Shardcast: Tropes Brandon Overuses

@thegatorgirl00 have you posted your summary somewhere on the forums? It was great! I would love to read it again and share with some friends if that’s ok?

Haven't listened yet, but I want to get ahead of this with a subservient religious class like Ardent and Idrian Monks. 

I'm pretty sure a Takama is a robe with a deep v/open front and a skirt like bottom

How could y'all forget Malise Gevelmar? (Shallan's stepmom) She's dead too!

On 7/5/2019 at 10:19 PM, Naurock said:

Haven't listened yet, but I want to get ahead of this with a subservient religious class like Ardent and Idrian Monks. 

Don't forget the Terrismen!

I think the arranged marriage thing goes along with how many royals/nobles there are. It’s part of the politics. Marriages help seal the deal for alliances, treaties, and the like. 

I will say that I’m not 100% sure Wax and Steris should count as an arranged marriage. Maybe it’s semantics, but they did arrange and agree to it themselves. No one else set it up for them. Sure it wasn’t about love at first and was absolutely a political move, but they were two grown ups who agreed to the union on their own. 

On 7/5/2019 at 10:53 PM, Aerim said:

@thegatorgirl00 have you posted your summary somewhere on the forums? It was great! I would love to read it again and share with some friends if that’s ok?

 

Here you go!

The book opens on our Typical Brandon Protagonist. They've lived an average privileged life until this point as the child of a noble or royal. The one tragedy they've faced is the death of their mom when they were a child. When they reach their late teens/early twenties, they're life gets turned upside down when they gain a magic no one fully understands the rules of. They must balance it with their arranged marriage and the feasts and balls expected of their station, all while avoiding assassination attempts. Can they manage to complete all this and save their people from certain destruction caused by war or apocalypse? Find out in the next Typical Brandon Sanderson Novel!

13 minutes ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

Here you go!

The book opens on our Typical Brandon Protagonist. They've lived an average privileged life until this point as the child of a noble or royal. The one tragedy they've faced is the death of their mom when they were a child. When they reach their late teens/early twenties, they're life gets turned upside down when they gain a magic no one fully understands the rules of. They must balance it with their arranged marriage and the feasts and balls expected of their station, all while avoiding assassination attempts. Can they manage to complete all this and save their people from certain destruction caused by war or apocalypse? Find out in the next Typical Brandon Sanderson Novel!

That’s so true... for Jasnah and Elhokar, it’s the dad who dies, but that fits every other character to a T.

I think it's funny (and sort of ironic) that Brandon uses the dead mom trope a lot, yet makes fun of it in Alcatraz.

On 7/8/2019 at 9:11 PM, thegatorgirl00 said:

Here you go!

The book opens on our Typical Brandon Protagonist. They've lived an average privileged life until this point as the child of a noble or royal. The one tragedy they've faced is the death of their mom when they were a child. When they reach their late teens/early twenties, they're life gets turned upside down when they gain a magic no one fully understands the rules of. They must balance it with their arranged marriage and the feasts and balls expected of their station, all while avoiding assassination attempts. Can they manage to complete all this and save their people from certain destruction caused by war or apocalypse? Find out in the next Typical Brandon Sanderson Novel!

Alright, let's see how much of this holds true for each book:

1. Privileged life as child of noble or royal
2. Mom died when they were a child
3. No other tragedy
4. Life turned upside down when late teens/twenties gain magic
5. No one understands magic
6. Arranged marriage
7. Feasts and balls expected
8. Assassination attempts
9. Certain destruction

Spoilers for a lot of these.

Summary: Raoden from Elantris gets the most with 8 out of 9 of these, by my count. Lightsong from Warbreaker has the least with only 1. The average is around 5.

1.  Magic/sci-fi has been corrupted by something or someone.  There’s mystery to it, as to why.  Takes about 3-4 books to get to the reason.