Brandon vs. Consequences

[Frustration]

Also known as Brandon does too many fake out deaths.

All fake out deaths

1. Marsh
2. Kelsier
3. Jasnah
4. Syl
5. Szeth
6. Wax
7. Yumi

Real deaths

1. Hrathen
2. Vin
3. Elend
4. Lightsong
5. Elhokar
6. Wayne
7. Dalinar
8. Teft

That's an almost 50/50 split for major characters, which is actually crazy. And that's not going into all the times characters should have died but walk away without a scratch.

 

Now we look at some other things

• Economic fallout so heavily implied in OB, nothing came from it.
• The Fused took over Urithiru, no lasting consequences.
• Adolin lost his leg. And almost immediately got plate that replaced it and then some.
• Outer cities in the basin and Elendel almost go to war. It's resolved without issue.
• The coalition breaks apart in OB, but they all get back together by RoW with no further problems.

These are the biggest, but not the only examples.

Basically Brandon can't commit to having negative consequences or really anything bad happening to his characters at all.

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

Yeah, he’s got an issue with this thing.

WaT is a major offender, but do I keep hearing people say it has less of a revision phase than other books? Or am I just going crazy?

29 minutes ago, Frustration said:

• Economic fallout so heavily implied in OB, nothing came from it.
• The Fused took over Urithiru, no lasting consequences.
• Adolin lost his leg. And almost immediately got plate that replaced it and then some.
• Outer cities in the basin and Elendel almost go to war. It's resolved without issue.
• The coalition breaks apart in OB, but they all get back together by RoW with no further problems.

These are all really bad. There has to be consequences for things. I’d hate to try to excuse too many of these, but the economic fallout thing could have been ignored for the sake of things happening in the story.

 

33 minutes ago, Frustration said:

• Marsh
• Kelsier
• Jasnah
• Syl
• Szeth
• Wax
• Yumi

Again, hate to be that guy, but Marsh, Kelsier, and Syl’s fake outs aren’t that bad. Marsh and Kelsier, I dare say, are the better fake outs, and Syl’s is important to Kaladin’s growth.
 

Everyone else’s fake outs add nothing to the story. They aren’t that great.

[Frustration]

17 minutes ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

WaT is a major offender, but do I keep hearing people say it has less of a revision phase than other books? Or am I just going crazy?

People say it felt less edited, and I agree.

Brandon says it had a longer revision process than he's ever done.

18 minutes ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

Again, hate to be that guy, but Marsh, Kelsier, and Syl’s fake outs aren’t that bad. Marsh and Kelsier, I dare say, are the better fake outs, and Syl’s is important to Kaladin’s growth.

Oh those are the best ones, especially Marsh and Kelsier as they have consequences that the rest of the story deal with. However they are still fake outs and they make death overall feel less meaningful for the rest of the series.

[Nitpicking]

I would argue that Dalinar's death is a fakeout, too. He's dead, but then the Blackthorn spren is young Dalinar. It's a cheat. I'm sure Brandon will use it to explore the Cognitive Shadow concept. Is that really Vasher, or a spren with Vasher's memories?

Also, don't forget both Tanavast and Honor, who we were led to believe were dead.

EDIT:

SPOILER FOR A SECRET PROJECT

Spoiler

Everyone December knows dies in her vision, only to be alive again in the next scene.

 

Edited July 1 by Nitpicking
Thought of something to add

[Ascended Grubberfly He/Him]

8 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

I would argue that Dalinar's death is a fakeout, too. He's dead, but then the Blackthorn spren is young Dalinar. It's a cheat. I'm sure Brandon will use it to explore the Cognitive Shadow concept. Is that really Vasher, or a spren with Vasher's memories?

Also, don't forget both Tanavast and Honor, who we were led to believe were dead.

EDIT:

SPOILER FOR A SECRET PROJECT

  Reveal hidden contents

Everyone December knows dies in her vision, only to be alive again in the next scene.

 

Could you please specify which one?

Yeah, I guess Tanner counts as another fake out. Didn't someone literally say they were splintered?

[Nitpicking]

1 minute ago, Ascended Grubberfly said:

Could you please specify which one?

I'm trying to avoid spoiling by implication, so I'll spoiler-hide the title:

Spoiler

The Fires of December

 

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

@Frustration, I think your own ideas on how to write about holy folks, as you shared here have the same essential flaw as you are seeing in Mr Sanderson's works. You are both unwilling to let the central pillars of the grand arc of the story fall and be replaced, fearing that the tent of excitement around such a figure will collapse without it.

I would ask you meditate on my later comment in that thread, which is a kind of raving born of my revelation of the headless and heartless image of God that I feel is the true image. There is a book titled The Gospel of Christian Atheism that covers the subject in a more rational manor. Accepting that true and eternal death is part of the nature of the world is hard for a lot of people. Even harder is to say "love every thing" without the promise of an eternity to be soothed of the pains of life.

Not me. I welcomed that reality before I set down my forum signature on this website: Life and Death are as a circle, neither first nor last. But this is because I have felt the image of a God who never moved Saturday into Sunday for years.

I hope that there is a bold shift coming with Mistborn era 3, such that the space era is much more open and free in potentials than the setting is currently. As it stands, there are just so many nails driven into the sides of the tent that it feels like it can't get up and move to a new territory, to switch from pillars within to nails outside for the metaphor.

[Frustration]

51 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

@Frustration, I think your own ideas on how to write about holy folks, as you shared here have the same essential flaw as you are seeing in Mr Sanderson's works. You are both unwilling to let the central pillars of the grand arc of the story fall and be replaced, fearing that the tent of excitement around such a figure will collapse without it.

I would ask you meditate on my later comment in that thread, which is a kind of raving born of my revelation of the headless and heartless image of God that I feel is the true image. There is a book titled The Gospel of Christian Atheism that covers the subject in a more rational manor. Accepting that true and eternal death is part of the nature of the world is hard for a lot of people. Even harder is to say "love every thing" without the promise of an eternity to be soothed of the pains of life.

Not me. I welcomed that reality before I set down my forum signature on this website: Life and Death are as a circle, neither first nor last. But this is because I have felt the image of a God who never moved Saturday into Sunday for years.

I hope that there is a bold shift coming with Mistborn era 3, such that the space era is much more open and free in potentials than the setting is currently. As it stands, there are just so many nails driven into the sides of the tent that it feels like it can't get up and move to a new territory, to switch from pillars within to nails outside for the metaphor.

I'm afraid I didn't understand that at all.

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

4 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I'm afraid I didn't understand that at all.

And by "that" you mean? I would appreciate you being a bit more selective in your confusion, if you mean to learn something from meeting one utterly unlike yourself.

To put the general idea in another frame: Imagine the person who says "All afterlives, all reincarnations, are bad". Imagine becoming and being such a person, even if you cannot live my life. How does it sound to see things that way?

[Frustration]

50 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

And by "that" you mean? I would appreciate you being a bit more selective in your confusion, if you mean to learn something from meeting one utterly unlike yourself.

To put the general idea in another frame: Imagine the person who says "All afterlives, all reincarnations, are bad". Imagine becoming and being such a person, even if you cannot live my life. How does it sound to see things that way?

I should explain more.

You made a metaphor to a tent, with poles and nails, and I'm not sure how to interpret it. It has something to do with excitement I can see, but I'm unsure how that relates to Brandon or myself.

If you could elaborate that would be most welcome.

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

Oh, the tent is the structure of a vast narrative. When telling a story, there must be tent poles of the story and nails of the story. The tent poles as the importance of the narrative elements, while the nails are the limits of narrative possibility. As an author, you raise up the tent poles actively, making a character or a figure important. Kelsier is a hugely important character who gets to be all kinds of special, so he is a big tent pole; if Kel was removed from Mistborn, then the shape of the story would have to change. Meanwhile, Hammond could have died at basically any time in the story after doing a lesson with Vin, and it would not require much rewriting to account for removing him. 

The nails are a little trickier, those are essentially the rules you as the author are trying to convey. The crazy thing about these nails is that you can end up with unconsciously placed ones. When you have a thought that goes "I cannot imagine what this person would be like", that is a nail. When you think "Well, even magic could not do that and the story make sense." that is a nail. Nails are good because they keep the story sensible, but they are bad when they stop better ideas being reached.

To me, it seems as if the willingness to accept true death, to be both dead and forgotten, as a thing which befalls even the most important seeming person is a nail that a lot of people have. They think that the figure of their true moral and spiritual mentor, the source of their learning, is eternal. This is foolish to me, all things end or become unlike their origins.

But Kelseir has to remain Kel shaped or otherwise there is no point in continuing to use that name, have the pole be sunk in that spot even if it changes heights. Likewise, a lot of authors seem to need to allow for and enable the acceptance of an afterlife. To write characters who embrace a fleeting nature, a liminal existence, is counter to the vanity that posses even my own writing: The will to be remembered in spirit.

 

[Returned he/him]

Sanderson does a really good job of setting up interesting situations but then lets them fade as he moves on to the next thing. I think that he likes the worldbuilding and enjoys the options those situations offer but doesn't consider them to be where the story is and so doesn't feel a lot of pressure to keep them up. This is reflected in situations not being resolved or otherwise paying off (such as the tensions in the Elendel Basin) and in being tidied up so that he can get back to the "real" plot (like the Urithiru takeover or the Rosharan coalition). In those respects I think it's a matter of scale: the major plots of the books have interstellar and interdimensional scope, so it's easy to ignore something like a regional tension and hard to make them both matter equally at the same time. A lot of them are also hard to resolve in a way that is both quick and satisfying: deflating regional tensions on the brink of civil war seems hard to do in a handful of pages, especially when it's mostly in the background.

When these sorts of details are used as flavor I get kind of frustrated when they end up not just ignored, but overridden. Alethi culture, especially as distinct from others on Roshar, is a big deal and comes up often in WoK and WoR: the Alethi way of doing things governs and describes a lot of behaviors and provides constraints on what certain characters can do in certain sitations. But it fades quickly afterwards, and Alethi end up behaving in pretty much the same way as Thaylens or Kharbranthians. It seems like it's too much bother for Sanderson to keep dealing with, so he just ignores it. It makes a lot of the writing feel thinner to me, like there are fewer details that matter and the setting is less than it used to be.

I'm a little bit more tolerant of characters. They take a lot of time and plot capacity to develop and you can't guarantee that people will respond to them in the ways you would like. You can't reliably just spin up a new Teft or Kaladin on demand, so killing one off (or changing them significantly) is a really big deal. With how long and expansive the Cosmere story is we should be seeing more major characters fall but I think that, along with the difficulty and risks involved in bringing in new characters, the considerations are: fan service (fans will not tolerate their favorites being killed very well and are unlikely to be satisfied by a death being thematically appropriate or necessary), and it seeming excessive and arbitrary (a common Game of Thrones critique). It's a hard needle to thread with so many books written and yet to be written, especially with so many magical options that make death a more surmountable problem. Even so, I agree that the fake-out deaths are a real problem because they are still deployed to get the full emotional impact a real death would elicit while also feeling arbitrary and cheap when reversed. It's gotten to the point that I barely respond to a major character's death because I think it's unlikely to stick. Their non-death consequences tend not to stick as much because many of the stories are about their personal growth (so they overcome or move beyond those consequences one way or another), and they are often chances to show off specific details of applied magic systems.

I think that Sanderson can commit to negative consequences but agree that he generally doesn't. He reserves too many outcomes for the future, saves himself the trouble of developing negative outcomes and how characters deal with them when he doesn't care about scenarios any more, and keeps characters focused on conflicts they can't change very easily to maintain constant tensions over a lot of text.

[Jult]

17 hours ago, Frustration said:

All fake out deaths

1. Marsh
2. Kelsier
3. Jasnah
4. Syl
5. Szeth
6. Wax
7. Yumi

Real deaths

1. Hrathen
2. Vin
3. Elend
4. Lightsong
5. Elhokar
6. Wayne
7. Dalinar
8. Teft

How are we defining "major" characters? Are we talking just POV characters? Or characters we watched die 'onscreen'? Do flashback deaths not count?

Where do we draw the line? And how is Teft above it? Like why didn't Sadeas, Jezrien, Zane, Dockson, Clubs, Tindwyl, Teleb, Eshonai, Amaram, Graves, Tien, Leyton, Raboniel, Lezian, Ati, Leras, Rayse, Tanner, Denth, Praxton (and all the Sand Masters), Neturo (and all of the Honorbearers), Blushweaver, Heleran, Lin, Tyn, Mraize, Iyatil, etc. make the list?

I'd argue most of these people matter more than Teft. 

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Jult said:

How are we defining "major" characters? Are we talking just POV characters? Or characters we watched die 'onscreen'? Do flashback deaths not count?

Where do we draw the line? And how is Teft above it? Like why didn't Sadeas, Jezrien, Zane, Dockson, Clubs, Tindwyl, Teleb, Eshonai, Amaram, Graves, Tien, Leyton, Raboniel, Lezian, Ati, Leras, Rayse, Tanner, Denth, Praxton (and all the Sand Masters), Neturo (and all of the Honorbearers), Blushweaver, Heleran, Lin, Tyn, Mraize, Iyatil, etc. make the list?

I'd argue most of these people matter more than Teft. 

They might be more influential in world, but there's two criteria that I'm working with

1. They have to be protagonists. While Antagoists can have plot armor that's much more rare, and usually less of a problem. So Sadeas, Zane, Amaram, Graves, Raboniel, Lezian, Ati, Rayse, Denth, the Honorbearers, Heleran, Lin, Tyn, Mraize, and Iyatil are all out.
2. They have to have significant screentime, as otherwise they are a background character. So Jezrien, Dockson, Clubs, Teleb, Leyton, Leras, Praxton and the Sandmasters are out.

Of them I probably should have included Eshonai, I forgot about her to be honest. We already knew Tien was dead from the start so I don't think he counts either. Blushweaver I could see an argument for, and I considered putting her there. I just felt she didn't have quite enough screen time, as I would have included Llarimar if he had died. Though I admit I haven't read Warbreaker in almost three years.

Edited July 1 by Frustration

[Schizoposting]

I don't see any reason why killing off characters is in itself a good thing—as others have already mentioned, randomly having your characters die can, and often does, make said deaths less impactful to the story. I would rather have death be used for something more than cheap shock value, in the Cosmere.

And "fake out" deaths are not inherently a bad thing: when used correctly, they can add thematically and narratively to the story. Out of your list of fake outs, I would argue that at least half of them are justified.

[Frustration]

40 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

I don't see any reason why killing off characters is in itself a good thing—as others have already mentioned, randomly having your characters die can, and often does, make said deaths less impactful to the story. I would rather have death be used for something more than cheap shock value, in the Cosmere.

I never said it was, I just pointed out the real deaths to show the ratio of real to fake-out deaths.

That I do believe to be a problem. If half of all deaths are fakes then how am I ever supposed to believe someone is really dead?

[Schizoposting]

8 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I never said it was, I just pointed out the real deaths to show the ratio of real to fake-out deaths.

That I do believe to be a problem. If half of all deaths are fakes then how am I ever supposed to believe someone is really dead?

Aside from the case of Kelsier, it's always made clear by the end of the book. But if you think that this is a major problem, what characters are you uncertain about being dead or alive, whose deaths we saw "on screen"?

 

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

Aside from the case of Kelsier, it's always made clear by the end of the book. But if you think that this is a major problem, what characters are you uncertain about being dead or alive, whose deaths we saw "on screen"?

 

For that specifically until I read the WoBs confirming it almost two years later I didn't believe Elhokar was dead. Mostly because of WoR.

As for other negative impacts:

• I didn't believe Wax was staying dead so that scene felt flat
• I knew no one was going to die so all of the newer books have lacked stakes.

[Schizoposting]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I knew no one was going to die so all of the newer books have lacked stakes.

But that's just not true: in WaT and TLM, Dalinar and Wayne died. Maybe you felt that there was a lack of stakes, but people did suffer consequences. 

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

3 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

I would rather have death be used for something more than cheap shock value, in the Cosmere.

I think death needs to sometimes feel senseless to be authentic to the real experience though. Imagine if Kaladin was out of Light and some random Singer stabbed him with a rusty knife. He ends up winning the fight after, but then he spends the next three chapters dying while trying to make sense of his life to Syl, but he fails because the rotspren have gotten into the cut. His last words before the death rattle are "I am sorry I didn't think about how to help that singer before he picked up that knife. This is all my fault." and then Syl goes to Shallan to try to get someone to at least stonecast Kaladin's body, but she forgets where it is due to the rebonding process.

it would be tragic, it would feel senseless, but it would be that wonderful stuff of tears.

[Aeoryi she/her]

I do think that since the cosmere is a story, it makes certain things (such as plot armor) more justified. There are definitely some characters who abuse this much more blatantly than others, such as Kelsier. (hot take: Mistborn Secret History felt like someone's fanfic). I would've been fine if the only ever mention of Kelsier we got was at the end of bands of morning in the epilogue, and he became moreso a legend, but it appears someone has other plans and now Kelsier feels like an isekai protagonist. 

I think the main issue with meaningful deaths is that there has to be some kind of build up to it. Take Lightsong, who has a very well written death. His death was magnificent because his entire arc was building up to that point. If we had no Lightsong chapters at all, and he just decided to die without any narrative build-up, it would feel like a "get-out-of-jail free" card because of how conveniently he was posed at that moment. And the truth is that when you have build up to a character, it's hard to simply let that character go. Take for example, Paratulip's example fae just described of Kaladin being shanked by a singer and dying of infection. While realistic, it would leave a lot of people disappointed, because Kaladin is an amazing character and people really want to see more of. It would be disappointing, but even if that was intentional it'd still hurt the series in a way that would hurt the story over all. 

The closest thing I can think to is the web novel Worm (major spoilers for ~26.2 and onwards)

Spoiler

in worm, when fighting an endbringer, Regent, who is one of the main characters and protagonists, dies in a single passage during the fight. The main character reacts to it in shock, but the entire sequence takes no more than a single sentence, then it is not touched on for the rest of the chapter.

This is an example of a death done with the shock value in mind, out of nowhere, and I can see why the author decided to do it- 25% of the combatants in the endbringer fight were predicted to die during the fight, and that was to show how brutal these fights were. And it was certainly tragic, but it was hard to connect to or even care about because it was so poorly projected. 

Regent dying in such a quick way didn't matter because I had no reason to care about it. The plot wasn't changed by his death at all, so it was completely irrelevant to the story and thus to the reader as well.

I do think that if fake out deaths continue to happen, they'll lose power quickly unless really done right. And I hope to see more character deaths that perhaps are a bit more... permanent. Reoccurring characters are fine, but there's a point at which it becomes too much. And I think Brandon is a good enough author to recognize this.

I don't know where I'm going with this but these are kinda just my thoughts yeah

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

10 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

(hot take: Mistborn Secret History felt like someone's fanfic).

If that is a hot take then I must be the sort of person who loves to bath in liquid metal.

Also! FELLOW ALEC FAN!? This is the best new friend I have found on this shard. 

And yes, you can only invoke the laecrimae rerum rarely. The Kaladin example would have to be a one off. When GRRM killed off Ned Stark, it was brilliant as a twist ending, but that was less powerful when the tragic twist became the norm.

[Checks that this is Cosmere Discussion] okay so I think Mistborn was doing this kind of thing right with Kel when he was not getting a do over as a cog shadow. His death felt natural, like the climax of his character. It was annoying for me to read The Lost Metal because I was just like "Oh, okay, Wayne is dying at the end." before I finished the first chapter. He never was that endearing to me, so this was more of a "Well, okay." thing than the real drama of Kel's last stand against LR.

Teft was never a huge thing to me, because his addiction narrative was clearly written by someone who has not had a real experience with the matter. This is kind of a recurring issue for me with the Stormlight books: They are clearly someone's ideas about mental health and not their experiences. I have a Shallan shaped kind of a past, and she's fun as a little cartoon character sort of a thing, but she never feels real.

I suppose that is the real problem I have: Mr Sanderson lacks the direct experiences to create the pigment of tragic death unless it is a Jesus allegory.

[Aeoryi she/her]

8 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

If that is a hot take then I must be the sort of person who loves to bath in liquid metal.

Also! FELLOW ALEC FAN!? This is the best new friend I have found on this shard. 

And yes, you can only invoke the laecrimae rerum rarely. The Kaladin example would have to be a one off. When GRRM killed off Ned Stark, it was brilliant as a twist ending, but that was less powerful when the tragic twist became the norm.

[Checks that this is Cosmere Discussion] okay so I think Mistborn was doing this kind of thing right with Kel when he was not getting a do over as a cog shadow. His death felt natural, like the climax of his character. It was annoying for me to read The Lost Metal because I was just like "Oh, okay, Wayne is dying at the end." before I finished the first chapter. He never was that endearing to me, so this was more of a "Well, okay." thing than the real drama of Kel's last stand against LR.

It's been so long since I've read worm lol. Haven't read the sequel though. 

Kelsier's death had so much impact that it's a shame that he had to have more life after it because it ruins the initial scene, I think

9 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

Teft was never a huge thing to me, because his addiction narrative was clearly written by someone who has not had a real experience with the matter. This is kind of a recurring issue for me with the Stormlight books: They are clearly someone's ideas about mental health and not their experiences.

I'm being honest I never really saw teft as anything more than a filler character who had a bit more development. Him dying just felt like a "wow we need to kill someone important to show how dangerous this is but not someone too important" moment rather than a meaningful death

11 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

This is kind of a recurring issue for me with the Stormlight books: They are clearly someone's ideas about mental health and not their experiences. I have a Shallan shaped kind of a past, and she's fun as a little cartoon character sort of a thing, but she never feels real.

As much as he does try, and granted, he really does try to make it accurate, I do think he misses the actual... experiences rather than just the words. Kaladin is an exception to this, at least for me, and he is a standout character throughout the entire series because of that. But other characters... sometimes it feels forced, or like it is defining the entire character. 

Shallan is definitely a victim of this- having a LOT of experience with plurality that shallan has, I can say that a lot of how it is written straight up doesn't make sense, especially when formless comes into the picture. It's also like she's frozen in development because of her mental issues, and that she stopped really "being a character" because her being plural was simply more interesting, which is really a shame. My favorite shallan moments are all when her character quirks are put to the side for a bit, like at the end of WaT when she fights Mraize. 

Renarin also seems to have this issue, I can see what the angle of approach is for him, but the issue is that he REALLY struggles to be relatable because he just kinda seems 2d most of the time and uh... things like him being queer were done very poorly imo. It doesn't really give any insight into the issues at all and that contributes to his little character depth

A lot of these issues are really things that are hard to get the core essence of without first hand experience, even with consultants or whatever. it's kinda a shame because this was a really good opportunity to raise awareness to a lot of these issues... it's just that it was executed rather poorly.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Schizoposting said:

But that's just not true: in WaT and TLM, Dalinar and Wayne died. Maybe you felt that there was a lack of stakes, but people did suffer consequences. 

That's true and I suppose I should have been more clear.

Both of them were basically dead anyway. TLM and WaT were the last books in their series(I know SA 6 will be a thing, but not for almost 5 years and Brandon has said we can consider it a different arc).

So yes, they're dead in world, but we probably won't see Wax or Steris again either, so it basically made no difference.

23 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

[Checks that this is Cosmere Discussion] okay so I think Mistborn was doing this kind of thing right with Kel when he was not getting a do over as a cog shadow. His death felt natural, like the climax of his character. It was annoying for me to read The Lost Metal because I was just like "Oh, okay, Wayne is dying at the end." before I finished the first chapter. He never was that endearing to me, so this was more of a "Well, okay." thing than the real drama of Kel's last stand against LR.

^Facts, all of it.

Edit:

1 minute ago, Aeoryi said:

I'm being honest I never really saw teft as anything more than a filler character who had a bit more development. Him dying just felt like a "wow we need to kill someone important to show how dangerous this is but not someone too important" moment rather than a meaningful death

And another one.

We're getting some really based takes today.

Edited July 1 by Frustration

[Returned he/him]

53 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

Take Lightsong, who has a very well written death.

This is an excellent example, thanks for bringing it up! I put it up there with Kelsier's death in Final Empire. I think that the reason these feel better to me than most others, like Teft or Wayne, is that it's very specifically something that is about their stories and desires. Kelsier and Lightsong knew that they were likely to die and made the choices that led to that end anyways-- they fulfilled their stories. Teft's death was wholly an object of others' stories. Wayne's death didn't hit me too hard because nearly all of his characterization came in the final volume of his stories, nearly all via flashback, and it really felt like the whole situation was one Harmony placed him into. Teft and Wayne barely had their own stories, though I concede that they had backstories. There's less drama in being a sidekick or an extra than there is in having a big, detailed story that is largely about you.

33 minutes ago, ParaTulip said:

I suppose that is the real problem I have: Mr Sanderson lacks the direct experiences to create the pigment of tragic death unless it is a Jesus allegory.

I hadn't thought of it this way before, and my initial reaction is that I'm not sure I agree. The Jesus allegory sort of covers any self-sacrificing death, which in turn reflects heroic commitment on the hero's part and the gravity of the threat they're resisting. Characters like that tend to be the most major of characters and it's an incredibly common trope.

Other characters' deaths tend to matter to readers based on their affinity for those characters. A sudden, incidental death or helpless execution is always kind of a pathetic moment, devoid of drama in itself. I liked Teft well enough but his storyline of overcoming his past failures and shame is literally the same as every Radiant's story, and he mattered to the story mostly because of his relationship with Kaladin. If he'd been a more realistically-portrayed addict I don't think I would have cared more about his murder just because of that. If he'd been a more rounded character, with more of his own goals, ambitions, experiences, and relationships shown on screen, that probably would have done it. His POV chapters gave us more than nothing (I cared more about his death than the countless, nameless soldiers we've seen fall). But it was a thin sketch that, for me, didn't produce much of a connection. He didn't have anywhere near the development or richness of a Kaladin or Kelsier.  

12 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

A lot of these issues are really things that are hard to get the core essence of without first hand experience, even with consultants or whatever. it's kinda a shame because this was a really good opportunity to raise awareness to a lot of these issues... it's just that it was executed rather poorly.

I feel like there's a double-edged sword with representation. I thought Renarin was interesting and well developed enough for a minor character in the earlier books, and his representation there was sufficient for a lot of readers to identify his autism long before it was confirmed. Readers could see things in him and identify with those things. But after he got the designation officially we got lists of things that are unmistakably diagnostic criteria, and jamming those in felt less natural than his previous expressions of relevant traits. His sexuality was similar, and he spent more words being explicitly described with unmissable statements than he did being an actual character who happens to be queer in ways that he may demonstrate while living his life.

I don't think that trend is specific to Sanderson, the zeitgeist seems to really value explicit taxonomy and some externalization of self. I'm not intending to criticize that, exactly, but I do think that it tends to make for worse prose stories.

Edited July 1 by Returned