taravangian development: is it a good or bad thing?

[Jerfier]

I don't think Taravangian was gray character or T-odium will be. I think T-Odium will follow Taravangian's way which is it is not good. I don't know what is Cultivation's goal but I'm gussing it will not overlap with Odium's. And it seems to T-odium will break the deal. Rayse didn't want to do this because he would be weaker against the other Shards but if T thinks it's necessary for the good of the majority he will do . 

[Stigmadiabolicum]

What im still curious about is if Taravangian was right when he said he needed to hide his plan from Dalinar? Would he have been cool letting T give it a shot and told Szeth to bring nightblood?

Or was it too risky, i mean Renarin dropping off the enlightened spren to give Odium a reason to pop over was obviously hidden to him, assuming Sja Anat told him to. He saw the light at the end of the darkness in his future, not knowing it was the shard haha, assuming it was a hopeful future possibility for him..

Really curious if Dalinar would have been okay with it, or innately opposed, its not like becoming Todium was the plan, just murdering Rayse..

As far as his boon curse, WoB has hinted it is still active, and knowing Cultivation might be a kind of handicap, like a much more severe version since hes tied to the other realms now. Maybe it works kind of like harmony where his intelligence days hes severely nerfed and misaligned with the power, and can only act on dumb days (which is still dangerous as we've seen in his dealings with Rayse)

Edited July 11, 2023 by Stigmadiabolicum

[Llamaknuck]

Am I the only one that does not care about Taravangian. Decent character, but, Odium is just an antagonist. He will inevitably be defeated. I’m waiting for JUST ONE time in the Cosmere that the “good guys” defeat something without struggle and absolutely dominate and demoralize the “big bad.”  Hopefully we will see that happen. Big bad introduced. Creates plan to control/rule/destroy.  Gets annihilated and used to wipe the floor. Story progresses. Please!!!!!!

[Clarkmon22 He/Him]

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13 hours ago, Llamaknuck said:

Am I the only one that does not care about Taravangian. Decent character, but, Odium is just an antagonist. He will inevitably be defeated. I’m waiting for JUST ONE time in the Cosmere that the “good guys” defeat something without struggle and absolutely dominate and demoralize the “big bad.”  Hopefully we will see that happen. Big bad introduced. Creates plan to control/rule/destroy.  Gets annihilated and used to wipe the floor. Story progresses. Please!!!!!!

One of the main focuses of Mistborn and the beginning of the cosmere was to NOT go along with the fantasy trope of just "beating the big bad" and "happily ever after."

WoBs:

Spoiler

Questioner

What inspired you to write that series [Mistborn]? It's amazing.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh good question, what inspired me to write Mistborn… A couple of things have to come together for me to write a book. Usually it is not one idea. Usually one idea is kind of the sparking point but then I file it in the back of my brain and wait until other ideas stick to it and work in really cool ways. Mistborn is a conglomeration of several things. First off it was watching-- I guess it was reading-- reading Harry Potter and being like "Wow these Dark Lords sure get a tough time of it. They're always beaten by these dopey kids." Right? *laughter* Like Sauron, there's this little furry-footed British dude who's like-- destroys your whole empire or things like this. And I was like "These poor guys, what if we had a book where the Dark Lord won? Where-- What if Frodo got to the end and the Dark Lord was like 'Oh thanks for bringing my ring back.' and then killed him and took over the world." It was really, I'm a fan of The Wheel of Time and thinking what if Rand got to the end of The Wheel of Time and the Dark One is like "Okay, I'm all powerful, you're not, end." And he won. Oh the Pattern just broke.

As an aside for Wheel of Time fans, I actually wrote that scenes for my own catharsis. I actually wrote a scene, I never let anyone else see it, where Rand lost *laughter* and it's actually like this dramatic moment and he's like "I could just destroy the world right now" And I just wrote "And so he did, The end." *laughter* I had a good laugh over it and then deleted it.

So, what if the Dark Lord won, but I figured that would be a downer of a story so I filed that in the back of my head and it melded with my love of heist stories. You'll notice Steelheart is also a heist story. It's one of my favorite archetypes, the gang who all have their individual talents and they get together to do cool things like-- I think one of my favorite movies in recent times was actually Inception which was a heist story using people's brains. So cool, such a great concept. But one of my classic favorite movies is Sneakers, if you haven't seen that. It's so good! So that genre made me want to write a heist novel in a fantasy world so I developed that independently. Allomancy and Feruchemy were developed independently as cool magic systems, that eventually started interacting in interesting ways. And then Kelsier was the other kind of linchpin, him as a character, wanting to tell this story about a guy who had been an upper-class thief, a con-man who then got motivation to go "No I'm going to do something good with my life. I'm going to change the world. It's kind of hard to explain.

Firefight release party (Jan. 5, 2015)

Spoiler

Emily Fell

What has been your favorite trope to subvert?

Brandon Sanderson

It's got to be the one that did Mistborn right, the- no, you know what, oh I can't say it.

I like subverting my own tropes the best. Finding something that I've been leaning on and recognizing it for what a good thing [it has been] in my books in the past, understand that readers are going to expect me to do it more, then subverting it is really fun for me. There is a moment like this at the ending of Oathbringer, that I won't mention because it is a spoiler, where something that has happened in the previous two books does not happen in this book. That is intentional, when I was building the outline for the series, I'm like "hey, I'm leaning on this idea a lot." It is a central theme of the [Stormlight Archive], so its okay, but I need to subvert it a couple times, otherwise it will get stale.

But if there is one I can talk about it is subverting the Hero's Journey in ways that are still satisfying. It's easy to subvert a trope and make it unsatisfying; most tropes work because they are satisfying to [an] extent. So the subversion [of the Hero's Journey trope] has to be still satisfying in its own way, and that can get tricky.

YouTube Livestream 1 (Jan. 11, 2020)

Hope that helps.

Edited September 19, 2025 by Clarkmon22

[Llamaknuck]

Taravangian is a poor odium and his attempts at cunning are forced. In the end odium is a lackluster antagonist. WaT was great but odium was the worst part of the story.