Aliroz-The-Confused

The more I think about it, the more I think the Shards that Sazed has talked to since becoming Harmony were actually avatars of Autonomy mimicking the Shards. It just doesn't make sense that nobody warned Harmony about Autonomy otherwise, despite Invention, Mercy, Whimsy, and Valor apparently talking to him. And Dalinar, Taravangian, and Sazed were/are all very young as far as deities go (so, I think it would be easier to trick them than it would be to trick, for example, Koravellium or Edgli; thus, I don't trust the visions Dalinar and Taravangian have of other Shards the same way I trust Tanavast's flashback chapters), it just seems very on-brand for Autonomy, whose cults appropriate the imagery of other deities/traditions (lots of bad guys in the Wax and Wayne books appropriate Survivorist imagery), who can customize her avatars to the extent of programming them to hate specific individuals, and who is associated symbolically with masks, to try to mess with Harmony by pretending to be other Shards. I mean, Ruin did a similar thing with the mimic mist-spirit to try to get people to fear Preservation. I mean, with how many worlds Autonomy has, and how she's been messing around breaking any notion of isolation agreements, you'd think the ones willing to talk to Harmony would be at least willing to explain "Autonomy makes sock puppets to run worlds and is aggressively expansionist". I guess maybe they didn't know, but if they value the separate worlds agreement enough to only start taking the threat of Odium seriously once Retribution was free, then they should get really cheesed off if they learn that Autonomy's been violating that same agreement. Especially Edgli, given her(?) letters. And after The Lost Metal, if they didn't already know then they really ought to know, or, at least, Harmony ought to try to warn them, if only because it's the right thing to do and it helps his position. It just doesn't make sense to me for a Shard to be both forthcoming enough to communicate with the new kid AND isolationist enough to not warn the new kid against Autonomy (I mean, in one of Harmony's letters he mentions Preservation, Ruin, Mercy, Whimsy, Valor, Endowment, Ambition, Odium, Devotion, Dominion, and Invention, and says that "other Shards I cannot identify, and are hidden to me".); it's easy friend-points or easy leave-me-alone points. That Whimsy, Invention, Mercy, Valor, and Endowment all talked to Harmony and didn't give him a full list of the sixteen, didn't say jack squat about Autonomy, and all had these god-conversations off-page, is SUSPICIOUS to me. It's suspicious to me, also, that Harmony couldn't find Invention again, that both Whimsy and Mercy acted such that Harmony seems not to think they're willing or able to help in any meaningful way, that Valor said two entirely opposite things to Harmony and Endowment, and that Endowment (the only one of these five whose letters we read) never mentions having communicated with Harmony. Sazed himself admits in his letters to Hoid that he's, as far as deities go, young and naïve. One of the main themes of The Lost Metal is how Bavadin/Trell/The Set would have had a much, much harder time if her/their enemies had gotten their acts together and compared notes (if the ghostbloods and the Wax&Wayne investigations had shared information, if Kelsier and Harmony had talked stuff out earlier, et cetera). Another is how lies, isolation, and whatever-the-word-is-for-when-you-convince-somebody-that-nobody-can-or-will-help-them can allow the less powerful to manipulate/contain/restrain the more powerful (The Set with the mistings and ferrings in Wayfarer, with an additional disgusting detail of the actors from Bilming being hired to sell the deceptions). Bavadin's whole thing is being the isolationist, the one who insists "no helping, no one helps you, you do it yourself or it doesn't count" (she fails to help Telsin and The Set at certain crucial points). It might actually be necessary for her, Intent-wise, to do all she can to prevent other Shards helping Harmony. So, since she's associated with masks (disposable false faces), isolation-for-manipulation-purposes, stealing someone else's style (Gertruda and Dumand, the dollar-store Wayne and Wax, being a clear example), preventing help, less-powerful beings deceiving more-powerful beings, and communication failure, it would honestly kind of bug me if she wasn't doing what I'm guessing she did and five or more shards just independently failed to mention her for no discernable reason. It fits thematically. We have means, motive, and opportunity. J'accuse, Autonomie!

IED? Is that one Isles Of The Emberdark, or something else? I don't want you to feel guilty if I end up unable to find hope (I think mister Sanderson intended the ending of The Lost Metal to be a hopeful and happy ending, and I don't think mister Sanderson intended his singular mention of Obrodai to be as distressing as I found it to be, and I don't think the children of Ashyn were intended to come off as being as threatening as I've interpreted them to be). I just worry for Scadrial and Sel (and to a lesser extent Nalthis), being from his earlier works, the ones he seems to think are inherently not as good as his obvious favorites. Those whole worlds could get any number of horrible fates offhandedly in a single chapter epigraph or throwaway mention. What if he wrote them first to beef up his writing skills for The Stormlight Archive? Those terrifying Jeskeri Mysteries smell like some Bavadin-flavored nonsense to me, and maybe the Dakhor monks as well, and if those monks then maybe all of Fjorden with Shu-Dereth. Hopefully it's just a messed up whatever-the-word-I-am-thinking-of-here which makes Fjorden be to Dominion as The Final Empire was to Preservation (a tyrannical theocracy, but not a seed of off-world influence). And, honestly, I kind of hope Hallandren is something of the same for Endowment. But I'm worried that mister Sanderson will sacrifice his non-preferred worlds/characters to ramp up the stakes for his favorites, especially with Azure (who I'm pretty sure is Vivenna), Zahel/Vasher, and Nightblood all being on Roshar (as if Roshar doesn't have enough cool stuff on its own without also getting to play with Nalthis's cool stuff). Having Sel, Scadrial, and Nalthis, the first three Cosmere worlds that readers learned to love, all fall to Retribution or Autonomy (or to a Totally Justified invasion by the humans on Roshar so that such can get character development and learn to be better people by figuring out they should stop doing evil things) seems like a brutally effective way to build tension (nowhere is safe) while clearing out space and competing plot threads. Having all the Shards we haven't visited yet (and their respective worlds) be gone/lost/overtaken/destroyed would do that too, making the scope of the overall bunch of books still astoundingly ambitious but perhaps more manageable (especially considering that mister Sanderson seems to want to abandon the page for the screen, sadly (though, to be fair, if he never writes another word set on Scadrial, he'll still have given that world more words than a lot of great fictional worlds ever got, so perhaps I ought to just be grateful)). And, heck, having Jaddeth turn out to be an avatar of Bavadin would reveal that Autonomy is, and has always been, the O.G. Cosmere Villain(ness), that we've been watching the work of Autonomy and Odium since 2009, those two nightmares whose names were revealed in Hoid's letter in The Way Of Kings. It would tie into how Trell was introduced back in chapter NINE of The Final Empire. Having that plus involving something similar on Nalthis would connect everything together startlingly well. Also, as I've said before, I think Autonomy helped Odium kill Devotion and Dominion, and possibly Ambition. I think Rayse and Bavadin were in cahoots. It would explain how Moash got that Taldain white sand with which he found Phendorana so he could kill her. In summary: Me, for this entire thread, Me, whenever anything even remotely suspicious happens off of Roshar Me, displaying my characteristic sense of proportion and sensibility.

Well, Vin wasn't scared of Ruin until... Yeah, you can't be scared of what you don't know is there. I'm more invested in Obrodai than I am in Roshar, to be honest. I want Obrodai to be saved or liberated or revealed-to-have-resisted-and-rejected-the-Avatar so bad. At the very least if it got got I can imagine them and the Scadrians going "Whoa, we were both bullied by the same cosmic horror at the same time! And Hoid didn't give a crud about either of us because he's obsessed with Roshar! We are best friends now, time for buddy-cop adventures, kicking down doors, doing the hustle dance, and geeking out about our respective magic systems!" SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP I'M ALLOWED TO DAYDREAM I'm honestly kind of wondering if Valor is some kind of old friend or sweetheart of Hoid's, because Edgli's letter has genuine "Stay away from my homegirl/homeboy, you manipulative doimpus, I've got restraining orders on you!" undertones to me. The Letters in general are fascinating. I love how Hoid seems to be the screwup little brother of the Pre-Shattering bunch, the Pippin to the fellowship or the Gandalf to Arda's immortals. I also think it's neat how the willingness to help Hoid, trust him, or assume the best of him seems to be absolutely inversely proportional to how long you've known him, with mortals (like Shallan) going, "Oh! It's mah fren :)", Harmony going, "New Phone, who dis? Wanna be frens? I'm nice, you don't have to hide. :)", the other shards going, "@%#$ you, and ^#$% your family, and &@^$ your dog", and Frost going, "Bro, I love ya like an annoying little brother, man, but HECK naw, everything you get involved in becomes an absolute freaking disaster, for the sake of everything that ever existed, STOP." I haven't seen such author-favoritism towards (a) character(s) who grankles my bajankles since Judy Blume's Fudge books (Fudge was, in fact, the first character on the Hate List. Seriously, that kid got NO consequences EVER for his constant bullcrud.). My G.O.A.T. Ramona Quimby would never. Don't know any of those worlds except Lumar, which has too much Orbital Shenanigans going on to not set off my Anti-Bavadin alarm bells (YOU'RE NOT JUMPSCARING ME WITH AN AUTONOMY REVEAL EVER AGAIN, MISTER SANDERSON! I'M ON TO YOU! Once and never again, once and never again, once and never again!). Likewise, your Firepower Index expresses truths I have been trying to articulate for years.

Yeah, that's on me for admitting to approving of something. But, getting the thread back to "there is no hope for Scadrial", I did a count, and got these figures: Civilization-inhabited Non-Autonomy Worlds: Sel, Scadrial, Nalthis, Braize, Roshar, Threnody. Six total. Autonomy Worlds: Taldain, Lumar, First of the Sun, Second of the Sun, Third of the Sun, Obrodai (poor Obrodai, claimed off-page in chapter epigraphs... Patji's letter is genuinely the scariest thing mister Sanderson ever wrote). Six, probably not total. As far as I know, every new whatever-adjective-means-that-one-or-more-stories-are-set-there world since 2010 has been an Autonomy world, with the singular exception of Threnody (the setting of a story that wasn't part of the original Cosmere plan, but was a side-thing done for a short-story collection involving multiple authors). I don't think that there's any other civilization-inhabited Non-Autonomy worlds left in the Cosmere. It's been 20 years since Elantris, I think we've gotten all we're going to get. Whatever world the Aethers are from, I'm guessing is an Autonomy-world, because that one guy told his guys not to kill the Set guys, and if anyone did that with regards to Retribution's guys I'd assume certain things, so I'm assuming certain things here. Whatever world Kelsier mentioned as a possible ally is also probably an Autonomy-world, because if I assume it is than I can't be surprised by a rug-pull wherein it turns out to be. Edgli's alive, obviously. The other Shards and their worlds, we haven't seen, except in the chapter-epigraph letters, and Edgli's letter is inconsistent with Harmony's letter (in its description of Valor's intentions and willingness to communicate with Hoid), which makes me think that Autonomy's been impersonating Valor to mess with Harmony, which makes me think that perhaps every shard Harmony has "talked to" has been Autonomy impersonating a dead shard (Invention, Whimsy, Mercy) and getting away with it because he's, as far as gods go, in his earliest infancy years. This would explain why ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THE OTHER SHARDS helped Harmony against Bavadin, and it might also explain why none of them helped during the Catacendre (and perhaps why none helped Tanavast when he called). They're all dead, Bavadin killed them and took over their worlds. Frost's letter says it's been millennia since Rayse took the life of another of the sixteen, but says nothing about Bavadin. My theory is that Bavadin helped Rayse against Aona and Skai, and possibly also against Uli Da. This would leave the notable factions in the Cosmere as follows: 1: Autonomy/Autonomy worlds/Autonomy worshippers (second-scariest, because she's reportedly one of mister Sanderson's favorite characters, and everybody always insists that she's "complicated" rather than evil, no matter how freaking evil it is to invade worlds and do the whole Set thing) 2: Retribution/Retribution Worlds/ Retribution Worshippers (third-scariest, because he's the biggest evil and the Final Boss, and will probably destroy or conquer at least one world before being stopped... and Scadrial is his first target) 3: The Anti-Retribution coalition on Roshar (First scariest, because if they oppose you then you're the villain, and that means you lose, no matter what they do) 4: Edgli/Nalthis/the Nalthians (The only ones I'm neither scared of nor scared for) 5: Harmony/Scadrial/the Scadrians (imminently doomed, since The Lost Metal ended the way it did, meaning that "oh no oh no oh no we're doomed but at least the worst hasn't happened yet" is the best things are going to be, because a new series means things get worse. Same way that Era 2 undercuts Era 1 and destroys its happy ending, the Ghostbloods series is probably going to have a similar starting-point relative to The Lost Metal's ending. Also, since the transition between Eras meant that we haven't had actual Mistborns doing Mistborn things since 2008, the Ghostbloods series will almost certainly do a similar nerf on Allomancy and Feruchemy, assuming that such magics even exist... those of you who don't remember before The Alloy Of Law have no idea how much it hurt to have Mistborn transition to being something not involving Mistborns, or how much it hurt to have Aluminum become a thing and invalidate most of the magic system.) 6: Threnodites (imminently doomed, they have no shards) 7: Sel (imminently doomed, they have no Shards, ) Yes, I know that Dalinar and Retribution both claimed to see or be aware of other gods, but what if those were avatars of Autonomy? I mean, Autonomy can just claim entire worlds offhandly in a paragraph. And the whole foreshadowing with Trelagism being about how all the stars are Trell's eyes... I think it's too late in the game to introduce new magic systems, new non-Autonomy worlds, and Shards we haven't met yet. All the notable factions were either introduced in the first few years of the Cosmere (2005-2011) or were introduced in 2016's Arcanum Unbounded. The only new world I've seen is Lumar, and that's obviously an Autonomy-world, given its weird setup with the moons, because bizarre orbit stuff is her jam. Also, it's from a Secret Project, and those weren't originally intended to be published in the first place. The fact that we're getting Mistborn movies and a The Stormlight Archive show instead of books means that we've passed the point of introducing new stuff because we're just going over old stuff. People assume that Scadrial has some kind of advantage due to technology, but that's a fake advantage. Having guns when the other side is pre-industrial isn't a method-of-solving-the-plot-and-winning that protagonist factions go around having, it's a method-of-winning-off-page at best, and more often it's a method-of-taking-over used by bad guys (monopolizing all the magic swords and using teleportation and planet-destroying magics is A-OK, because that's unique and interesting). It's a setup for your enemies reverse-engineering your stuff; any innovation is a buff to everyone. And, for crying out loud, Invention is/was its own shard, if that one or that one's worshippers ever show up they're gonna go all "lol, look at these arrogant Scadrians thinking they're clever.". I think that the idea that Autonomy was threatened by Scadrial's technology is a misdirect created by Autonomy to trick her enemies into specializing into technology, and both Kelsier and Harmony took the bait. But, even in Sci-Fi, unless it's cool technology, it's not gonna win you the day. Don't be too proud of any technological terror you construct. We waited 11 years for The Lost Metal, and that was the ending we got. For all we know, the Set's still around and active, for all we know, there are other Wayfarers, for all we know, Autonomy can and will try again at any time, and for all we know, some of the missing ladies might have been taken off-world. Yeah... The happy ending is survival. The book was written from 2020-2022, and it shows. The evil undefeatable world-ending oppressive horror going "I'll withdraw for now" came off as downright joyous back then, because all fiction was less distressing than reality. Yes, yes, I know my theory is wrong, all of my theories are wrong, that's why I don't make new theory threads. I know there are all sorts of WOBs disproving any supposition I can come up with, and I know there's probably stuff in books I haven't read disproving them, I'm operating off of the actual words on the printed pages I've read, and I'm operating off of pattern recognition, and I'm operating off of "if I expect it, it can't surprise me, and if my ideas are sad enough they'll be less sad than what happens so I'll be relieved maybe", and I'm operating off of "maybe if I set my expectations as low as possible, then I can avoid being disappointed". My point is that it's no longer fun to make up one's own Cosmere worlds because any world can just get got by Bavadin at any point like Obrodai and nobody will give a darn because the Cosmere is a horrifying place.

I would dispute "a lot" here. The Jannissaries of the Ottomans and the Mamluks are the only examples I can think of, and, as you said, those don't map very well to what we see in Shinovar, especially if you take into account the way that those situations changed over generations where the Watchers on the Rim seems to have not done so. Interestingly, I actually approve of the Shin more than just about any other Ashynite culture, because they stayed in Shin like they were supposed to.

I haven't read Isles of The Emberdark, The Sunlit Man, or Yumi And The Nightmare Painter. I appreciate that I haven't been spoiled on them, and I'm not going to open spoiler tags for them. I would appreciate if information on, from, or about these books were either kept in spoiler tags or not posted in this thread. I'm worried that this thread will get flooded with spoilers for Isles Of The Emberdark once that book leaves the Spoiler Zone.

I wasn't trying to refer to myself as plural, I was including myself in the generality of readers. I think for most people, the appeal of fiction is that it isn't real, and the appeal of fantasy is the escape from modernity. While this forum may not be fiction, it is about these fantasy novels, and I'm not sure that enlightenment thought is an appropriate framework to approach them. This makes sense. Understood, I won't do it again.

Modernity is lamesauce, though, we don't want Enlightenment nonsense up in our fiction, we read fiction to get away from that. In THIS THREAD we respect the Shin, consarn it! You smack-talk the Shin, I kick-a your shins!

I already said what it would take for me to consider Navani as sincerely trying to be better, and what it would take for her to actually be doing better. For me to consider The Sibling to not be subsumed, either 1) at least some of what I just described would have to happen (or Navani would have to make some difficult and, indeed, rather costly and genuinely-detrimental-to-productivity steps in that direction, and then follow those by continually making progress in that direction), or The Sibling would need to break the bond with Navani and bond with someone else, because I genuinely think that bond is abusive, and I genuinely think that the situation with the "lesser" spren is one of questionable consent. I guess there's a fourth possibility: A POV from The Sibling would face a steep and uphill battle to convince me that The Sibling isn't being mind-controlled or manipulated or subsumed, but it could, theoretically, be done. Navani's POVs read, to me, like an abuser's manipulations and like an disingenuous and insincere apologia for exploiting the spren. Or I'd need a POV from a "Lesser" spren to see it from that point-of-view. Honestly, a couple pages of that, establishing that it's not just trained "happiness" behaviors that the humans are misinterpreting (it's a genuine trouble in real-life animal observation and experimentation--animals that are aware that they are being watched behave differently, and that makes it really hard to know what influence or impact that has. Some animal behaviors were essentially unknown until the advent of certain miniaturizations in camera technology. Also, people act differently when observed vs when not-observed.) would make me go "oh, I guess mister Sanderson didn't intend this to be nightmarish". I'd like to be certain that the spren can and DO leave, and sometimes never come back, that they're not being kept from being their natural, wild, and free selves, that this new self-awareness isn't somehow a loss of innocence or somehow painful or traumatic. I want them to be like the songbirds coming to a bird-feeder and then flying off (my grandmother always said that their song and their beauty was well worth the cost of the seeds and the feeder), or like bees doing their work and coming back to their hive-based-around-a-man-made-box (I think, so long as you don't take too much honey and are mindful to check for mold, diseases, and parasites, that there's not necessarily a moral problem with beekeeping). The "lesser" spren are cute little beans, and I want them to be okay. You're right, it is dangerous, and I try to keep an open mind about almost everything. The other side of this coin is that I think that being able to change your mind about everything is a dangerous place to be in, for anyone. Almost everything can and should be re-evaluated. A very small handful of things (supported by experience and application to reality) need to be regarded as absolute and certain (just like how every logic system has to have some axioms to start with, like, in mathematics, "things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other") because you have to start somewhere. Things I have views on which nothing will persuade me to give up my basic position on (spoilered for being long and veering off-topic) I think the Horneaters might consider The Sibling a god, since (at least some of them) consider spren to be gods (as far as I know). Honor's dead, Cultivation's uncommunicative and inscrutable for the most part, and Odium's a butthole. Also, I'm not certain, but I thought I remembered Tanavast shuddering or at least having a "I'm not comfortable with this, guys" reaction to the first Fabrial, though I'll admit he darn well could have forbade them and chose not to. I have issues with certain ways of using animals for labor, and with certain ways of using animals for food. Other ways I don't necessarily have problems with (at least in the context of real life). I have issues with fabrials, and a lot of that is because I see them as enslavement, but at least part of that is because they represent the encroaching modernity, the draining away of wonder and joy, the subordination of the spiritual to the material, the progress that my preservation-aligned soul mourns. Also, I never interpreted spren as being equivalent to animals, I always saw them more as fairies, ghosts, animist spirits. And finally, I never said I was reasonable. I said the exact opposite of that, repeatedly. EDIT: Woot woot 300th post.

This is actually one of my favorite things about the Cosmere, though. I love the idea that everything, even rocks, ships, and sticks, has its own little divine spark of being, that there is no part of creation that is without its own identity. It's very animist, and it resonates hard with me, who loves sticks and stones and cinderblocks, who used to smile at the bricks of an empty shed as a kid because their color and constancy made me happy. It resonates with going on hikes and knowing the wildflowers and birds, with learning all the different kinds of rocks. It pleases my dumb ol' lizard brain in a "pretending that a bit of plywood is a spaceship" kind of way. That Preservation preserves not just Scadrians but Scadrial, and that Ruin threatens not just the Scadrians but Scadrial, and that Rashek has kept not just the Scadrians but Scadrial itself in an ash-blanketed misery, unites the getting-invested-in-the-world with the getting-invested-in-the-characters in a way that is just spiffy. That the ghostbloods didn't just kill all those good people on the Wind's Pleasure, but they also burned the lovely ship that wanted to hard to be a good ship, does the same, and having spren for ink, for emotions, for flame, pain, death, rot, does the same, giving The Stormlight Archive something of a "Where's Waldo" or "what do you see on the hike?" layer of depth and color to the world (one of my favorite things on my first read of each book of The Stormlight Archive was learning new varieties of spren), which makes it all the more horrifying when Odium wants to take over and do horrible things all over the place.

That's fair, but "stop enslaving these beings" is, in general, the morally correct thing to do. It bugs me that the Kholin monarchy has enslaved spren, humans, and singers, and that in the same book we get Jasnah doing things to get rid of that, we get Navani expanding it. Dern it, the moral complexity gives me anxiety because it's genuinely unclear from the published text whether we're supposed to just accept fabrials going forward or if I'm allowed to hope for freedom in the future. And, with the whole "parshendi being magically-mind-broken singers" thing, any "oh, but these aren't intelligent like people, they're more like animals" arguments set off "but what if a future plot twist reveals that they're not..." alarm bells. Pivoting from "we must not split humans in this hierarchical way and enslave them" and "we must not split singers in this hierarchical way and enslave them" to "Actually, it's entirely okay to do split spren in this hierarchical way and enslave the ones that aren't people-equivalent" feels tonally messy. A rare instance of Brandon Sanderson not invalidating my read on his work. But yes, I don't think either of us is ever going to change positions on this. I think that this is one where it is the case. My problem is that The Sibling compromises on all its convictions. I don't think we'll see The Sibling raising any significant objections from here on out, only minor quibbles that will be quickly addressed. My other problem is that I genuinely regard fabrials as slavery, and I will not root for the humans on Roshar inasmuch as they innovate with, study, use, or create new fabrials. My third problem is that I regard The Sibling as having been subsumed by Navani's reasoning and essentially Sja-anattified or mind-controlled through a relationship I consider nightmarishly abusive because it reminds me of things I don't want to talk about.

I think "go kill all your friends and family" and "stop enslaving these beings" are very different things. The logic of "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it", is basically my entire relationship with how most of society works. Humanity, especially the society I live in, is inexplicable, inscrutable, and utterly bewildering to me. And I can't coherently express my thoughts the way I wish I could, so across this gulf of mutual incomprehension, mutual respect seems to be the healthiest way to engage. I can't afford to reject "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" entirely, or I'd be completely alone. And, well, since I can't persuade people of things or win arguments, and since everybody has an incredibly strong urge to prove me wrong at all times, it's not like I can find like-minded people because those don't exist. Without "someone else thinks it's true, so I have to respect it" logic, I don't think anybody would respect what I think is true.

I don't know about "most" (I'd go with "many", because I'm not 100% certain that the numerical majority of human cultures actually were monarchical and my old stats professors used to get on my case for imprecision about that kind of stuff), but yeah, you're right that a lot of cultures did that. I was more thinking of "spooky immortal entity from before your earliest historical records" than "person-aged person" Even so, I wouldn't try to lecture a Pharaoh on morality unless I had the kind of backup/being-told-to-do-so that Moses had, you know (or if I was about to die and it was one last defiance)? Stuff's way above my pay grade. You'd need to get the nine-year-old me from all those years ago if you want that kind of boldness. Part of this is that, as readers, we have context, information, and perspective not available to these Singers, and another part of this is we don't live in the context we're reading about. If I was a singer and didn't have the religious beliefs I have in real life, I don't know how I'd react to something like the Fused. I hope I would tend towards something like Sazed's "trying to find the truth, giving everything a shot until I find it, attempt to respect and honor all sincere faith". Yeah, that's an "old lady saying that the serial killer is 'such a nice and polite young man'" moment there. Oh, I edited my earlier post to add this, but I think (probably inaccurately) that spren go to the Beyond when they die. Your reading has them as something more like the mermaids in Hans Christian Andersen' The Little Mermaid. I don't actually have a coherent definition for soul in the context of the Cosmere. EDIT: WOOT WOOT 108th post in this thread!

If it was a being that somebody else regarded as a god, I'd listen to it. And we know the horneaters regard spren as gods. I'd rather be like Eshonai and end up like Eshonai than be like Navani or Dalinar. Better to have trusted and been wrong than to not have trusted. And if I couldn't bring myself to trust The Stormfather or The Sibling enough to stop when told that I'm doing an abomination, I'd do like Szeth and free the being from the bond. I absolutely do not trust Navani's moral judgement any more than I trust Taravangian's or Jasnah's. We have completely opposite readings of the books, then. I think spren are souls. Little itty bitty ones. I see skazes and seons the same way. I think they go to the Beyond when they die unless killed in specific ways (same as people, who don't go to the Beyond if killed via Nightblood as far as we know). The Stormlight Archive is an entirely different series if spren don't deserve moral consideration than it is if spren deserve moral consideration. It's not even recognizable, really, on an emotional engagement level. This difference may be irreconcilable to our understanding of the work. Unfortunately for everyone who cares about the spren, or got emotionally invested in them, or connected to them more than to the humans on Roshar, the odds of Frustration predicting Cosmere stuff correctly are pretty much 1, and the odds of me predicting Cosmere stuff correctly are always 0. I might have to swap sides and agree with you just to force mister Sanderson to not go that direction.

Given that The Sibling is the offspring of Honor and Cultivation, it's the closest thing to a god that Navani can reasonably communicate with regularly. With Adonalsium shattered, the Shards are the next closest thing. With Honor dead and Cultivation mostly inscrutable and uncommunicative, that leaves the Stormfather, The Sibling, and the Nightwatcher. With The Nightwatcher all mysterious and inscrutable (a real momma's girl, that one, adorable!), that leaves The Stormfather and The Sibling as the legitimate acting interim moral authority. Dalinar and Navani bullying them into compliance with their own desires is, to me, genuinely evil. I don't like frameworks where personhood is a requirement for moral consideration (I believe that the rest of creation deserves moral consideration, even if people deserve more consideration than things). I do not like frameworks where the ones who decide who or what deserves moral consideration do so on the basis of logos (I do not believe that logos is the best framework for confronting moral issues, or, at least, I do not believe that logos without other things (some of which, like pathos and ethos, are orthogonal to reason and logic) is more appropriate for confronting moral issues than an alloy of logos, pathos, and ethos, with other things). I don't like drawing the line between "people, and thus deserving moral consideration" and "not-people, and thus not" because I think that when such a line is drawn, I may end on the not-a-person side of it. I always related more to alien, robot, or fairy/fae/sprite characters than to human characters whenever both were in the same story, and I always connected more to the simpler side characters than to the main characters in just about everything, especially when said side characters serve the role of "understandable but incorrect, to be proven wrong and either 1) learn a lesson or 2) persist in error and provide a warning to the audience about being stubbornly wrong". Basically, I'm risk-averse to the kind of frameworks that I feel have been (ab)used (by intellectually dishonest people, against the actual intent) to justify eugenics, "cures" for neurodivergence, and hierarchical categorization of humans. For me, if the balance inclines, it inclines towards extending the "deserves moral consideration" category too much rather than not enough. My views on the requirement to be the equivalent of people are heavily weighted by my fear that I am not equivalent to people.

When a benevolent god tells you to stop what you are doing because it is an abomination, you should stop what you are doing. You should not argue with such, you should not try to persuade such, you should not try to justify to such, you should stop what you are doing, and have the humility to accept the rebuke. Navani's hubris and arrogance here, her elevation of reason over devotion, her attempt at compromise, is the sin of pride. Also, you seem to think that this is about reasoning/thinking ability. I reject that framework, because I consider it to be an inherently evil framework to divide beings into "greater" and "lesser" on that basis. If consideration and freedom are only owed to those "greater" beings who can run Reason.exe, then I am inherently lesser because my instance of that program is broken/corrupted. I do not think like people think. I know what you mean here, but I'd like to point out that one could argue that Kaladin, Shallan, Adolin, and others were, in their own ways, indoctrinated (part of Kaladin's arc in Oathbringer is about realizing that his mental framework for thinking about the Singers is wrong, the Alethi are raised to see genocide as acceptable and normal, Shallan has all sorts of self-worth and identity problems from being abused the way she was). And one could argue that Kaladin and Shallan have what one might call a "mental status". This doesn't mean that Lirin's raising of Kaladin is in any way equivalent to Shallan's childhood, or that either of those are anywhere near what Ishar did to Szeth. It means that mental health issues and growing-out-of-toxic-frameworks-that-you-were-taught are themes of the work that are explored in a variety of ways. I think there's a tendency in some readers to act as though Szeth's worldview/personality is entirely the result of manipulation and abuse, which I think is reductive and does a disservice to the character.

This is the best thread on this website.

I've been thinking about it, and after talking with my cousin I think my troubles with The Stormlight Archive and its main protagonist faction are as follows. 1: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be about flawed people seeking redemption. 1a: The series is half-finished, so Wind and Truth is not a satisfactory ending because it is not meant to be an ending. 1b: The series is incredibly long, so seeing the characters go for thousands of pages while continuing to do awful things and often backsliding on the progress they make risks making it feel like they're not going to stop doing awful things or get better. For example, after over five thousand pages, Navani is still innovating, still enslaving spren, still inventing new "abominations" (The Sibling's words). At some point, it feels like this is just how the characters are, and how they'll always be. 1c: The series is astoundingly dark and bleak, so the things that mister Sanderson has his characters do or be a party to have to stand out against that backdrop. Thus, the things that mister Sanderson has his characters do or be a party to have to be genuinely horrible, and this makes it extremely hard for him to write that redemption. 2: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be about the transition to modernity. 2a: This makes the work a lamentation, a funeral dirge, an elegy for Fantasy. It's deeply depressing because the transition to modernity is deeply depressing, and the appeal of fantasy and of the "medieval stasis" is the daydream of preventing or avoiding that transition. 2ai: In other words, the humans on Roshar continually make their world more modern and less fantastical (the most obvious example of this is the impending extinction of Chasmfiends, with another example being fabrials). For those who love fantasy, or who love worldbuilding, having that appeal wither away is a rug-pull. 2aii: This means that the story is banking everything on its characters being compelling and sympathetic. But mister Sanderson has made that unbelievably difficult for himself. It also means that those who engage with worlds rather than characters are gradually alienated. Mister Sanderson has been praised for his worldbuilding and criticized for his characterization, so he's risking a lot by using his characters, which has been considered his weaker talents, as his main tools. 3: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to be a part of the larger Cosmere, and something that interacts with it. However, he has also made it clear that The Stormlight Archive is the centerpiece, the main work, his favorite. 3a: This means that readers who prefer the other worlds/works in the Cosmere will have to see the settings and stories that they are invested in get folded into a larger story centered and focused on The Stormlight Archive. 3b: This means that, inevitably, everyone else is going to interact with the main protagonist faction of The Stormlight Archive. 3bi: However, because of 1 and 2 (and their combination, which is that everyone who interacts for a long enough time with the humans on Roshar ends up interacting with Odium/Retribution, which means suffering a lot, if not being destroyed or enslaved), this is a worrisome prospect. 3bii: The situation that the Listeners/Singers are in, and the situation that the spren are in, while intentionally being at what are probably "darkest before dawn" points, provide a pattern for what happens to those who interact with the humans on Roshar, one that, if extrapolated to everyone else, is very bleak. The readers haven't seen the "dawn" yet, and it takes hope to trust that things will get better. In this decade, that's not the easiest thing to have. 4: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive in such a way as to maintain reader sympathy during the wait between setup and payoff. 4a: In order to keep the characters of The Stormlight Archive sympathetic despite the horrible things they do or are a part of, the framing is structured to support them as much as possible. Flashback chapters, lack of Singer points-of-view relative to human points-of-view, long and thorough explorations of what makes these people tick. 4b: This means a great deal of page-space goes to things like Kaladin's depression and Shallan's identity issues. 4bi: This has, perhaps, the side effect of prioritizing intimate human character studies over the perspectives of the countless Listeners, which means that the ones who need the most work to be sympathetic (the humans) get the most attention while the Listeners, who have the readers' inherent sympathy because they are being subjected to genocide and atrocities, get the least. 4cii: This, structurally, risks making it feel as though mister Sanderson prioritizes the humans on Roshar to the exclusion of other views from relevance. 4d: Presumably, the second half of the series will feature more Singer content (each book has more of it than the previous), but in its unfinished state, the series provides a pattern of narrative dominance for the humans on Roshar that makes it easy to assume that they will be similarly narratively dominant over everyone else in the Cosmere. 4di: This is compounded by The Stormlight Archive being the longest work in the Cosmere, and by it being explicitly the centerpiece, main work, and favorite. 5: Mister Sanderson is writing The Stormlight Archive to explore, question, challenge, and test its own moral framework, because, as the blurb for The Way Of Kings says "Fire and hammer forge a sword; time and neglect rust it away". 5a: This means that, given the length and depth of the series, there must be elements of deconstruction and reconstruction. It makes sense to put the deconstruction in the middle and the reconstruction at the end, with the beginning establishing the ideals, the world, and the characters. 5ai: This combines with the morally complex characters and their realistically-tedious-and-bumpy path to redemption (which is never easy) in such a way that the story asks the reader to have hope in and trust the characters at the same time it asks the reader to interrogate and question the ideals. 5aii: This risks making it seem as though the story is giving its characters a free pass and abandoning the moral framework, even if that's not the intention or what the series as a whole will be like when it's finished. 5b: This means that some of the middle books end with the framework partially or wholly deconstructed, undermined, or damaged. However, since the pattern of decreasing absolutism and increasing relativism exists, it makes it easy to assume that it will continue. Conclusion: Mister Sanderson may be asking his readers to make a leap of faith, knowing that this part of his masterwork will drive off some readers. My assumptions about what patterns can be generalized, whether or not things will get better, and whether or not it is possible to write happy endings in this day and age, may be wrong, as all my theories have been.