Aliroz-The-Confused

I wrote that sentence badly. I think I should have written, "Leras had a plan which, in addition to other things, made sure Ruin didn't become everyone's problem. Vin fulfilled that plan. This required self-sacrifice.". I think the text of The Hero of Ages is written in such a way as to not confirm or deny whether Vin was aware of other worlds when she was Preservation, on the one hand you'd think she'd mention it in her thoughts, but on the other it's hard to see how someone could be Preservation and not be aware of other worlds. I think I should have written "Tanavast had a plan which, in addition to other things, made sure Odium didn't become everyone's problem. Dalinar rejected this plan. This required self-sacrifice." Your appraisal rests on Odium being able to force the children of Ashyn to break the contract. My appraisal rests on Odium not being able to do that. I also dispute Odium killing Cultivation as being guaranteed. I just don't see Odium winning the Honor-and-Cultivation 2v1 without help, I think if He kills one then whichever He doesn't kill first takes Him out, and on the Koravellium-vs-Odium 1v1 I don't see why it's impossible that Cultivation could kill Odium (I think She set up Taravangian to become Odium as part of a plan to kill Odium, a plan which Dalinar thwarted by giving Honor to Taravangian). I don't think Odium killed Devotion and Dominion without help, even with both of them wounded. I think Autonomy helped. I also speculate that Autonomy may have helped Odium against Ambition and Mercy. The writer of the letter, the one who tells Hoid not to interfere, seems to agree with me with regards to Tanavast setting things up. I think that letter was foreshadowing, especially the part about children stumbling around and breaking things they don't understand. Because that's basically my read on the Kholins, as I've said before. In my view: Dalinar, in the end, chose to die rejecting all paths that he did not come up with, used his power to force his ideas upon the world and destroy all alternative possibilities to the one which leaves him remembered as a genius who did the shocking and unexpected and unforgettable, as the harshly-debated bringer of the new times who did important stuff, as the one who chose the arc of fate. Because he could not, would not, maintain what he claimed and inherited, because he wouldn't dedicate himself to someone else's vision, wouldn't put in the work if it meant not getting the credit/blame/attention, wouldn't spend millennia holding it all together as the second in an unending sequence of Honors, wouldn't let it be Koravellium whose decisions put an end to Odium. Because, in the end, he did not know that the task of royalty is to accept what passes to you and pass it on in turn to the next. He did not know the way of kings.

I can't believe you forgot the biggest damage: Axindweth introducing Venli to Ulim and giving her the gemstone. Still, if the balance inclines, I'd say the children of Ashyn did far more damage to Roshar than the Scadrians. Imagine if all we ever read of Shallan was that chapter I quoted, and all we knew of Roshar was from worldhopper accounts and ghostblood reports. What sort of assumptions would we make? How does it all look from outside? Or, imagine if we got the hypothetical novel series about the Listeners that I've mentioned before. If the Stormlight Archive was Roshar Era 2. Or, if we got a series set on Ashyn. Or, what if we knew the Listeners who were mutilated by Bridge Four as well as we knew Bridge Four from the published pages, and knew Bridge Four as vaguely as we knew the Listeners who were mutilated by Bridge Four in the published pages? It seems to me that in any framing other than the specific one we get, the picture that emerges is utterly horrifying. The reason I worry about Scadrians ending up in breeding programs is that mister Sanderson has written seven Mistborn books in which Scadrians are forced into breeding programs and zero in which they are not. The reason I worry about the children of Ashyn taking over a third world and ruining it is because of what they have done to two worlds already. The reason I worry that Scadrial is not going to have a happy ending is because we have a grand total of zero happy endings that stick in the Mistborn books. None of what I propose is appreciably worse or different than what has already happened, it's just that it's harder to rationalize when we are familiar with the "before". I would dispute that being betrayed makes it acceptable to demand someone as payment. Being intentionally distant is not the same thing as seeing someone as an object that can be traded. None of that changes the fact that Shallan operates under the understanding that (1) she can treat beings as bargaining chips and (2) the consent of said beings is irrelevant because she only needs to negotiate with their "masters". No amount of legitimate beef with someone is going to make that okay in my eyes. I argue that taking the "warlike/violent/scary + historical and current atrocities + the dominant faction came into power through invasion within living memory + breaking the power of religious opposition = I think these guys are supposed to come off as scary" vibe check that we apply to the worshippers of Skai/Dominion, and applying it to worshippers of Honor and Cultivation, shows just how much the sympathetic point of view of the Cosmere colors the reader's perception, that someone having thoughts we can read, a likable personality, and a sad backstory can determine whether we root for conquerors or the conquered, can determine which sins the readers forgive, can determine whether the same action comes off as heroism or villainy. The fact that the Kholins were opposing Odium did a lot, and I mean a lot, to make them come off as good by comparison. But Dalinar gave Honor to Taravangian and loosed him upon the Cosmere. Dalinar rejected the previous Honor's plan and killed himself to make Retribution everyone's problem, Vin fulfilled the previous Preservation's plan and killed herself to make sure Ruin didn't become everyone's problem, and I respect the latter a heck of a lot more than the former.

Remember in Shallan's conversation with Kelsier (quoted from page 1321 of Wind and Truth), Shallan feels entitled to Ala. "Demand." "Thing". "A payment." "it" Shallan's base assumption is that other beings exist to be traded, exchanged, and owned. This is while she is attempting to be diplomatic and negotiate peace. There is, as far as I know, no indication that this is all that unusual or that Shallan is acting in a way that is not normative for her and hers, and it is more or less the only real diplomatic interaction we see between a Cosmere-aware child of Ashyn and a Cosmere-aware representing something outside the Roshar system. If anything, negotiation/diplomacy behavior should skew more positively interactive than standard. Shallan knows Ala's name and doesn't use it, only thinking it once in her point-of-view. These tendencies continue after this conversation. Her narration objectifies Ala (referring to her as "it", "a ball" throughout). Shallan calls Ala "Spren". I think these are intentional writing choices by mister Sanderson.I think it might be indicative that we see Kelsier negotiating with Shallan in good faith (volunteering information about the time dilation and even warning her, unprompted, that if she left Roshar decades might pass for her loved ones) in the same book that we establish that the coalition against Odium, lead by Jasnah, cannot do so and thereby loses Queen Fen. I think might be indicative that the murderous scoundrel crime-boss rogue dedicated to Scadrial thinks of Ala (who is neither from the Scadrian system nor the Rosharan system) as an individual with a name and identity and an equal in a way that Shallan, a sacred knight of Honor, does not. <joking> Not a good day when Schemey McStabbythiefdad displays better playground manners than you. Maybe Kelsier rolled a natural twenty on his diplomacy check and Shallan rolled a 1. </notjokinganymore>Then again, given that the second half of The Stormlight Archive isn't out yet, maybe I'm assuming this is horrifying foreshadowing for a setting-wide "the red flags were there and we should have seen this coming" plot when it's supposed to be foreshadowing a single-character-wide "new experiences lead to increased self-awareness, which leads, with effort, to improvement" plot.

I guess I'm coming at it from the wrong childhood, 'cause I grew up with Watership Down and Tolkien's Middle-Earth and am thus too old-fashioned to look at spiritual eternal beings, fairies, the iconic and wonderful spren that make Roshar and Stormlight so unique and contribute so much of the vibes and aesthetic and identity of the work, see them lured into becoming power sources for machinery, and not be horrified at the paving of a fairyland, 'cause when I was a kid Dr. Robotnik was the bad guy even if none of the little animals in the badniks were person-level intelligent.

Huh. I haven't thought about Monster Trucks for more than about ten consecutive seconds since I was a little kid. My three-year-old nephew thinks they're really neat. That movie sounds interesting; I haven't seen it.

Honestly, I don't know. I'm biased and unfair. Any consequence strong enough to satisfy me would be harsh enough to hurt all the people who have taken comfort from Stormlight. Alright, that's it, I'm dropping a theory (which will be incorrect like every single other theory I've ever made): The shard of Reason is on Roshar, and what I have seen as characters choosing to be pragmatic rather than decent has been them aligning with Reason. Reason's goal is to have the other shards kill each other and then be the last one standing so He or She or It can make the Cosmere "correct". The protagonists of Stormlight, abandoned by Cultivation and without Honor, will turn to Reason, and have already begun to do so (Navani, unknowingly, has been a servant of Reason her entire life, and perhaps Raboniel was, too). Either this is presented as good (likely, as I doubt mister Sanderson will ever interrogate the value of the concept of Reason the way he has done to Preservation and Honor), or Reason is intended to be a major problem in later books (unlikely). Secondary Theory: Sja-anat is somehow connected to Reason, and "Enlightenment" is a clue. The only way I'm ever going to find the Stormlight protagonists sympathetic and accept mister Sanderson's choice to write this as being how Rosharan technology progresses as anything but soul-crushing and heartbreaking is if it's Reason corrupting the humans occupying Roshar and then they figure this out and redeem themselves by rejecting Reason. Alternate Theory: Invention, rather than Reason, is behind it all. Or some combination of Invention and/or Reason and/or Virtuosity, and Hoid's anecdote about the three thinkers is foreshadowing.

Apparently, Returned's post has been removed. If it was the mods, I'll delete the text in spoilers below. This is the content of that post: Yeah, if my peers accepted being killed, went willingly, and perhaps even suggested that course of action, I would be absolutely and utterly horrified and appalled at whatever 'friends' they had who let that happen, ESPECIALLY if it was for the benefit of said 'friends'. There is, perhaps, a comparison to be made here with military recruiting, but the inherent difference is that spren, unlike humans, are not mortal and are not meant to die. Deadeyes did not exist before the Recreance. The spren who would become deadeyes had the remaining 99.9999999999forever% of their lives ahead of them. One could argue that what happened was merely an apparent permanent state of unresponsiveness resulting from irrevocable damage, but I'd be cheesed about that, too. Adding to that, Ishar tortured and killed spren with his terrifying give-them-physical-forms experiments. Adding to that, Navani invented a way to irrevocably kill spren. If we don't count deadeyes as permanently dead (Mishram being freed seems to have maybe allowed them to resurrect), we should at least acknowledge that Phendorana was killed because the children of Ashyn innovated. The breaking of the oathpact was only possible because Navani figured out how Raysium worked and kept her notes in plaintext. And Navani thinks to herself that she 'won' in her interactions with Raboniel. Mortal beings simply cannot comprehend what it is for beings originally eternal to be made temporal, what it is to grieve someone who was meant to last forever. The closest equivalent is Nightblood destroying souls, because souls are the part of mortals which are meant to last forever. Or, perhaps, the death of children and babies, considering that they are the mortals which have the greatest amount of life ahead of them. As for the "lesser" spren, I don't think that intelligence is or ought to be what determines whether something deserves freedom. There is, perhaps, a point to be made with the severely mentally handicapped needing constant care and freedom being a risk for them, but I feel that that is unfair because "lesser" spren can survive on their own in the wild, which further distinguishes them from most (though not all) types of working domesticate animals. I would also point out that domestication is supposed to provide a survival benefit to the domesticated, and this is coin which is NOT being paid because, again, the "lesser" spren are not mortal animals. Navani is, I believe, written as being intellectually dishonest by making the comparison, and I think mister Sanderson intends for us to be appalled. As for the Singers, they lost everything. Unless the last half of the series is almost exclusively Singer points of view with a few chapters of humans (including one who interacts almost exclusively with singers during his chapters while providing tiny bits of information on what's going on with the humans), the Children of Ashyn will have also taken the majority of the narrative. If we'd had thousands of pages of Singer points-of-view, if we knew them as well as we know the Children of Ashyn, we would probably feel quite differently about the children of Ashyn. Heck, my initial panic was that the Scadrians would end up like the Singers. The Shardholders agreed to separation. I believe that Ati and Leras chose to occupy the same world so that they could keep each other in check (my theory is that they knew that the intents of Ruin and Preservation would, once they aligned their bearers and one of them triumphed over the other, cause him to break this leaving-everyone-alone agreement, so the only way to uphold the pact is to keep each other in check). I think Aona and Skai may have done something similar to prevent Devotion and Dominion from being able to bring conquest and connection to anywhere except Sel. I think Rayse and Bavadin just wanted everyone else dead because they're complete monsters (I have a theory that Autonomy and Odium killed Dominion and Devotion together). Honor and Cultivation keeping Odium imprisoned is, though not what they intended from the beginning (in my view they broke the agreement by settling together on Roshar while Aona&Skai and Ati&Leras were maintaining the agreement in the only way possible given their shards), not entirely dissimilar in practice. Heck, if anything, a 2v1 ought to be easier. Nobody helped the Scadrians when the Catacendre happened. Nobody (as far as I can tell) helped the Scadrians against Autonomy. Nobody (as far as we know) helped the people of Sel when their gods were killed. Heck, for all we know, Tanavast's call for help came after Leras brain-shattered himself and locked Ati away. The Scadrians never made Ruin everybody's problem, Preservation's plan was to set up Harmony so that neither Preservation nor Ruin would become everybody's problem. The people of Sel don't try to inflict their living-in-a-world-with-broken-shards problems on everyone else by trying to splinter every other shard. Those are presented by the narrative as Scadrial's Responsibility and as Sel's Reponsibility, their troubles to deal with, the narrative, in my opinion, gives them a responsibility to deal with it on their own. The narrative condemns everybody else for "not my problem" when it comes to Roshar but does not treat Scadrial or Sel the same way, and I think that's deeply unfair, especially because Aona, Skai, Leras, and Ati were, if I understand the timeline correctly, entirely unable to help Koravellium Avast and Tanavast due to being dead or incapacitated. Hoid begged Frost for help for Roshar, but never for any other world, In the letter, he says "I have never been dedicated to a more important purpose...I ask again. Support me. Do not stand aside and let disaster consume more lives. I've never begged you for something before, old friend". Hoid, and the narrative, prioritize Roshar and the children of Ashyn over everyone else. Evidently Hoid did not see the events of Mistborn Era 1 as a problem worth Frost's intervention. Perhaps he was too busy stealing and eating the last material remnant of the only god who ever successfully managed to get the "prevent enemy god from becoming a cosmere-level problem" achievement in HypotheticalCosmereGame2007 <semisarcastic>. There's also no indication that Hoid made any such calls for help when Autonomy tried to overtake Scadrial, so his ideas of who is obligated to help who, with regards to Harmony, only seem to go the one way. Kaladin is guilty of ordering his men to do crimes against Listenerdom. He also nearly killed Sylphrena. I won't accept him as proof until he makes a true atonement for what he has done. Navani's interactions with the Sibling are the most subtly horrifying things in the entire Cosmere. The Sibling is being so helplessly, utterly subsumed by her reasoning. I think mister Sanderson wants us to see this as a parallel to Taravangian's interactions with Gavinor and Sja-Anat's interactions with the spren she corrupts. Renarin and Rlain freeing Mishram is, okay, yeah, you got me there, even if in my predictions, it's going to make things much, much, much worse in the future. It proves good intent, but if we're counting that we ought to point out that "eventually lets you out of captivity after millennia of captivity" is not at all a glowing recommendation for wanting to have anything to do with the Children of Ashyn. Okay, that leaves Adolin, and... yeah. Ya got me. I guess he leaves that kind of thing for poor Yanagawn (I think Adolin's friendship with Yanagawn is yet another parallel to Navani, Sja-anat, and Taravangian, a one-way influence relationship where one party becomes subsumed by the other's perspective. The only one of Yanagawn's actual loved ones (Noura) to witness this objects to it. We see this also with Kaladin and Szeth.), but at least he proves the capacity for... wait a minute, the whole deadeyes situation was humanity's fault in the first place! "Eventually provides companionship and therapy after convincing you to destroy yourself" is not at all a glowing recommendation for humanity, either! I guess I can hope for the children of Ashyn to belatedly undo some aspects of some of their atrocities. That's a step up from my previous assessment. I don't mean to sound sarcastic, it's a genuine relief. Maybe if the children of Ashyn claim Scadrial they might let the last Kandra free after millennia (honestly happier than the extinction I'm predicting, I take what little hope I can get with this mister Sanderson guy). I rescind my statement that there is no evidence for good-faith interaction, recognizing that there is evidence of eventual attempts to undo wrongs done by prior generations (even if it is for the sake of entities which are potentially useful allies against Taravangian, as opposed to "lesser" spren or any entities which are currently more useful in captivity and would require a sacrifice-with-no-benefit to free rather than use). I won't tell anyone, whoever you originally were. (Sorry, I'm having trouble telling people apart when they're all OOKLA). If you want me to hide the evidence I can edit the quote. Lurker buddies! Lurker buddies!

Frustration! You came back.. *high-fives in years-long hiatuses-from-this-forum* I hope the Scadrians can create a non-opaque version of Ralkalest. A lens of such stuff might allow one to see through lightweaving's illusions. Or maybe a tineye's senses could notice flaws in an illusion, that would make things slightly less one-sided (though still incredibly one-sided).

So, I have thought about it, and this is my attempted translation into reasonable-ness for what I'm trying to say. Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn act in accordance with honor?". We've established that the answer is no, they act pragmatically and reasonably instead, choosing a more sophisticated sense of morality. Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn act in accordance with Honor?" The answer is also no. They renounce oaths to get desired results when keeping them would have bad outcomes. Jasnah leaves Queen Fen with no alternatives to joining Taravangian because Jasnah cannot be negotiated with in good faith any more than a pirate or a bandit. Everything involving deadeyes proves that to rely on the humans inhabiting Roshar is to be disappointed. Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn coexist on a world with others without eventually taking everything from them and breaking the world?" The answer, as far as Wind and Truth is concerned, is no. Not in the long run. Given how sharing a world with them has ended up for the Spren and the Singers, the evidence is clear. Consider the question: "Do/can/will the children of Ashyn maintain Odium's imprisonment, preventing the threat from spreading to other worlds?" Wind and Truth answers this with a no. Dalinar renounces all responsibility for Honor and abandons the shard to be claimed by Taravangian so that Taravangian will become everybody's problem. He chose to do this. It turns out that when the children of Ashyn say "Honor is dead; I'll see what I can do", what they choose to do is this. In my opinion, these are genuine grounds for everyone else in the Cosmere to distrust, fear, and want to avoid interaction with the human inhabitants of Roshar as soon as they learn what they have done. The fact that most of the Cosmere doesn't know the things we readers know is of IMMENSE benefit to to perception of people like Shallan in negotiations with people like Kelsier. The fact that we readers have sympathetic points-of-view, a pipeline into the intentions of people like Shallan or Jasnah, is also of immense benefit to the perception of these same people by us, the readers. If you, like me, do not find their flaws endearing or compelling or narratively necessary or excusable, then the overall message of Wind and Truth in my opinion comes across as "there is no hope. These people are flawed, this is the best they can do, and it's not good enough, everything is worse because of what they have done. Honor is dead, and this is the best they can do. It's not enough, and everybody and everything is going to suffer for it. But that's how it is, and it is better to care and be destroyed by that caring than to not care. It is better to love and lose than not to love. It is better to trust and be betrayed than to not truth. It is better to lose a planet than to lose one's soul. These people are flawed. Please forgive them." Unrelated: I think this will be my last post for a few years, or at least one of them, considering that when Returned compared me to Moash nobody contested that assessment. This forum deserves better than people like Moash, that irredeemable traitor with no good qualities who is the worst thing his creator ever made and who is despised by everyone who knows him, including said creator. As always, I'll respond to private messages.

Wait, dang it, you meant "how would you, in existing Cosmere Magic systems, build a waterbender" not "How would you worldbuild waterbending if you got to make up a Cosmere magic system". Spoilered for answering a different question so as to not derail the thread. I think I'd have someone do steelpushing and Ironpulling on the trace metals within the water.

Spoilered because boring and pretentious. In summary, I think that Rashek was actually spot-on as far as "advanced medicine = ruin" goes, but that doesn't mean we're meant to see him as being in the right.

Guys, guys. Rashek SLAPPED Kelsier Godsmiter's face off. He killed the unkillable man with SLAPS. Has Taravangian ever become so wise as to understand the true fundamental power of the almighty SLAP? I think not. Kelsier has achieved a state of PURE ANGRIES AGRIES AGAGANGRIES ANGRY that allows him to punch infinite beings. Brilliant, not even Leonhard Euler's equations could explain that, the P.H.D.s in being SMART that you'd need to accomplish that would require twenty kajillion years of intense study for you or I to get. And Rashek, while up against this UNSPEAKABLE POWAH, calculated the one way to win, with what we call THE SLAPPENING. Because punch is fist, and slap is outstretched hand, and the greatest of all truths is this: Paper beats Rock.

I think I asked this once before, years ago, and was told that not every shard specifically has a number. Can't cite any sources on that, though. I'd guess that Preservation is 16, Honor is 10 (arranged in a triangle), Cultivation is 3 (arranged in a triangle), Odium is 9 (arranged in a triangle missing the middle one), and Autonomy is 1.

Those are considered strategic victories because they represented an irreplaceable loss to one side (obvious for Midway and Stalingrad, less obvious for the Battle of Britain until you realize that Germany lost more or less all of its trained pilots while Britain had MORE trained pilots afterwards than it had had before), after which a second attempt was impossible, while the other side did not lose its ability to make a second defense. Autonomy lost some Scadrian minions, but those were expendable and Autonomy's ability to make a second attempt is not impeded (the equivalent to Midway would be if she lost the Men of Red And Gold). She is unscathed where Harmony is wounded and blinded. Also, Retribution is coming for Scadrial. I think Autonomy was besieging Scadrial to weaken it for Odium or Retribution to attack, and wounding Harmony and then withdrawing to let Odium/Retribution get the kill (or, perhaps, to lure Odium/Retribution into a fight that He might lose). I think she did something like this on Sel, considering how Devotion seems to be opposite to Autonomy in the same way that Preservation and Ruin are opposites. Perhaps she also helped with Ambition, I wouldn't be surprised. In any case, if I'm not mistaken, a lot of the missing women are still missing, and at least some of the babies conceived in secret places are nowhere to be found, so I'd call it a partial rescue. I wouldn't call what the heroes in The Lost Metal accomplished a win, unless survival counts as something to be celebrated, unless enduring and resisting change counts as worthy in itself, unless preventing something from happening counts as accomplishing something, and that's more preservation-sympathetic than I think mister Sanderson intends for us to be. Also, the Wax and Wayne books included first contact between continents, which I predict will have terrible consequences, and which Harmony and Kelsier seem to have intended to not happen given that they could have told the peoples about one another. That's an irreversible thing. So, in summary, I don't think Autonomy lost anything irreplaceable, I think her leaving Scadrial for the time is a setup for Retribution and Harmony to fight to the death, I think this is part of a pattern for Bavadin that she did on Sel, and I don't think that Scadrial/its inhabitants can successfully defend itself/themselves against Retribution.

Certainly.

You're thinking like a modern materialist person; try thinking like a pre-modern person who hasn't internalized the idea that sacredness is a human construct and material things are only things. A sacred relic is sacred in and of itself regardless of whether anyone knows about it. It's literally (part of) the body of a god. The reason why it's not thought of as sacred by any of the Scadrians is because they do not know about it, and they can never venerate it because it was stolen and eaten! In, say, LOTR, would an equivalent act against a world's (co-)creator be anything but heinous blasphemy? Compare the two trees in The Silmarillion, or the Silmarils. The readers would naturally get the message that whoever has done this is either (1) adversarial to the world and its people or (2) incredibly prideful and arrogant and in rebellion against the divine. The characters who say that are mortals, and do not know the things that the Shards know. I do not think this take is an intended message. People keep saying this, and I'm sure mister Sanderson has said this, but it's directly contradicted by published material. In my opinion, there is no way to naturally come to this conclusion from what has been actually published, hence the WOB. I believe that the purpose of such statements from mister Sanderson is to give himself leeway to write imperfectly. Pretty sure we're supposed to see all of Autonomy's avatars are more or less aspects of the same multifaceted thing, different masks over the same face. In any case, Patji's letter to Hoid all but states that Autonomy functions as a gestalt entity. The foot and the hand and the eye are all different, but they are of the same body. Defeat, for Autonomy, is, as far as I can tell, defined as the end of Taldain's safety and isolation (which seems to be the main motivator for Bavadin). Taldain is unscathed as of The Lost Metal. Not acquiring new territory is not the same thing as a loss. Nuance means that the work is made by a mind running reason.exe, which is a program I either don't have or have a broken version of, which means that that which is nuanced isn't intended for me, and I cannot relate to it because it was not intended for such. I can't appreciate the subtleties and deeper layers, so nuance for me pretty much always feels like a sense of utter cynicism about humanity which can be summed up as "humanity is flawed garbage, but you ought to love it anyway. We are doing our best, and this is the best we humans can do.", or, in other words "characters being flawed where 'flawed' means doing only the wrongs that the author finds redeemable, and it's my own fault if I have any different sense of morality because I can't argue with nuance because I'm not smart/insightful/wise/empathetic enough to understand the complexities.". And I'm fine with that! It makes for a lot of fascinating and interesting stuff, even if I can't appreciate it as well as other people can. I just... I just don't like it when it takes over a genre or form that is supposed to be accessible to worldviews like mine. I guess the Cosmere metaphor would be: "Nuance is that which is made by the shard Reason, and I kinda hate that because it inevitably and invariably subsumes all other philosophies and worldviews, and I want to be allowed to have a Preservation or Honor point of view but that's illegal because conversations about literature are for Reason-people." Or, to sum up in six words why I dislike the omnipresence of moral nuance: it makes me feel left behind.

I honestly would appreciate it if one of you could say what ways I actually changed your thinking on Stormlight, as in, specifics. What things did you rethink? Because all I see is me being wrong all over the place and nobody agreeing, so being told what parts actually came off as valid or somewhat-valid would help a lot. I strongly disagree with this. I think mister Sanderson has made it abundantly clear that Scadrial is not intended to have any sort of happy ending. If he was going to do that, he wouldn't have written the Wax and Wayne novels, he would have ended it after The Hero Of Ages. Sazed became a renegade and a criminal mastermind because he couldn't bear to be complicit in what the Terris were doing to themselves (see: Tindwyl). His deepest motivation, that flame-of-the-soul that compelled him to become a hero, the underlying purpose of everything he did in the novels, was to make a world where no one would endure what Tindwyl endured. The original Mistborn trilogy ends with him becoming Harmony and the implication that he will, as a god, be able to fulfil this. The premise of the Wax and Wayne novels is him failing at this and being unable to do anything about it. It does not bode well for the Scadrians, long term, that their god cannot protect them, that their god has been forced into such suffering and helplessness. Wax, Wayne, and Marasi entirely fail, in my opinion, because the women were gone for seven years, and some of them are implied to still be gone, and there are implications that infants were conceived and were taken to unknown places for unknown reasons. Autonomy's withdrawal comes off as "I got what I needed", not as any kind of defeat. The closest thing we get to a defeat for Autonomy is Scadrians beginning to do things on First Of The Sun, but that's hardly the kind of crusade that one would expect to happen between the worshippers of gods who are at war. Heck, Isles Of The Emberdark is presumably set on Taldain, which is Bavadin's homeworld, and that implies that we're supposed to sympathize with Autonomy-aligned characters. We're never asked to sympathize with the philosophies of Ruin or Odium, so this, along with Sixth Of The Dusk, implies that we're not supposed to see Autonomy as evil in the same way as Ruin or Odium, which implies that the Scadrians' grievance with Bavadin/Trell is less legitimate than the children of Ashyn's grievances with Retribution. Furthermore, Hoid stole and ate the last piece of Preservation's body. That was a sacred relic, irreplaceable. Like the Ark of the Covenant or a piece of the True Cross or something like that. Hoid stole and destroyed a sacred relic after figuring out its location from the Terris (the first people to worship Preservation, who had had that religion taken from them) during their apocalypse, and never faced any consequences for this act of desecration. I'm not sure we're even meant to disapprove of it, nobody in the fandom seems to be bothered by it like I am, so either I'm insane or the books treat wrongs done to Scadrial and Scadrians with less gravity than it does others. Hoid is also metaphorically and physically in bed with Jasnah Kholin. He clearly has a favorite world and an opposite-of-favorite world, and I'm inclined to think that mister Sanderson has the same favorite and the same opposite-of-favorite.

I think that arguments are won when one person concedes to being wrong. Immortal Platypus said that there could be no resolution to our disagreement and said that we would have to settle for clarity but disagreement, which I interpreted as meaning that he or she was offering me an opportunity to surrender without being disagreed with any further (essentially, he or she said he or she was never going to see things my way). I did so. To tell you the truth, I would rather you accepted winning with grace, rather than lecturing me about how I am wrong even in admitting to being wrong. Two thoughts on this: 1) Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but this is sarcasm, right? Because I honestly can't see any way in which this is true, and, if I'm interpreting this sentence correctly, I think you directly contradict this in the next thing you say. 2) I'm sincerely sorry if I changed your thoughts or feelings, that was never my intent. You still disagree with me, just as before, so I'm not seeing how I could have made you rethink your feelings on Stormlight. I'm not sure if you meant it this way or not, but if you didn't, then I don't think you realize how mocking this sounds, how much like gloating it feels. I lose either way. I think, perhaps, you might want to ask yourself if you feel that you are missing out on a point of view or if you are missing out on the opportunity to politely and gently correct an incorrect point of view. Both are valid, but the experience of being on the other side of those two situations is different. See, that's the thing. I didn't post my point of view to express myself, or to discuss it, but to see if there was anyone who agreed with it, who could agree with it, or if mine was an isolate perspective (which it turned out to be). Not everybody wants to express himself or herself, though everybody, of course, deserves to be allowed to do so. Some people would rather be silent and read books in the school library than write poetry or play an instrument. Some people are censors at heart, like myself, and every once in a while must cough in a library to see if there is someone else there who is doing the same thing, who might cough back and then say nothing, and not stop reading, and add the pleasant knowledge that someone else is enjoying a book to the pleasantness of enjoying a book. All of which is to say, I wanted to see if anyone agreed with me, and found the answer. I already conceded that your view is right, what did I do wrong? I thought that was what you were going for when you said we would have to settle for clarity but disagreement. I was enjoying it, and was surprised when you offered to end the conversation. I'm sorry that you're enjoying it less and less (I was hoping you'd enjoy winning the argument), and you are not obligated to respond if you don't enjoy it. As for Joan of Arc's volatile temper in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, in context the instances that are cited as her being short-tempered and brusque are her immediately shutting her soldiers down whenever they start talking about wanting to do things like "we could spend our pay on prostitutes instead of food and then steal food from the peasantry", "We could change course and join a nearly-done siege so as to capture some noblemen and hold them for ransom, that would get us more money and be safer than intercepting that band of traitorous war criminals that the angels said you should have us go intercept", "We could kill all these prisoners and nobody would know". The other times she demonstrates a fierce temper is against certain french nobles who have repeatedly betrayed the king and who historically would later betray him again, or a godly wrath when she comes across the aftermath of atrocities.

1: Kick him in the shins. 2: Kick him in the nose. 3: Kick him in the stomach. 4: Call his haircut stupid. 5: Tell everybody that he pulled a dead bird out of his hair and threw it at your grandma. 6: Pretend to pay attention when he tells a story, and then ask questions about a different story halfway through to break his train of thought. 7: Repeat the things he says in an irritating voice. 8: Steal his chewing gum and replace it with soap. 9: Make up stories of embarrassing things he did thousands of years ago, knowing that there are very few old enough to remember those times. 10: Purchase the naming rights to a Nalthian laxative and name it after him. 11: Ask to hear a story and then walk away partway through. 16,729,438: Tell everybody his real name is Clarence.

Nuance can be found anywhere, in any fiction, though. There's no end to "humans are flawed garbage and this is the best they can do" stories. That sort of thing, and nuance, means that the story isn't really for me, but for people who don't think like I do. I think that he promised moral absolutism, promised a story different and unique and wonderful, something almost impossible to write and breathtakingly daring in its imagination. The potential version with moral absolutism and without moral sophistication would be unlike anything that's been written in generations, maybe ever. The series isn't finished, maybe he'll actually do it. But probably not. Oh. I'll try to be more useful, then. Can't there be some use in what I say outside of rational debate? Oh. What? No. That makes absolutely no sense. That's like providing fire to make something colder. I can't debunk examples. I know very few of them. Personally, I feel as though a reader of the books cannot be expected to know random errata scattered across the internet, and ought not be expected to know or be familiar with or regard-as-equivalently-canon-to-published-material material that has not been edited or published or even made available in print. Mister Sanderson could change his mind at any point before publication, but when the book exists in print, it is settled. If ever a book of WOBs is published, I will read it. Fine. You win. You're right and I'm wrong.

She dies because her species of spider has a lifespan of between eight months and a year (she lives a full year, so one cannot argue that her death is even hastened by her choices). The flies and other bugs are explicitly non-sapient. When Wilbur asks her why she has woven her webs for him, she says, As for setting boundaries, there are a surprising number of conversations in the book which end with her saying, more or less, "I'm tired. Let's continue this conversation some other time." and retiring to her web. I also do not regard scripture as fiction. I think we agree that that first example does not count. The Chronicles of Narnia would have been a better choice on my part, but that gets into strange places with Aslan being a fictional representation of Christ (who you and I agree is nonfictional and perfect because He is God). Yes, I would prefer if she had died. As is, it's a cop-out and a cheat. Heck, I'd prefer it if Sylphrena had died in such a situation, so that the readers could fully appreciate how thoroughly Navani messed stuff up with her innovations in understanding the Cosmere. As-is, the readers don't have to lose any character they love in that moment, which denies a payoff to that buildup, making it seem artificial and weightless, and it really only serves to make oaths feel meaningless and to absolve Navani. As far as Cultivation is concerned, I say nothing because I think that I have basically nothing to go on. As far as I can tell, we know almost nothing of Cultivation. I did not mean it in bad faith, I meant it sincerely. As for specific examples, "We have to go back. Storm it, we have to go back", which is the moral center of the first book, is a promise of moral absolutism. The story is structured around that point, The rest of the book, at least in my analysis, is (in the moral sense) either lead-up or aftermath to it. While my sweeping generalizations make it extremely difficult for you to debunk anything I say, your insistence on granularity, specificity, and rational debate make it extremely difficult for me to defend anything I say and extremely difficult for me to debunk anything you say. If we restrict it to the specific, to excerpts and page-numbers and this chapter or that chapter, how am I supposed to speak of the whole? How am I supposed to speak of the overall tone, of feelings and mood and the big picture when you require elements small enough to be cited? I don't know if I agree that some cultures are better than others, I don't have a coherent answer to that question. What I do know is that between this and Navani's treatment of the Sibling and the spren, and Shallan taking Iyatil's mask off, and my inability to find any reason to believe that Rosharan humans are capable of interacting with non-humans or non-Rosharans in good faith in the long term, I stand by my previous assertion about mister Sanderson's intentional characterization of Rosharan humans. I will retract that assertion if you can provide a specific counterexample in which one or more Rosharan humans act in the benefit of another world with no ulterior motives or expectation of gain or reward. You said "If a character is perfect, it defeats the point of the character being there." Then you said "Characters cannot be moral absolutes. They can be absolute in their morals, but that is a different things, and some morals are worse than others, meaning that if they are absolute in bad morals, they are still bad people. If a character goes through their story without changing, they have no arc. What is the point of a main character without an arc?". I guess I didn't see your parenthetical (which is incredibly likely because I often miss parentheticals) or you added it later (likely, given that we both edit our posts.). I think "not being specific enough in the first place" can sometimes be moving the goalpost, and I feel like that's what happened here accidentally. Additionally, I'd argue that Charlotte A. Cavatica is a main character, considering how much of the story is dedicated to her, how much of the dialogue is hers, and that she is the eponymous character of the work (though the third-person-omniscient point of view means the story is not told from her perspective). I'd also argue that Joan of Arc is indisputably the main character in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, though she is not the point-of-view. It doesn't seem quite right to regard Charlotte and Joan as side/background characters here. No, there cannot, but the Cosmere being created by a perfect law-giver counts as there being or having been a perfect law-giver. I cannot coherently define honor/Honor (some concepts cannot be reduced to simpler concepts), but I would say that it smells a little like a blend of sincerity, integrity, reliability, acting in good faith, keeping to customs and tradition, being true to your word, not compromising, playing on hard mode, and not giving a tinker's cuss about context or consequences or convenience or any fancy grown-up very smart wisdom. You did not misinterpret, that is what I said. (For the record, you are also restricting what the genre is, saying what characters are allowed to be, requiring that main characters have flaws to have a purpose. If patterns can be whatever they want, then why is moral relativism and nuance required in Stormlight? I feel as though the expectation of nuance and moral sophistication restricts the great story that Stormlight could be from being told.) Yes, Tolkien's works have nuance, which is a lot of why I said nuance has little business being in a fantasy and takes over if overused rather than saying that nuance has no business in fantasy and takes over if used. I guess the problem I have with it is, if an author starts bringing that kind of thing in, if an author starts requiring critical thought as a moral prerequisite for engaging with the material, then I tend to end up thinking critically about it, which means my inner critic gets awakened, and my inner critic almost never approves of anything, and sees any sort of enjoyment and appreciation of anything as wrong. I know that's a "me" problem, but I genuinely cannot enjoy most fiction, and treasure the few that I can, and resent when I feel like I lose one of them. I agree that we are approaching this from such different frameworks that there can be no resolution.

Oh swears to you, Moash being alive is a personal attack on everyone who has feelings and everyone who doesn't, and everyone who doesn't fit either of those categories, and everyone else. No, an oath means nothing if you renounce it. It's not some negotiable context-dependent thing you can just abandon for *results*. Sigzil's spren will never, can never, and should never forgive him, because he has violated that of which her spirit is made, a fundamentally Anti-Oath doing that is antithetical to her very being. And the narrative treats it as a clever loophole to prove that Oaths are stupid nonsense actually and you should abandon them rather than live and die for them. It's not redemptive, it's the opposite of that, and retroactively makes every Radiant a million times less trustworthy and respectable because they CANNOT BE TRUSTED even on the ONE THING that they should be expected to be trusted on. Most of all, it's a forcible injection of nuance, which has very little business being in a fantasy (which should speak to the heart more than the mind, and have the patterns of dreams, not of logic) because it's too strong a flavor and will overpower everything else if overused. 1: Jesus Christ, if one regards scripture as fiction. 2: Joan of Arc, Personal Recollections of Joan Of Arc by Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. 3: Charlotte Aranea Cavatica, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Bam, right off the top of my head. Nothing the Parshendi have done, even under Odium's dominion, has made them at all worthy of being compared to freaking communists. As for your disagreement that Stormlight promised moral absolutism, I disagree. Everything about Stormlight promised moral absolutism, for thousands and thousands of pages and countless words. I also disagree that Honor and honor are different.

I reject the idea of objectivity and subjectivity. I reject the idea that morality and emotion are inherently "subjective" and thus "lesser" than the "objectivity" of reason. The whole appeal of fantasy is that it allows us an escape from modernity, from the last three and a half centuries of results-obsessed thinking, from the cage of having to apply critical thought to everything rather than feeling and believing and experiencing things like children do before they're taught to behave. The whole dang appeal of Stormlight to me is the ideals and the moral absolutism, the sense that right and wrong are things that truly matter, that a conviction can lift you above the common clay and grant you the skies, that there are Rules that don't have exceptions no matter how clever or powerful or silver-tongued you are, that the ideal and the material are not separate, that people must be honorable even when it's not reasonable, that every thing and mood and aspect of creation has its own strange little spirit so there is nothing that is truly not worth loving, the idea that even grown-ups must take seriously that burning itchy painful sense of right and wrong which children are taught to suppress. Having exceptions and nuance and context-dependent-rather-than-inherent morality dilutes it in my opinion to just another "People are inherently flawed and cannot actually achieve the ideal and you're an idiot for imagining otherwise" story which one can find anywhere. You're right that observing judgement without ever considering it is tyranny, and that rejecting everyone else's thoughts is unfair and unwise (those are tendencies I need to work on). Mistborn is an entirely different thing than Stormlight, with an entirely different appeal. Vin and Kelsier steal and murder because they're thieves and murderers, it's what they do. We're never asked by the narrative to think they're not criminals breaking the law. There's no pretense of playing fair. Scadrial's gods in that trilogy are Preservation and Ruin, and even though they are not aware of said deities, Kelsier's crew strive to wreck an empire while preserving the memory of the world that was, it checks out remarkably well for a story that only lets us learn of Preservation and Ruin in the third book! The ruin-type things they do lead to ruin, the preservation-type things they do lead to preservation (in Secret History Leras himself tells Kelsier that he (Kelsier) has served ruin more often than preservation, an absolutely gutting line that hits incredibly hard for a character who died before ever knowing of such gods (but who nonetheless is responsible for the horrible disaster)). In contrast, we get Honor and Odium from the first Stormlight book. The characters have much more active guidance from Dalinar's visions and from the Spren, which makes their failures to live up to the ideals they strive for feel like Knowingly Making Apocalyptic Choices rather than Unknowingly Making Apocalyptic Choices. The humans are usurpers who stole the entire world, a clear contrast to the Skaa whose world got taken over by a tyrant. In other words, Mistborn is about Chaotic Good Rogues who violently hate slavery (and cause the apocalypse) and who surprise you by NOT choosing the pragmatic option, Stormlight is about Lawful Good Paladins who begrudgingly put up with slavery (because the apocalypse demands their full effort) and surprise you by choosing the pragmatic option. One of those feels a lot more dissonant than the other, I think, because Stormlight is much more ambitious, and gives itself much less slack. The closer a thing is to being perfect, the more noticeable the flaws become, the more irritating. Because Honor is incredibly difficult to live up to. Harmony comes off as inscrutable and so I never felt like I truly knew enough of what was going on to be disappointed. Then again, this is probably me playing favorites and giving him slack while being salty about Stormlight's characters being given slack, so I may need to rethink a lot of stuff. Dang, good point. Thank/curse you. Adolin kililng Torol Sadeas bothered me because it was a secret murder and that's not at all honorable. It felt like a betrayal of the whole way of doing things that so many characters had sacrificed so much to keep to, like cheating on a test. I guess what bothers me is the sense of disappointment I feel in how the characters who most should live by ideals and honor choose to live by pragmatism and reason and then the narrative doesn't always seem to hold them to the standard it sets. It makes the POV characters in Stormlight come off as hypocritical, like they don't really care about what's right and true, and it makes them seem rotten and hollow inside sometimes. It's like the frustration of watching someone try so hard and do so well for so long at something just about impossible, and get so close and then toss it out the window and grab the prize anyway, or of being let down by someone who you've always been able to rely on. So, yes, I do like the Cosmere books. I like them very much. That's what makes them so frustrating. This is exactly what I'm talking about! If it doesn't restrict their actions, then they're just playing at having ideals and caring about promises and right and wrong. They're all Amaram. I guess you're right about them being shallow and not dealing with right vs. wrong, but I always felt like they had depth and dealt with right and wrong quite often, so maybe I'm seeing what I want to see. Most of the books are very enjoyable for me. It's just that Stormlight promised a moral absolutism that was wonderful and fascinating and then goes "surprise! The Honorspren were right about Humanity! Humanity is flawed garbage that can't stop being flawed garbage! They're doing their best, this is the best they can do, and that'll have to be good enough for you. Jokes on you! You've been rooting for soulless pragmatists, war criminals, unrepentant hypocrites, and imperfect mortals the entire time! Oaths and ideals are stupid actually and the cool kids abandon their oaths to save their spren, because sacred vows mean JACK SQUAT when Smart Grownups figure out something smarter to do than care about the rules they swore to live by! Also they're starting to show up on your favorite setting because SCREW YOU. You're never getting moral absolutism, this was all a freaking prank. Also Moash isn't dead yet."

"We must work in the world. The world is thus." Is not the creed of Honor. They did what they had to survive, yes, but that does not make it honorable. An act can be both heinous and necessary without either of those things meaning the other doesn't count. A person can be victim and perpetrator without either of those things meaning the other doesn't count. The point is that they chose survival over what was right. The point is that they chose the action based on its results rather than on the action itself, exploiting the specific pain and anguish they caused, and that's the opposite of honor. "The Ends Justify The Means" is not the creed of Honor. Meanwhile, the Parshendi who attacked Bridge Four were willing to die for their convictions, willing to die to avenge the wrongs done to their fallen who could not avenge themselves (what is more helpless and vulnerable than a corpse?). That is honor. My issue isn't with whether or not the actions were reasonable. My issue is that they are reasonable, and they should NOT be reasonable. Honor and Reason are often opposed (it's such a resonant conflict that Honor Before Reason is a trope), and when they are, the characters have chosen reason as often as they've chosen honor. Honor should be strict, unyielding, and without exception. It should be reliable. It should be infuriating and frustrating and cause as many problems as it solves but in the end it gives an ability to be trusted and negotiated with and engaged with which nothing else can give, and I feel that the protagonists of Stormlight want to be treated like they're Lawful Good after doing as many Chaotic Good things as Lawful Good things, and the Shard representing the philosophical notion of "keeping to the rules even when it's hard" should be the most strict in its demands. Also, I'm not sure Rlain entirely counts as representative, though he certainly is at least partially so. He's something of an outcast (not that that makes him a bad person at all! A person being estranged from their society of origin is often just as much about that society as it is about that person... Sazed was a renegade from his people, too. But it does mean that it might not be fair to let that person speak for the group). In some ways, he is a not-evil parallel/foil to Moash (one could argue that Rlain betrayed the increasingly corrupted Listeners to join the flawed-but-genuinely-trying-to-improve-every-day Bridge Four where Moash did the opposite) and it wouldn't be quite right for Moash to represent Bridge Four (though that is his backstory, and nothing can make it NOT be his background). I wouldn't say every time, and I'd argue that some of what you are calling condemnation is actually the "side characters, other protagonists, antagonists, spren, and themselves" wrestling with those actions and eventually giving grace/a pardon/forgiveness/absolution/slack-because-of-extenuating-circumstances, and that's not the same thing as condemnation. The narrative, through Rlain, more or less seems to tentatively-and-with-caveats absolve Bridge Four rather than condemn them, and often does the same for other characters who make dishonorable decisions. (And the fact that Honor favored Bridge Four after that is significant... evidently you can do Odium-type things to the Parshendi and the remains of their old god will STILL favor you, but doing the same thing to POV characters disqualifies you. I guess it still works, though, if one grants that the gods must work through imperfect beings, and most of their acceptance by Honor was AFTER "we have to go back. Storm it, we have to go back", which, yeah, "person guilty of heinous things to survive risks life to do what's right with no expectation of surviving" is a change of heart and a redemption story. The Listeners still have entirely legitimate grievances against Bridge Four, though, valid grounds for execution, and part of redemption is accepting that you can't make everything right with everybody and part of redemption is accepting that those you wrong deserve recompense.) You're very much right that I've underestimated the extent to which characters have been held accountable, and the extent to which their actions have, in truth, come back to bite them, and I have to eat crow for that, you got me there. I'd disagree on your point about The Sibling, though. It nearly dies rather than grant Navani a bond. In other words, Navani gets the bond she wanted, and The Sibling relents. I do not believe that Navani truly improves on a moral level (though she improves at accomplishing the thing she wants to accomplish, which is getting The Sibling to retract its stated refusal to consent), I'd argue that she changes her mind but never has a real change of heart. She just stopped doing something that wasn't working when it didn't get her what she wanted, tried something else, and eventually Solved The Problem of The Sibling's resistance to her influence (we see The Sibling repeatedly express that it is losing itself, that it's losing certainty, that its will and thoughts are being subsumed by Navani). That's not at all Honor-coded, that's Reason-coded. Navani never stops trying to learn and understand, she never stops considering reality to be her personal puzzle to solve and figure out, never truly accepts that there is authority greater than hers that she ought to obey, and she outright thinks in Wind And Truth that she won in her interactions with Raboniel. I'd also disagree that Jasnah has had any true change of heart, as even in her last POV parts she still seems to think in terms of results and outcomes. I'll concede everything else in this quote, though. No, it's not ragebait, I just genuinely have unreasonable opinions because I value certain things more than I value reason. My opinions are strange, but they are mine and I stand by them. Why should the Listeners, to whom this is clearly a spiritual matter with all the weight of life and death, matter less than the more relatable protagonists? Nope. Characters are allowed to be perfect. Characters are allowed to be imperfect. Characters are allowed to be aspirational, to embody ideals more than "relatable foibles of the human condition", to be moral absolutes. Characters are allowed to go through the story without changing or learning anything (many of the most memorable characters do so! "Managing not to change in a situation that wants you to change" is an ENTIRELY valid story, just as valid as "Learning to change in a situation that requires you to change"). Ideal Hero Saves The Day is just as much a part of storytelling as Flawed Hero Sticks The Landing and Flawed Hero Gets Wrecked For That Thing He Did. It's not pointless, it's just making a different point; or, in other words, it's not missing, it's aiming at a different target. On the one hand, ouch, yeah, I am unreasonable and I deserved that. On the other hand, thank you for taking my point of view into consideration and recognizing that I don't understand things the way most people do.

I have broams. Emerald broams. And I'm lonel-WAAAAAAAAAAAIT COME BACK!