Aliroz-The-Confused

I don't want to plot against Kelsier. -puts on Evilroz hat- Okay, so, first we run around spitting on the street and digging up all the marewill flowers. This isn't necessary, but it will help us psych ourselves up for doing dastardly and nefarious deeds. Second, we're going to need to make him panic, because a man panicking is a man whose mind sharpens to a single point. The simplest way to do that is to imperil Marsh, because the Life-Death brothers talk tough but can't keep their cool when it comes to the prospect of one another's demise. So, we consult the works of the great philosopher, philanthropist, and humanitarian Rashek T. Uberculosis (bet you didn't know his full name, kiddos! Remember to tell your friends, this is canon information that won't make you look like an idiot), the only known being to successfully kill Kelsier, and, what do you know, luring him into a trap by threatening people he cares about is just what the old packman did to get Kelsier into melee range. Since I'm not the Lord Ruler, I probably don't have the ability to slap people to death, so I'll need the Bands of Mourning for that. Since the bands, last we saw, were drained, they will need to be filled up. But once that happens, there's NO WAY TO STOP ME. Now, getting Kelsier, Marsh, and a bunch of people they care about all in one place and initiating a fight with them is a BRILLIANT AND FLAWLESS plan with NO POSSIBLE DOWNSIDES and having the bands in the same place as all those people I'm trying to kill can only make the situation EVEN MORE SAFE FOR ME. I mean, the Lord Ruler killed Kelsier and my mom told me that he went to live on a nice farm for tyrants afterwards, so after this I can retire to a nice farm for evil people. Waaaaaait a minute... Better seek a second opinion -puts on Whimsyroz hat- First, we take ninety paper clips and bend them all the wrong way so they're pointy. Then, we dig a big hole and put the pointies in the dirt at the bottom. Then, we cover up the hole with a rug and have a sign saying "FREE LERASIUM SAMPLES... only for attractive anti-heroes". Then, once he's in the hole, we make spooky noises because everybody's scared of spooky noises. Also, Kelsier might be afraid of holes because of the pits of Hathsin. He'll get scared and say "flippity-skipperdoodles and unscrupulous giraffes on a pinecone, this is egregiously unpleasant! Let me out!", but we'll paint all the sides of the hole with fresh wet paint so he can't touch it without getting his hands all icky, preventing him from climbing out. Then, we summon all of his fangirls and toss them into the hole. He will be crushed under the weight and his soul will float out of his body all transparent-like while we say some pun relevant to the situation.

Wait, do you mean to tell me that there are people who read the first Mistborn trilogy and didn't imagine those accents for the nobility? NOTE: If this is done in the movie, it should either be done by having people who natively have the relevant accent as the actors OR someone with Daniel-Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln-level skill sounding as close to historically accurate for the relevant regions as possible. No one from any coasts affecting a fake accent (so no Gregory Peck pretending not to be from California in To Kill A Mockingbird), no exaggerated nonsense like comedians do, no downplaying-it-to-be-more-comprehensible-and-familiar-to-the-audience, just solid, natural, genuine accents. Considering how Wayne operates in the sequel trilogy, getting accents right is arguably a massive plot point that needs to be set up (especially with how Kandra work) and worth every effort. I mean, Apple has the money. I want somebody, years from now, to be able to make a compilation of every "Kandra 'a'" sound so we can all lose our minds when we realize that it was both subtle and intentional. Failing that, have every Kandra who says 'a' say it like Homsar: AaaAAAAaaAAAaaAAAAaa. And have nobody notice until Wayne points it out in Shadows of Self.

Oooh, it would be really neat if TSM turned out to be a book from the Singer perspective. It would be doubly neat if it lacked human perspectives. I would outright do a happy dance if the Singers got to have their own story that didn't involve the children of Ashyn, especially if it was set before Honor left for Ashyn. I know the chances of it actually being any of these things is 0, because I'm not that lucky, but if it ever happens that the Singers get their own story I will take back at least 53% of the bad things I've said about The Stormlight Archive and the Ashynites.

I do not see the sides as morally equivalent. But, I'll concede the point that atrocities, invasion, slavery, genocide, and everything else is morally acceptable in The Stormlight Archive so long as whoever it is done to isn't perfect (and since nobody is perfect, that means no rules for anybody). See Also: Bavadin, who is apparently a favorite of mister Sanderson and who everyone has taken great pains to explain to me isn't actually evil, just "complicated". I'll throw this back at you all if the Scadrians start invading worlds and doing Evil Heinous Crud. If you can root for your favorite genocidal taboo-breaking atrocity-committers in their invasions, enslavements, forcible-impositions-of-modernity, acting and negotiating in bad faith, and innovations, then I can root for mine. And I'm not hate-reading, I'm reacting to the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive the same way I would react to any fantasy villains doing the same things. The Stormlight Archive is tonally and morally inconsistent with the rest of the Cosmere (in my opinion to the detriment of the Cosmere as a whole), and this was much more acceptable when it was self-contained. I haven't read The Sunlit Man, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, or Isles of the Emberdark yet. I hope they provide a break from Roshar and its inhabitants. I also hope they provide a break from Scadrial, Autonomy, and that nightmare. It would be really great to get a stand-alone novel set on a non-Autonomy non-Scadrial non-Roshar world again. (spoilers for Tress Of The Emerald Sea)

Personally, I think that oaths, promises, vows, and other such word-magic are both resonant and consistent with fantasy. For example, Cú Chulainn's geasa/geas. The idea of words as just words and not magic is arguably a strange cultural quirk of modernity, and in exploring contexts outside the narrow confines of our own understanding, it feels more right to try to see things through non-modern eyes than to cram our boring notions onto the imagination. After all, a book of magic is a Grimoire, which shares a linguistic root with grammar, which shares a root with glamour (both in the "style" and in the "magic, illusion, or mind control" sense). Enchantment is word-siblings with Incantation, with chanting. Many cultures have had a notion that Law is something that exists outside of and possibly predates humanity, with figures like Moses and Lycurgus being law-bringers rather than law-makers. There is a notion of going somewhere to find the law, and then bringing it back. As for finding loopholes, that's always been a favorite of tricksters, trickster heroes, and trickster deities. As for contracts, that's been a thing for a long time with various types of faerie/fairy/fae, and the idea of the deal-with-the-devil. And, as far as science fiction goes, Azimov got endless mileage out of the three laws of robotics. A lot of science fiction revolves around understanding the laws of reality/physics, around robots who can't go against their programming, and with aliens who are in some ways the strange and otherworldly equivalent of fantasy's fae/fairy/faerie. My problem is that mister Sanderson doesn't quite seem to understand that leonine contracts don't usually count in these sorts of things (typically, that gets Lawful Evil/Neutral beings like the Kindly Ones very very upset with you, since you're essentially making counterfeit law and thus trying to pass off Chaotic behavior as Lawful), and he lets his characters renounce oaths without facing the eternal consequences that they ought to face. I disagree. The spirit of the rules is "don't cheese off the spooky ghosts" not "don't kill people". It's like staying downwind so a coyote doesn't smell you, you're not exploiting a point of law where coyotes are contractually obligated not to mess with you if you're downwind of them, it's being aware of your environment, of how other beings navigate it, and what the consistent patterns are in the actions taken or not taken.

Huh, I always assumed that Aona and Skai were siblings, but if it's a mother-daughter relationship then Cultivation and The Sibling might be relevant to this. (Personally, Navani gives me the willies, she's got those Scientist-putting-things-in-other-things vibes that make me want to go run through loop-de-loops and jump on fabrials to let the spren out.)

I think this is a neat prediction and would be pretty great. In my opinion, that's what we got for Szeth. Eshonai also got what I consider an unsatisfying ending. One of the costs of caring about a character is risking that the author will do this sort of thing. One of the costs of having investment and hype is risking that the author will do this sort of thing. At the very least, there's still the books that already exist. People have often told me that sequels, remakes, or adaptations don't make the original stop existing, and that if an ending bothers or upsets you, there's still everything up to that point. It's not enough, I think, but it's more than nothing. Whatever ending the series has, mister Sanderson is unlikely to give his most popular series an ending that would be unpopular. Whatever he does, I think it will be done as well as he can, and he's said that he is deeply concerned with portraying atheists respectfully and fairly.

It didn't primarily preserve lives, though, it lured the listeners into a trap so they could be killed. If someone did the same thing to Kaladin or to bridge four, you wouldn't be so forgiving. If I had the skill, I'd write a fanfiction story about a bunch of Listeners, all with different personalities and interesting relationships and dynamics. Some of them would be jerks, others would be nice, there'd be a lot of wholesome fluff with certain couples. There'd be running gags, mysteries, setup for subplots that might be resolved after the war, and all that good stuff. And the very end would be half of them getting killed and having their corpses desecrated to lure the other half to their deaths. And I don't think that the Alethi invaders and the Listener defenders are morally equivalent. I don't think that every war is between two sides of equivalent morality, especially in fantasy novels.\ We're not supposed to see Odium's forces and the Radiants as morally equivalent, I think. That's the thing. I don't see the sincerity. I can't find it. I want to, I look for it, and I can't find it.

I regard The Final Empire in the same way I regard The Set, and the same way I regard Odium's attempted invasion of Roshar. As far as I'm concerned, the protections of taboo are not inalienable and it is possible to place oneself in the category of Hostis Humani Generis, as outside the protections of consideration and convention. I consider The Final Empire to have done so. I understand that mine is an isolate position, and it is one I will not endeavor to defend or justify. I will not be persuaded from it, and I will not attempt to persuade others to it. I do not consider it to be an exception to my sense of "rules", I consider it to be a context in which my "rules" do not apply the prohibitions they normally would. I'd compare it to how things like the Hague and Geneva conventions apply to wars between nation-states but do not offer protections to terrorists, pirates, or extraterrestrials.As for blasphemy (spoilered for being boring and wrong), I feel like mister Sanderson gave Kelsier sufficient consequence for his doings, but I don't feel like Kaladin has been given any real consequences for the atrocity he did. As far as corpse-desecration... (spoilered for being boring and wrong)

I mean, that bit where Wax thinks "you don't understand what this feels like" at Sazed and then gets an impression of Sazed at the siege of Luthadel is exactly what I'm talking about. Wax: Attempts to lecture his god, expects the story to prioritize his trauma over everything else Harmony: No. Wax: But I'm the protagonist, and this is a Brandon Sanderson novel! Harmony: Yes, both are true. Wax: So can I have some slack? Harmony: You are the protagonist. This is a Mistborn novel. Wax: #\$%! Harmony: Indeed. You are, unfortunately, the hero of the age. I am so sorry. Wax: Well, at least the people I love will be oka-%&*#! Harmony: -tearfully nodding in commiseration- Me: -curled up in a ball with the book, sobbing-

That caveat is a lot of my problem with The Stormlight Archive. That caveat means that your own physical and/or mental health is more important than the ideal, and thus more important than right or wrong. It means that your own physical and/or mental well-being is more important than than your soul or the eternal afterlife consequences of your doings. The rest of the Cosmere does not seem to have this caveat (or at least not to the same extent), and Mistborn, particularly in the first trilogy, (in my opinion) very much does not have this caveat. (Not trying to open a conversation about that, so I'll put my interpretation in a spoiler box and acknowledge that my interpretations are both unique to me and wrong. I'm not trying to persuade anyone, just trying to head off "what do you mean by that" questions) Like I said, I think The Stormlight Archive does morality on easy mode, Mistborn does morality on hard mode, and the rest of the cosmere does morality on normal mode. I feel that it's a double or possibly triple standard. This especially irks me because in the later Wax and Wayne books we see this "nothing is more important than your well-being" caveat start to appear, with Wax especially demonstrating it in his grudging, half-hearted, okay-but-only-because-nobody-else-can-if-this-is-the-last-time-ever service to Harmony, wherein he starts to treat his trauma and mental well-being as though it was a comparable concern to finding human trafficking victims, preventing the deaths of millions, opposing an evil goddess's conquest of Scadrial, and stopping the Set from escalating intercontinental tensions into a world war. Luckily for me, this is a character point rather than the story's perspective, and The Lost Metal (in my opinion) manages to keep itself morally and tonally consistent enough with the original Mistborn trilogy to avoid being Stormlight On Scadrial, but it's a worrying sign for me that The Stormlight Archive's narrative/moral priorities might be starting to bleed into the rest of the Cosmere. Narrative Black Hole indeed. This is why I see Navani as a monster. I don't see her attempts to improve as earnest or sincere. Sincerity, to me, would be stopping all fabrial research and banning it. An actual attempt to do better would be outright outlawing the creation of fabrials, at bare minimum. Following through on this attempt by destroying as many as possible of the fabrials that exist so the spren can be free is what it would take for me to consider Navani as having had a change of heart. Otherwise, she stays in her place as the fictional character I hate fifth-most. What I see is Navani trying to soothe the concerns of her own conscience, of The Sibling, and of the reader, while having no change of heart, only slight changes of method specifically to avoid confronting things that might lead to a change of heart. I see the apparent "enjoyment" of the fabrial spren as eerily similar to the apparent "volition" of Enlightened spren and the apparent "contentment" of the abducted in Wayfarer, and it reminds me of Ulim's interactions with the Listeners (manufacturing consent for your own purposes). Do minor characters count? Because I think moral inconsistency is much more of a main character thing. If not, then I'd say that Szeth was morally consistent. I'd also call Sarene and Raoden morally consistent. This is part of why I have problems with many characters in many genres.

I thought about this a little bit more, and here's what I came up with. And I think it's easier to write characters to be morally right than you think, but doing so often messes up the story's pacing, deflates dramatic tension, closes off story-paths that would be more compelling, telegraphs the ending of subplots, or requires contrived plot beats to spark conflict and establish stakes. If stories are about tension, conflict, drama, and all that jazz, then having the characters consistently/always/nearly-always make the right choices is like speedrunning a game: Impressive, hard to do, not necessarily a lot of fun compared to the sheer effort that goes into it, often done by taking paths that feel awkward/unnatural/unintuitive, and lacking much of the exploration and content. A different way to play the game, for sure (one could argue that speedrunning Super Metroid almost counts as a different game than Super Metroid), and one that can be a lot of fun for those who like to do such or watch others do such but is at best niche compared to the less-restricted ways to play it. With The Stormlight Archive being ten books, each one massive, it makes sense for the characters to have long journeys towards becoming their better selves. It sets up interactions, situations, and allows for worldbuilding (which is why I'm reading the books in the first place). With only five of the ten out, it's probably too soon to say for certain what the overall work will be like, morally.

I'd very much prefer it if the protagonists' flaws weren't things like "genocide", "slavery", "war crimes", and "has desecrated the dead". Huh. When I sign up for fantasy, I'm pretty sure I sign up for non-ambiguous notions of good and evil most of the time.

Yeah, it is. This is because I feel that The Stormlight Archive is built around unfair framings of its characters, events, and setting. It's also because I'm not capable of a fair framing. As for the mentality of Stormlight, it's less "ends justify means" I see and more "people are inherently flawed, this is how they are, this is all they are, all they can ever be, this is the best they can do, they're trying their best, love them anyway despite their flaws. To expect anything better than this behavior is to expect too much of humanity. There are no consequences in the end, no punishment for oathbreakers, no eternal pattern of rightness to which all things resolve in the next life. The ideal is impossible, give up on it. Perfection doesn't exist." I don't understand why characters must be realistic if the setting is fantastical. Is it easier to suspend disbelief for magic swords and shadows that face towards light than it is to suspend disbelief for moral consistency?

Dunno who Nomad is or how Skipping works, but I'll assume it's a teleport kind of thing. Let's call your ability Traversal. The curse is that Traversal is about Connection as it relates to the connection between objects in different places. Or, in other words, the connection between a world and its sun/moon. In other words, it interacts with space, time, gravity, and fortune in bizarre ways, since you're basically using Fortune to trick the universe into thinking that the place you want to be is the place where you are and rubber-banding the distance between them by making and collapsing a connection between the two places, which interacts interestingly with how gravity is the mechanism by which worlds move, so you fall in a random direction once you get there. In a nutshell, you can traverse to anywhere (with axon-width precision, exactly your desired location), but you immediately get launched in a random direction and go SPLAT all slapstick-like. It's always painful, disorienting, loud, and leaves you momentarily dizzy (during which moment you have hallucinations of Aviar orbiting your head). If there are valuables, sharp objects, cactuses, wet paint, or glass, you will go SPLAT into them.

Option One: Have The Sibling transfer the bond to someone else, someone who isn't actively inventing new abominations against all goodness. Option Two: Upon consulting The Nightwatcher about the possibility of The Sibling dying, The Nightwatcher says "The last thought-scream, the last message my dear sibling shrieked into my awareness, was 'Ichosewrong Ichosewrong Ichosewrong killmekillmekillme death would be better than this, I can feel my mind going, I can feel my emotions changing, the sympathy, I'm not caring anymore about what I loved, I'm not remembering why it mattered to me, my convictions are fading, replaced by hers, help, I chose wrong, I should have chosen death, help me help me Nightwatcher help m-'. If you can free and save my sibling, do so. If oblivion is the only salvation... then it is not my choice, but The Sibling's.". Option Three: Assume we either don't know or don't care or, given that we think the good guys are the bad guys, assume we're either confused or working for Retribution impersonating the Nightwatcher to trick us into doing things that will sabotage his enemies and let him kill The Sibling, that the spren who are supporting us are Sja-anattified, and that the ghostbloods have their own sinister reasons for helping us, probably involving a last-second double cross where one of them bonds The Sibling and they control Urithiru. My apologies, I forgot that it was you who started all this. Sorry, Trusk'our. Let's say it's either limited to one, OR, the first boon comes with one curse, the second boon comes with two curses (for a total of three), the third boon comes with three curses (for a total of six).

I'd say that Odium is to the Children of Ashyn as Autonomy is to the Set. Autonomy being the bigger bad doesn't mean the lesser villains aren't culpable, especially because free will is a thing. But, well, that doesn't mean that everyone agrees. Especially, as you pointed out, Venli herself, who has as good a place to speak on such matters as anybody. I'll also note that Odium is now Taravangian, who is Ashynite, and he's worse than Rayse. I'll also note that Taravangian is also Honor now. Ashynites bearing Shards has made the situation worse than what the Yolish shardbearers had it as. So, the Yolish have the lead, and a massive head start, but the children of Ashyn are trying to make up the distance and surpass them in the race to scumbagland. I admit I overestimate the culpability of the Ashynites and underestimate the culpability of Rayse in this situation. It's probably an overcorrection for how I feel like the former gets preferential treatment by the fanbase and the author.

SImilar to Frustration's threads prompting the readers to try to figure out how to do things, here's this one. The mission: The Nightwatcher, grieving her dear brother the Stormfather, abandoned by her mother Koravellium Avast who is Cultivation, has watched the Suck-Empress Of Garbage subsume her last remaining sibling The Sibling. Unforunately, that perfidious cringe-matriarch of all things trashy has SINISTERLY and UNJUSTIFIABLY turned herself into a magic crystal ON PURPOSE to prevent her own death from being possible and to keep The Sibling trapped. The Nightwatcher wants to save The Sibling, if there still remains anything of The Sibling left to save. Whoever you are, you have the support of the so-called "Lesser spren" in the endeavor of rescuing their only advocate. You might be able to get ghostblood support (unless you already are one). You can almost certainly get the support of many of the Honorspren of Lasting Integrity, especially Sekeir, given that the so-called "greater" spren who are in that horrifying abomination known as the Nahel Bond with the honorless humans are almost certainly destined to become fabrial-slaves soon, and the not-bonded spren will want to save their comrades. Bonus points if you can destroy that notorious band of war criminals and slavers known as Bridge Four, and their evil leader Notable Jerkface Kaladin Storm"blessed".

Quoting this for posterity, as it may be useful later. And yet you say things like "Death rate of 30% below age 15 was the norm.", "Semi-constants wars between states was the norm.", "Slavery was the norm", "Religious pogroms were the norm.", as though such were incontrovertible truths rather than your interpretation of the historical record, an interpretation which is the opposite of incontrovertible among historians. I don't have the patience or energy to argue with you on these things, especially when you have no interest in engaging in any way other than being reasonable despite repeated reminders that this is a thread for being unreasonable and not for having reasonable discussion. It's either just going to be an endless cavalcade of "nuh-uh", "yuh-huh", "nuh-uh", "yuh-huh", or it's going to be an incredibly tedious and unfruitful cavalcade of us both citing various datasets and statistical/historical sources at each other until the mods lock the thread for having nothing to do with discussing the Cosmere. Getting back to the actual subject of this thread (me being as salty as the Great Salt Lake about the various doings of the Children of Ashyn): When Venli, in chapter 55 of Wind and Truth, looks over the surviving Listeners. Quoted from Wind And Truth, chapter 55, page 534. 1700. Only 1700 Listeners, unless I'm reading this wrong. (I know not all Singers are Listeners, that's not the point). Outside of these 1700, every single singer has either been killed by or because of the Children of Ashyn, or has at some point been enslaved by the Children of Ashyn. If we had thousands and thousands of pages about them, we would not regard the humans on Roshar the way we do. This is, as far as I can tell, the moral reasoning of The Stormlight Archive, and it terrifies me.

That would be so freaking awesome. Good job, Wrongfallen Soldier. If only canon could handle such things.

Hmm, not seeing a way to actually accomplish this, so here's a bunch of wrong answers. -puts on Wrongliroz hat- Spoiler-ed for being wrong, because none of that actually works in that way.

Spoilered just in case (and also it's long), but there's nothing here that's outside the spoiler policy for this part of the forums.

As I've said before, if mister Sanderson really wanted me to be like :D, he'd write 600 Pages Of The Set Getting Wrecked or The Liberation Of Obrodai or announce a Bavadin Has A Horrible Day Involving A Wood-Chipper, Twenty-Seven Anvils, Unexpected Enemies With Folding Chairs, And The Realization That She Never Got To Tell Rayse That She Loved Him book or movie. But, as for the ones on that list, I have BOATLOADS OF HYPE for Unnamed Other Ashyn Book.

Yep. Mistborn era 3 might actually be about Scadrians. I know I ought not to, but I'm hoping.