Ostensibly Omnipotent Beings: Godslaying in the Cosmere

[KOOZ]

I was pondering the somewhat underwhelming response quite a few readers had to the final showdown with the Big Bad in Calamity and got curious as to why so few people felt satisfied or were buying into the premise of the resolution of the main conflict in the trilogy.

 

What struck me as interesting is that, ultimately, Brandon Sanderson has developed a Pavlov's Reflex in his readers via keeping to the form in his stories where the protagonists/antagonists are faced with a being exhibiting ostensibly deific power (or it's avatars/placeholders) and then one way or another said deities are shown to be fallible, and may be ticked, contained or otherwise destroyed (alternatively, said events occur prior to beginning of the main narrative). There is also an element of small to large scale physical/magical confrontation coupled into the resolution, but more on that later in the post in the Calamity thread.

 

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I cannot find a major Sanderson Cosmere work that does not follow that rule in the overall story arc - i.e. humanizing beings thought to be Godlike, or showing them to be fallible and showing that it is possible to oppose their desires. Consider the following works and part of the nature of the conflict (spoilered for brevity):

 

The very mythos of the Cosmere is based on one concept: Adonalsium is broken. The being that gave rise to the shards, powerful as they are, is destructible. And judging by recent WoB, it was done by humans, unless I am much mistaken. The resultant Shards can have their holders killed and the power of the Shard splintered.

 

Mistborn Series

 Final Empire

 -Lord Ruler, Sliver of Infinity, is thought to be immortal and impossible to kill; yet he is soundly defeated by the end of the book

 Well of Ascension

-yes, the heroine is tricked by Ruin, yet the very fact that Ruin was imprisoned in the first place shows that he is not omniscient and may be fooled; moreover, Kwaan managed to derail Ruin's plans back in the day - defeated by a human for a millennium, not bad!

 Hero of Ages

 -Preservation is killed by Ruin

 -Ruin is killed by ascended Min; yet this is facilitated by cooperation of Elend, a powerful mistborn, yet very much human; also, Kelsier randomly interferes; kandra and atium allomancers also spoil Ruin's plans - and that is partly to the Lord Ruler's plans as well, who is still a human, albeit a powerful one... and also a dead one at that

 Secret History

 -let's just say that Kelsier punches two deities in the face and gets away with it both times; also, Ruin and Preservation are very much humanized and Preservation is made to look especially fragile

 -the nerve of the Selians of wanting to steal Presevation's power also highlights how "easy" it is to attain quasi-godhood

 Alloy of Law

 -not much is happening there, except that it's Harmony/Sazed, a stark reminder of how the world was brought from the brink of Ruin

 -also, Sazed is currently a single deity reining, yet he has not created a perfect world - there are lots of issues still present in the Basin

 Shadows of Self

 -rather dark, the representatives of Harmony are rebelling, to an extent, there is an external influence that Sazed cannot directly counter - clearly there is a limit to his power

 -on another lever, Wax confronts his kandra and said kandra self-terminates, a reminder that they developed an alternative to following direct orders from the Shards

 Bands of Mourning

 -Trell - the fact that the local god is shown to be limited and unaware of all that is going on outside the planet

 -the Bands themselves - that any human, however ordinary, may possess extreme, almost godlike powers (given that Harmony has not made any significant shows of power since reshaping the planet, the reader, through the eyes of the protagonists, sees the Bands of Mourning as the most powerful manifestation of magic in era 2 books)

 

 Elantris

-Aon and Ska are dead, the power of their Shards is splintered

-the Elantrians, beings considered Godlike by other humans in the region are fallen and the cause is a simple natural disaster

 

Warbreaker

-the Returned, considered Gods in Hallandren, where most of the action takes place, can spontaneously die and need weekly sustenance in form of Breath

-they can be killed by humans and can kill each other

-the whole Lightsong PoV humanizes them and also shows how limited their knowledge is

-Edgli can still be splintered by Odium, that threat is there in the background, but cannot be gleaned from reading the book by itself

 

The Stormlight Archive

 The Way of Kings

-Honor is dead, the whole atmosphere is set up in a way as to make the readers wonder whether Cultivation will survive the ensuing confrontation with Odium

 Words of Radiance

-the Parshendi are shown to have defied the will of Odium by escaping his influence for, likely, millennia

-the return of Knights Radiant, the bonding of Dalinar and Stormfather, other events indicative of humans accessing Shard power paves way for resistance to Odium

 

Sixth of the Dusk

-this one is interesting because we're dealing with a slice of rural society, to an extent and the Ones Above are the technologically superior species to be almost seeing as godlike (sufficiently advanced technology, magic, etc), yet at the end of the story, the trapper in essence thinks he found the solution which tricks the Ones Above and defies their will

 

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

-here, the Shades are seen as indestructible avatars, and the resolution of the conflict in the story is about defying them and also controlling them

-the very rules (no fire, no blood, etc) that are set up by the society are used, to a certain extent, to, if not control, then influence the behaviour of these beings

 

The Emperor's Soul

-ok, arguably this story has the least presence of deities and anything said here will be far-fetched; the only thing to note is that Shai is the most magically powerful individual (she even has the ability to return the personality to a brain dead entity), yet she is also in captivity the entire book, thought she does manage to do something about it

 

White Sand - won't comment on it for now what with the graphic novel coming out soonish

 

As such, it seems that we've been conditioned to expect that mortals with inferior power can overcome such beings. Specifically, a common theme of power transference can be observed - it is possible to obtain and lose godlike powers (in the context of the narrative, relatively speaking) for mere humans. This then enables some form of confrontation with another deific being. The fact that the final conflict in Calamity was more (uhh, stretching it, here, but let's call it) philosophical in nature is something that seems to break the mould and, to me, reminds me more of the Wheel of Time confrontation of

Rand with the Dark One

to the point where in one of the blogposts, BS wrote that he had to redo the dialogue as it sounded more like a philosophical discussion at the end of the world, rather than a confrontation. And yet, in worlds where deities exist and are vastly superior to any other forces of nature present (and let's exclude worlds where there is a pantheon of gods, like in the Malazan world), the entire concept with battling them and somehow destroying them whilst being on equal footing is not considered conventional (e.g. in Wheel of Time,

Rand's idea of killing the Dark One is thought to be far-fetched by pretty much everyone

). Thus, the reader then may expect to see the protagonists beseeching, persuading or otherwise somehow establishing a dialogue of unequals which avoids power-based confrontation entirely. Would that, my fellow forumers, explain to an extent the feeling of dissatisfaction, I wonder?

 

Also, what do you generally think of the high mobility on the power ladder in the Cosmere?

Do you like the fact that pretty much no entity in the Cosmere is "unkillable"?

 

In a way, for me, it is nice that precedent is established for power transference: this then allows for unpredictability in terms of character arcs, and there are no constant personages present (save Hoid, but then, who knows what will happen to him in the end?).

 

 

[Bowiespoon he/him]

It's really nice, there is nothing I hate more than have villain x be unbeatable because villain x is being reserved for the final battle.

 

The reason calamities ending was disappointing....... truth is, I've already forgotten the ending, but i remember thinking I skipped a chapter.