was really funny

2. Sadeas deserves it.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Navani "suck-empress of Garbage" Kholin is number five on my Fictional Hate List and the top three are all dead.  And all of them maintain both reader and author sympathy throughout.

Also none of these people have killed Moash (number four on my Fictional Hate List), which suuuuuuuuucks.

I really want to know who individuals 1-3 are now.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

In short, the children of Ashyn are a narrative black hole that warps everything around them, who always get what they want through sheer main character energy and author favoritism

Yeah SA characters get plot armor beyond any reason. Brandon even retconned who discovered aluminum/conjoiner fabrials because it was more important Hulio figure it out than someone we didn't know.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

In short, the children of Ashyn are a narrative black hole that warps everything around them, who always get what they want through sheer main character energy and author favoritism, and now that they're on Scadrial which has more "fated for bad things" flags than a veteran cop two weeks from retirement going on one last case to finally get the evidence to put that corrupt senator he's been chasing for decades behind bars teaming up with a young rookie main character and showing said rookie a picture of his wife and kids while promising to explain the mysterious past of his adopted child as soon as he gets back... I'm sensing a future clash between Roshar's cynical realism and Scadrial's idealist absolutism, and I might have hope for the latter if mister Sanderson hadn't spent several thousand pages teaching me not to hope, if every WOB about magic systems didn't favor Roshar's magic systems over Scadrial's, and if we hadn't gone the ENTIRE MISTBORN SERIES SINCE 2008 without any actual Mistborn doing Mistborn things (for crying out loud, the upcoming Ghostbloods series will probably nerf Allomancy and Feruchemy AGAIN until we have only one type of Ferring and only one type of Misting), if we didn't have a WOB confirming that mister Sanderson's author-avatar Hoid thinks Scadrial should have Taldain instant noodles AND the presence of chouta on Scadrial implying that other cultures can, should, and will replace what already exists on Scadrial, if every "Scadrial/Scadrial-related-thing vs Roshar/Roshar-related-thing" thread didn't end with the latter roflstomping the former, or if things weren't such that Retribution, Bavadin, Hoid, and certain of the children of Ashyn all have decided that Scadrial should be their new stomping grounds.

Gosh-dang it, mister Sanderson, please throw the world of mists and metal a bone!  Let Sazed finally have his crash-out!  Let his name be Discord and let us love him for it.

I have been saying for years the metalic arts need some buffs.

Also this is hilarious.

[Qianweilian He/him]

6 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I really want to know who individuals 1-3 are now.

My guess is Sadeas, Amaram, and Straff

6 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I have been saying for years the metalic arts need some buffs.

They're weird as in they are either op or weaksauce. Compounding is stupid and hemalurgy is really scary, but just a regular Feruchemist isn't much more than convenient and "I'll spend my life savings on mopping the floor with one guy."

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

I am still confused about this part though:  but who come off as scoundrels and rogues because the narrative prioritizes the viewpoints of those they most oppose over those they most help,

Spoiler

The original Mistborn trilogy gives the nobility a viewpoint through Elend "the original instance of suck in the Cosmere and only thing keeping Mistborn: The Final Empire from being flawless" Venture, and never really does the same for the enslaved skaa.  Any framing other than the one we got makes Kelsier and the Crew come off better and the nobility come off as worse.

In the opposite way, any framing other than the one we got makes the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive come off way worse.

The original Mistborn Trilogy, outside of one scene with li'l Spook, doesn't do flashback, and tends to have the horrors recounted through dialogue, distancing us from what happened to Kareien, Mare, and Tindwyl.  We're not with Dockson at the Devinshae plantations, we're not with Kelsier in the pits of Hathsin, we're not with Sazed during the years that made him Sazed.  We're not with Vin in her terrible childhood in the same way we're with Shallan for hers.

But we get copious flashbacks with Tien, Helaran, and even Szeth's family.  We see the exact moments of trauma that break Kaladin, Shallan, and Szeth.

We get to see Kaladin and Tien, the brothers Stormblessed, as little boys.  We don't get to see that for Marsh and Kelsier, the life-death brothers.

In the Wax and Wayne novels, we eventually get (separate) flashbacks to Li'l Wax and Li'l Wayne, and this is perhaps a structural necessity without which they might come off as significantly less sympathetic.

In other words, the nobility of Scadrial get a sympathetic representative among the main characters where the enslaved Skaa don't, and the nobility of Roshar get many sympathetic representatives among the main characters where the enslaved Singers don't.  In both cases, mister Sanderson seems to take trouble to shield his readers from the horrifying reality of slavery and appears more comfortable highlighting the humanity of powerful people either directly involved in, complicit in, or otherwise content to enjoy great power based in, slavery.

Kelsier being a danger to Elend primes the readers to question the righteousness of overthrowing the Final Empire.  Kaladin being a bodyguard to the Kholins primes the readers not to question the righteousness of the invasion of the Shattered Plains.  We see Kaladin through the eyes of those who love him most and who he has most helped (Bridge Four), but we never get to see Kelsier through the eyes of the Skaa.

This, however, kind of backfires on me because I have difficulty relating to most fictional point-of-view characters and thus tend to glom on really hard to minor characters, nameless populations, and folks with eight total lines of dialogue across six books because my imagination goes all "Oh, what are these ones like?" and has a wonderful time connecting to the setting through imagining their worlds.  It's kind of like how the one Star Wars character you can make any Star Wars fan smile by mentioning is that blue elephanty keyboard-circle-playing guy in Jabba's palace (you know the one!  Don't act like you don't love that guy.).

Not a spoiler for fiction, just spoilered for excessive prolixity.

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Okay but:

1. That was really funny

2. Sadeas deserves it.

My inner school lunchlady and inner school lunchlord (what else would the male equivalent of a lunchlady be) are screaming "But it's a health code violation!".  But yes, Sadeas deserved it, and a lot worse, a lot earlier.

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Also I too hate Jasnah and Navani.

Wait, are you my cousin?  Or... or is there a third person in addition to my cousin and I who hates Navani (we're respectively the President and Treasurer of the Navani Hate Club)?

5 hours ago, Qianweilian said:

My guess is Sadeas, Amaram, and Straff

Nope, though Straff was the first Cosmere character to get on the hate-list.

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

I really want to know who individuals 1-3 are now.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

They're from a novel series very dear to me, which, when I read it, became my favorite fiction of all time, displacing the Cosmere from that position.  My cousin got me into it, in the same way that I got my cousin into the Cosmere, and we regard the two introductions as equally significant in our reading lives.  There are no fanfictions of it on the internet.  There is no fan art of it on the internet.  No mentions on TvTropes or Wikipedia.  No fan forums.  It is... pure, innocent of the ways of the internet.  I watched the Cosmere go from being something I could think was meant specifically for me to something that belonged to a massive fandom.  I'm not gonna let the other series have the same fate... and its lack of internet presence implies that all who love it have felt the same way.

 

Edited January 20 by Aliroz-The-Confused
Italicizing the titles of books.

[Schizoposting]

4 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

I'm unreasonable, and prefer idealism and absolutism to nuance and pragmatism.  The Lost Metal and Wind and Truth left me without hope for Scadrial.

What do you mean by "idealism" and "pragmatism", and how are you defining "absolutism" as it relates to "nuance"? I find that the average philosophically uneducated person tends to have very incoherent beliefs and values. So, it would be very helpful for you to clarify your philosophy, since the words that you used have very specific meanings in a philosophical context. 

[therunner he/him]

7 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Well then, I guess, if this thread is over, I might as well sum up everything I've been trying to say so it's all in one place, one massive tantrum for all my salt so I can be chill and reasonable from here on out and still be the official Number One Hater Of Ashynites.  Here goes... 

I'm unreasonable, and prefer idealism and absolutism to nuance and pragmatism.  The Lost Metal and Wind and Truth left me without hope for Scadrial.

Scadrial always had by far the weakest magic system, and that was before it was nerfed into the ground.  Scadrial has the smallest population of any shardworld.  Its Shard is paralyzed and unable to effectively act.  There are zero Mistborn books in which scadrians aren't being trapped into horrifying breeding programs, and zero Mistborn books with happy endings that aren't revealed to be false later.
Its only "advantage" is "technological progress", which just means any any enemies can easily reverse-engineer their technology (Invention is an entirely different Shard, I do not trust technology to end up being any sort of actual advantage in the long run).  Furthermore, in this field it is behind Autonomy's worlds and presumably behind Invention's worlds.
One bomb could kill a quarter of Scadrial's population.

Meanwhile, the Rosharans have teleportation, matter conversion, instant communication, telepathy/mind-control in the Nahel bond, antigravity, control over friction, implements to cut on the level of fundamental particles, perfect hologram-type illusions, and can casually violate thermodynamics.  In addition to this they are learning the secrets of the fundamental forces of the universe so whatever parts of the previous are limited will soon be commonplace for them.  But none of this is "technology", it's all magic that can't be reverse-engineered.  Also Windrunners are always right and everyone ends up agreeing with them or being wrong so that's like emotional allomancy times infinity.

Furthermore, Scadrial is themed around Preservation and Ruin, which essentially means it's about getting wrecked and enduring it.  The moral structure of the Mistborn books is idealistic and absolutist, which makes it an anachronism in the framework of mister Sanderson's writing and a threat to the consequentialist, pragmatic, oaths-are-stupid-and-ideals-are-meaningless-nonsense be-reasonable-don't-be-fanatic kill-your-conscience the-ends-justify-the-means there-are-no-consequences ethos of The Stormlight Archive (exemplified by notorious atrocity-committer and taboo-breaker Dalinar Kholin giving Honor to Taravangian, breaking oaths, committing genocidal acts, rejecting Tanavast's plan for his own, and then getting off entirely without eternal or spiritual consequence--the gods themselves are helpless before mortal chicanery--there are no consequences for oathbreaking (no law, no meaning, only a cold nihilism without justice), and even more exemplified by Navani's subsuming of The Sibling and enslavement of the spren).

The protagonists of The Stormlight Archive are heartless, soulless pragmatists who, at the moment of truth, choose reason over all other virtue and then act as though the ideal failed them when what truly happened was them choosing a different ideal (reason rather than honor); but who come off as the good guys because of their sad backstories, likable personalities, and an unearned resonance with the notions of idealism and honor which turns out to be mere aesthetics covering a fundamentally amoral, casually heinous, and exploitative core.  The protagonists of Mistborn are zealous, uncompromising, sincere idealists and absolutists who, at the moment of truth, embody the purposes of their gods; but who come off as scoundrels and rogues because the narrative prioritizes the viewpoints of those they most oppose over those they most help, because the Mistborn novels' focus on intrigue and secrets primes readers to be suspicious, and because of the Mistborn series' general aesthetics.  In other words, while The Stormlight Archive appears to be about Lawful Good Paladins and Mistborn appears to be about Chaotic Good Thieves, in practice the Radiants are unrestricted by their oaths and fail to act in good faith where the heroes of Scadrial act in the way opposite of that.

The children of Ashyn destroyed their own world, came as refugees to a second, eradicated and enslaved the natives after convincing the gods and spren to betray said natives for them, killed spren and lobotomized a species by imprisoning Mishram at a parlay, and took over said second world.  When they eventually found the last remaining free natives, they went from first contact to having killed one fourth of them in six years.  Then they invented a new way to kill spren and shared it with Odium's forces.  They also enslaved the spren in fabrials and mind-controlled their only advocate into compliance.  And, at the end of the last we saw of them, Dalinar more or less gave Honor to Taravangian, pointed him at Scadrial, and said "Sic 'em, boy".  

Notable Jerkface Kaladin orders an atrocity for the purposes of survival, nearly kills Sylphrena, keeps Rlain as a slave, tells Sigzil to kill his conscience, and "corrects" Szeth's thoughts until he breaks down and accepts a "healthy" conception of reality (especially upsetting, as this is the last absolutist on Roshar finally submitting to reason).  Shallan "I murdered both my parents and caused the apocalypse" Davar murders Iyatil and takes her clothes off.  Jasnah "so freaking creepy they had to lock her up as a child to protect the world from her bad vibes" Kholin loses a decency-off to the final boss, making it impossible for the coalition to be negotiated with and leaving Fen with no choice but to accept Odium's rule.  Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor puts POOPIES in people's FOOD.  Navani "suck-empress of Garbage" Kholin is number five on my Fictional Hate List and the top three are all dead.  And all of them maintain both reader and author sympathy throughout.

Also none of these people have killed Moash (number four on my Fictional Hate List), which suuuuuuuuucks.

We get almost no Singer points of view compared to human points of view because having any more Singer points of view would have shifted the moral "center of gravity" away from the humans.  If we cared about those slaughtered Parshendi as dozens of individual and named characters with personalities and hundreds of pages of characterization, if we knew their names and stories, if the books let them be main characters, it would be much harder to get invested in the anxieties and love triangles of the Kholin family and those in their orbit.

In short, the children of Ashyn are a narrative black hole that warps everything around them, who always get what they want through sheer main character energy and author favoritism, and now that they're on Scadrial which has more "fated for bad things" flags than a veteran cop two weeks from retirement going on one last case to finally get the evidence to put that corrupt senator he's been chasing for decades behind bars teaming up with a young rookie main character and showing said rookie a picture of his wife and kids while promising to explain the mysterious past of his adopted child as soon as he gets back... I'm sensing a future clash between Roshar's cynical realism and Scadrial's idealist absolutism, and I might have hope for the latter if mister Sanderson hadn't spent several thousand pages teaching me not to hope, if every WOB about magic systems didn't favor Roshar's magic systems over Scadrial's, and if we hadn't gone the ENTIRE MISTBORN SERIES SINCE 2008 without any actual Mistborn doing Mistborn things (for crying out loud, the upcoming Ghostbloods series will probably nerf Allomancy and Feruchemy AGAIN until we have only one type of Ferring and only one type of Misting), if we didn't have a WOB confirming that mister Sanderson's author-avatar Hoid thinks Scadrial should have Taldain instant noodles AND the presence of chouta on Scadrial implying that other cultures can, should, and will replace what already exists on Scadrial, if every "Scadrial/Scadrial-related-thing vs Roshar/Roshar-related-thing" thread didn't end with the latter roflstomping the former, or if things weren't such that Retribution, Bavadin, Hoid, and certain of the children of Ashyn all have decided that Scadrial should be their new stomping grounds.

Gosh-dang it, mister Sanderson, please throw the world of mists and metal a bone!  Let Sazed finally have his crash-out!  Let his name be Discord and let us love him for it.

(Also I think Autonomy helped Odium kill Devotion and Dominion and maybe Ambition; and I think Reason might be on Roshar messing with things and that's why everyone on Roshar acts all reasonable instead of honorable but zero of my theories have ever turned out to be true so I won't be surprised if neither turns out to be the case.)

This is the best example of black-and-white thinking I have ever seen. Really, bravo. 

Scadrial good, Roshar bad, no notes.

I won't even bother with pointing out numerous flaws of Scadrian protagonists (e.g. Breeze "I like to invade peoples mind for fun"), because there is clearly no point.
 

Quote

When Honor and Odium merge, the honorspren choose the children of Ashyn over their own god.  Sure, he would have destroyed them, but the prospect of being ended never stopped the Honorspren from serving Honor before.  The narrative doesn't portray this as betrayal because the honorspren are consistent with what is, in the end, the one and only moral rule of The Stormlight Archive:  Good is defined as whatever is best for / desired by the children of Ashyn.

I'll point out that that Scadrians killed their god (twice), which is much more discrespectful than Dalinar deciding not to follow the plan of one god, in favor of getting more gods involved. Or Honorspren deciding they want to live actually.

And Scadrians joined the side of god who betrayed the other god, Leras and Ati had a deal, create world together, than Ati can destroy it. But Leras betrayed him and sealed him, because he didn't want to follow through.

And make no mistake Ruin is as much a god of Scadrians as Preservation is, none of them would exist if it were not for the two of them.



BTW did you finally read The Sunlit Man, or Emberdark? If so, I would love to hear your opinion on Scadrians there.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

  Reveal hidden contents

The original Mistborn trilogy gives the nobility a viewpoint through Elend "the original instance of suck in the Cosmere and only thing keeping Mistborn The Final Empire from being flawless" Venture, and never really does the same for the enslaved skaa.  Any framing other than the one we got makes Kelsier and the Crew come off better and the nobility come off as worse.

In the opposite way, any framing other than the one we got makes the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive come off way worse.

The original Mistborn Trilogy, outside of one scene with li'l Spook, doesn't do flashback, and tends to have the horrors recounted through dialogue, distancing us from what happened to Kareien, Mare, and Tindwyl.  We're not with Dockson at the Devinshae plantations, we're not with Kelsier in the pits of Hathsin, we're not with Sazed during the years that made him Sazed.  We're not with Vin in her terrible childhood in the same way we're with Shallan for hers.

But we get copious flashbacks with Tien, Helaran, and even Szeth's family.  We see the exact moments of trauma that break Kaladin, Shallan, and Szeth.

We get to see Kaladin and Tien, the brothers Stormblessed, as little boys.  We don't get to see that for Marsh and Kelsier, the life-death brothers.

In the Wax and Wayne novels, we eventually get (separate) flashbacks to Li'l Wax and Li'l Wayne, and this is perhaps a structural necessity without which they might come off as significantly less sympathetic.

In other words, the nobility of Scadrial get a sympathetic representative among the main characters where the enslaved Skaa don't, and the nobility of Roshar get many sympathetic representatives among the main characters where the enslaved Singers don't.  In both cases, mister Sanderson seems to take trouble to shield his readers from the horrifying reality of slavery and appears more comfortable highlighting the humanity of powerful people either directly involved in, complicit in, or otherwise content to enjoy great power based in, slavery.

Kelsier being a danger to Elend primes the readers to question the righteousness of overthrowing the Final Empire.  Kaladin being a bodyguard to the Kholins primes the readers not to question the righteousness of the invasion of the Shattered Plains.  We see Kaladin through the eyes of those who love him most and who he has most helped (Bridge Four), but we never get to see Kelsier through the eyes of the Skaa.

This, however, kind of backfires on me because I have difficulty relating to most fictional point-of-view characters and thus tend to glom on really hard to minor characters, nameless populations, and folks with eight total lines of dialogue across six books because my imagination goes all "Oh, what are these ones like?" and has a wonderful time connecting to the setting through imagining their worlds.  It's kind of like how the one Star Wars character you can make any Star Wars fan smile by mentioning is that blue elephanty keyboard-circle-playing guy in Jabba's palace (you know the one!  Don't act like you don't love that guy.).

Not a spoiler for fiction, just spoilered for excessive prolixity.

 

That's actually quite a deep and insightful analysis.

1 hour ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Wait, are you my cousin?  Or... or is there a third person in addition to my cousin and I who hates Navani (we're respectively the President and Treasurer of the Navani Hate Club)?

Well unfortunately my cousins aren't anywhere near this deep into the Cosmere, so no.

Here's a thread from 2020 of me hating on Navani

 

13 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

They're from a novel series very dear to me, which, when I read it, became my favorite fiction of all time, displacing the Cosmere from that position.  My cousin got me into it, in the same way that I got my cousin into the Cosmere, and we regard the two introductions as equally significant in our reading lives.  There are no fanfictions of it on the internet.  There is no fan art of it on the internet.  No mentions on TvTropes or Wikipedia.  No fan forums.  It is... pure, innocent of the ways of the internet.  I watched the Cosmere go from being something I could think was meant specifically for me to something that belonged to a massive fandom.  I'm not gonna let the other series have the same fate... and its lack of internet presence implies that all who love it have felt the same way.

 

 So I'm guessing it's self-published, given your penchant for absolutist morality...

Jon del Arroz?