Aliroz-The-Confused

See, this is why I love Tolkien, he lets me be right about stuffs sometimes, unlike mean old mister Sanderson. Good guy John Ronald.

I try not to have anticipation, hype, enthusiasm, excitement, curiosity, or predictions with regards to such things. My predictions are always wrong, zero of my theories have ever been correct, and my expectations of interesting stuff keep getting met with more love triangles and Good Writing. If I have only dread, pre-emptive expectation of Good Writing instead of Cool Stuff, and anxiety for the stuff I'm invested in, then either I'll get the incredibly rare satisfaction of being proven right in my guessing or I'll be the opposite of disappointed. So my projected fulfilment of this prophecy is two paragraphs of Discord before Sazed gets killed via Nightblood and someone else takes up the shard(s). Prove me wrong, mister Sanderson. I dare you. Some change is always necessary, yes, but that doesn't mean some preservation isn't always necessary, too. The diffrence between "change is inevitable" and "some change is always necessary" is that the latter allows for the idea that some things can be preserved and not changed (while other things are changed and not preserved). I think that's important. Don't tell nobody, I've got a reputation to uphold, but I'm fundamentally optimistic about humanity, and that includes the humans who lived all those years before I did. I'd rather believe in a nobler estimate of man, and a happier view of the human condition (within the historical and archaeological record's boundaries, of course). I think about Holocaust memorials, and the necessity of such things (to remember that such might not happen again). I hope that future historians don't think that that was the rule for our era rather than the exception. Ah, but nothing in Arda set chronologically after The Lord Of The Rings was ever published. (spoilers for caution)

I vehemently disagree. And if you're going to present your views as incontrovertible truth, then so shall I. It is tedious for me to always have to defend my views, put qualifiers on what I say, and constantly point out that my opinions are opinions, while others are allowed to express subjective appraisals without requiring such qualifiers (at least, not as often). What you see as the norm in history is the worst nightmares of short transitional periods, well-recorded because they were exceptions. It is like how every plane crash ever is remembered, photographed, and publicized, leading people to think that air travel is unsafe when such things are the exception. The transition to modernity is uniquely awful, violent, and traumatic because it represents the time when after all the guardrails were removed and before the new ones were installed. It was so terrible that modernity had to invent the Progress Narrative to justify itself, and had to demonize and regard as worthless the entirety of human history before itself by presenting the horrors of modernity's transitonal birthing period as the norm for the human condition. It more or less constructed the progress narrative so it could say "you don't want to go back to those bad old days, do you? Do you? Because that's what would happen without modernity.". The genres of Fantasy, Western and Science Fiction are escapes from modernity, and they speak to a desire to see a world not yet stained with such sin. Heck, a lot of the appeal of fantasy is the notion of preventing the transition to modernity inasmuch as such is possible, and preserving what was before. That's more or less what The Lord Of The Rings is. The only point where the Kholins could get away with their atrocities and maintain reader sympathy is in this transitional period where there are no rules and no guardrails, where the ancient taboos are gone and honor is dead, but the new rules and new guardrails don't exist yet. It's the only point where we could go "Oh, the Kholins aren't doing anything unusually evil". But both in real life and in the cosmere, the invasion of the Shattered Plains would be outside the bounds in any other time period or setting. Heck, Hallandren and the Fjordell Empire are much, much less evil, and are innocent of atrocities which are evidently normative for at least the Alethi if we judge by their invasion of the Shattered Plains and Unclaimed Hills. The Kholins are fantasy villains, the kind of people who would get stopped in any other proper fairy-story. They and Taravangian are essentially the same people (note that Taravangian thinks in Wind And Truth that the only two people he respects are Jasnah and Dalinar). Their modernization of Roshar is a travesty, and The Stormlight Archive is a funeral dirge for Roshar, a lamentation for Fantasy as it is colonized by nuance, an elegy for Fairyland. Mister Sanderson might disagree, but that is because he does not understand his own work, and if he dislikes how Fantasy stays in the medieval stasis, it is because he fundamentally does not get (or rather, has forgotten) what Fantasy is or why it's good. Which is a shame because he wrote one of the great Fantasy series, one of the great fairy-stories, in the original Mistborn trilogy (not that he probably realizes this, or if he knew he has forgotten, but that's on him). On the plus side, once we get to the Sci-fi part, we're gonna get some awesome sci-fi. No, it is not. This is a context in which I think I am allowed to say that it is not and not be an idiot. Preservation is a fundamental part of existence in the Cosmere, just as much as Ruin. Mistborn's greatest appeal to me was that Preservation was presented as something real, true, valid, and meaningful. The idea that change is inevitable is, in my view, too often used as a way to absolve those who make it happen from any responsibility. For example, those who deny human causes for climate change. The whole point of Preservation, I think, is the rejection of the idea that change is inevitable, or, at least, the idea that change, even if inevitable, can and must be delayed and prevented for as long as possible. Yes, Preservation didn't preserve himself, but it was his plan that succeeded in the trilogy, not Ruin's. And I think he set things up for long after his death, such that there's a possibility that I'm not absolutely certain to be wrong to guess that maybe the scope of such has not been fully revealed yet. I can hope, at least, until I'm inevitably proven wrong by new books. Whimsy is just as fundamental as Reason. Preservation is just as fundamental as Ruin. I think if the message of the Cosmere was meant to be "change is inevitable", then Ruin would have won in The Hero Of Ages. No, wonder is about appreciating that which is not understood (or at least not fully understood). That's why they call it wonder. The rain does not need to understand the rain to be the rain. The sky does not need to understand the heavens to be the universe. Understanding is unnecessary for existence, for love, for being, and for wonder. But things that are unnecessary can be the most worthwhile things of all (art is arguably unnecessary in certain views). It is good to understand, it is a beautiful thing to understand, it is a worthwhile thing and a sacred duty. But wonder is something different. An appreciation without understanding. And that can be beautiful, good, and worthwhile as well. Often, increased understanding leads to increased wonder, with each answer revealing more questions. Telescopes and microscopes to see more of what the Creator has made. But the wonder, I think, does not come from the understanding, but from that which is not (yet) understood. I don't understand most things, or, rather, I misunderstand most of what I think I understand. That's why my username is Aliroz the Confused. This is disturbingly beievable, given Hoid's canon disregard, if not utter loathing, for all things Scadrian.

Missouri Executive Order 44 fits under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide's definition of genocide, which is as Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined it. Specifically, articles 2a, 2b, and 2c, applying in the context of a religious group. I hesitate to elaborate further, as this crosses from history into my own family history, and people whose children later knew and were remembered by my own grandparents' generation (including my maternal grandmother, whom I grew up two houses away from, whose great-grandmother she remembered from her childhood, said great-grandmother being the daughter of individuals driven from Missouri under Missouri Executive Oder 44), and I do not wish to misrepresent such events. This is highly sensitive ground, and, it being so, I advise that caution, discretion, and care be taken when discussing such matters.

It's because the reader realizes what the author's intent and priorities are, and decides to quit while ahead, leaving mostly good memories. From the minute we know that it's slavery, we should have no doubt about the badness of the baddies (The Final Empire's opening draws its tension from "will this work or will these people all die?" not "is this morally right?". Only a results-oriented consequentialist or a deontological pacifist can argue against the morality of Kelsier's attack on the Tresting plantation). From the point I first reads about Sazed and learns what's going on with the Terris, I thought the destruction of the Final Empire was not only justified but morally obligatory. From the point the reader reads Dox's monologue about Devinshae, the reader knows what the nobility in general are like. It's the same thing as Wax and Wayne against the villains of the Wax and Wayne books. In my mind, the reasons it appears to be in doubt are 1) that Elend Venture's status as the "one good noble" primes the reader to question the rightness of destroying the Final Empire 2) while the lack of enslaved skaa points of view denies us a chance to see the main part of the good that Kelsier does, 3) Vin's criticisms of Kelsier are incredibly well-written (good enough to be compelling) but the ways in which she is myopic (especially when interacting with the nobility, and especially when it comes to the enslaved skaa) are also incredibly well-written (enough to lure the audience into turning a blind eye to the things she ignores), 4) that Elend is sympathetically-written enough that it's easy to miss the fact that for much of the story he does not regard the skaa as intelligent/human, and the ways in which he is myopic are well-written enough to lure the audience into turning a blind eye to the thigns he ignores, 5) the symbolic foreshadowing of Ruin and the hints that darker, more complicated things are pushing the characters to do these things are cleverly hidden as foreshadowing of Kelsier doing something evil and hints that he has darker, more complicated motivations, 6) the way in which other characters are allowed to criticize Kelsier and be right primes us to doubt him, and 7) the preservation-and-ruin-theming of the setting making the destruction of the Final Empire Ruin-aligned and the continuation of the Final Empire Preservation-aligned, especially with the context of Rashek's backstory and Alendi's logbook. Most of these are load-bearing, but remove Elend Venture, and you can keep it PG-13 without compromising the audience's understanding that Kelsier's actions are entirely justified. Or, have him be killed (or seem to be killed) in the first film so that his sympathetic-ness supports the perceived rightness of the Crew rather than undermining it. Maybe have him show up imprisoned but alive for a surprise and have Kelsier's decision to spare him be during some sort of escape or confrontation. Or have Elend be among the people that are going to be executed with Renoux and Spook (heck, this event is exactly where he almost dies in the book). Or, move the conversation Elend has with Vin about how he was forced to lose his virginity up to the first movie, and make it a heartbreaking, quiet scene that does justice to a trauma the books glossed over. Alternately, keep Elend as-is but focus on Tepper, Jassa, and Mennis, giving us at least a subplot of their trials and travails as they and the other skaa from the Tresting plantation try to survive, so that we get to know and care for the people that the Crew is doing all of this for. Make us like them enough, and the sympathies will be rightly aligned without the need for seeing things that would require an R rating. It's a very talky sequence, but Mennis's dialogue with Kelsier after the loss of Yeden's army does a lot to show the sheer despair and hopelessness of the skaa (while also showing their genuine desire to rebel and their resilience, courage, defiance, and endurance), and it helps show that Kelsier is not "inciting" a rebellion that would not happen naturally but enabling a rebellion that centuries of great effort have gone into making unworkable. When I read The Final Empire for the first time back in 2009, one of the things that always stuck with me was Sazed's descriptions of extinct religions. I found the worldbuilding fascinating, and each little glimpse of a destroyed culture was, in its own way, a heartbreaking reminder of what the Final Empire had ruined. That some of them held out for centuries was beautiful but deeply upsetting. Including these sequences where Sazed talks about extinct faiths and gives little human details of them humanizes them, reminding us that it's not just about stopping what's going on, it's about protecting and preserving the memory of what's been lost. If the screen version gave us visuals of these peoples and cultures, of their cities/architecture/foods/clothing, you could go a long, long way towards making the Final Empire hateable without necessarily showing outright gore (think of the scene in The Incredibles with the computer showing all the superheroes, one after another, with text confirming their fates). Indeed, at least one of these sequences is foreshadowing for things that will be very very important later, and only including that one more or less shines a "OH HEY IT'S THIS ONE LOOK AT THIS ONE" spotlight on it. The more that are included, the more the audience is primed to see it as natural that the Cosmere is religion-themed, worldbuilding-heavy, and god-focused (something Elantris established in print). I know a lot of my suggestions are dialogue-heavy, but, to be fair, that doesn't mean it can't also be an action thriller. Just look at Jurassic Park, which balances the action with quiet dialogue scenes to create a rhythm (inhale, exhale, tension, release, buildup, payoff) that makes the action (to some people, at least) more exciting than it would be, rather than less, because it prevents burnout. Jaws is an absolutely terrifying movie with very little in the way of actual shark-on-screen content, and from what I've heard Alien is similar (though I've heard Aliens might not be, or maybe I got the two confused).

(It's okay, Xzevicus, the forumites here destroy all theories (it's why I don't make theory threads anymore). I think your theory is a good one.)

I'll grant that religions have been drivers of atrocities if you'll grant that they've been guards against atrocities. I'll acknowledge the wrongs done by theocracies if you'll acknowledge the wrongs done by secular regimes. I'll concede the flaws of the pre-modern world and credit the better qualities of the modern world if you concede the flaws of the modern world and credit the better qualities of the pre-modern world. I'm not claiming equivalence, but if you're going to be black-and-white about this than I will as well. I'll also point out that many of those pogroms and genocides were done by secular regimes, with an example of non-dominant religions being subjected to such under a secular regime being the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from the United States in the nineteenth century. Other examples may be seen in the history of many communist societies. Many civilizations that were conquered lasted longer than our current civilizations have lasted. Many of those civilizations that conquered them also ended, sometimes surprisingly quickly after such conquests. This, I think, applies in the Cosmere as well. Recall who the last holdouts against The Final Empire were. I'll accept that a physical means of holding on to power is necessary in order to maintain power, but I think you ought to acknowledge that it is not necessarily sufficient. I guess my point is that power is foundational to these kinds of authority, but other things can be foundational to such authority in addition to power. By the time of Wind And Truth, the Kholins have removed (more or less) all foundation for their own authority other than power, and thus, when faced with Taravangian's greater power, Jasnah has (essentially) nothing else to fall back on (or, at least nothing else that can compel Fen to obligation against Taravangian). In my opinion, the Kholin monarchy is in some ways unsettlingly similar to many antagonist factions in fiction, with one of the crucial differences being that their invasion isn't against the main characters' homes. How are the nightmares of modernity better? Is it the wars? The desolation of the African, Australian, and American continents? Or the mortality caused by the various leads, microplastics, carcinogens, and other products of progress (smoking, industrialization, pollution), as well as the mortality factor of automobile travel? Perhaps these are less awful than the awfulness that could be found in the world that preceded our modernity, but I don't think it's inarguable. I'd think it might be more accurate to say that as problems are solved, new problems are created (often lesser, more manageable problems, but sometimes horrors as bad as any in history). I'll grant that the tradeoffs are worth it (I certainly wouldn't choose to go back all those centuries) if you'll grant that there were tradeoffs, but if you're going to be black-and-white with a progress narrative then I will happily be black-and-white with the opposite. Besides, my point was that the transition to modernity represents something traumatic and violent, a loss of the wonder and magnificence of much of what the Creator had made, and most of all, in the context of The Stormlight Archive, a colonization of fairyland and Fantasy. Usually the kind of stuff that Fantasy's about preventing, avoiding, or escaping from.

No, the worlds and magic are what made it special, and what made it a success. The Stormlight Archive and its characters came later. I remember the early days, before The Way Of Kings. Back then, the reviewers weren't ashamed to praise the setting and the fans weren't ashamed to call it the best part. For crying out loud, Elantris was named for the setting, and Mistborn was named for its magic system (note that we haven't had actual Mistborns doing Mistborn things since 2008, which grankles my bajankles, but still). It's the same thing as how Star Wars was never praised for its characters and script before the prequels came out and people needed some way to pretend that there was a sophisticated grown-up reason for why they didn't enjoy the prequels like they'd enjoyed the originals as kids (seriously, look up the reviews from 1977, people never praise the writing or the characters of Star Wars, they say things like "this is the most fun I've had going to the cinema... ever!" and "I've never seen anything like it. What a phantasmagoria!" (paraphrased, not direct quotes). When my grandpa came home from the cinema to pick up my grandma and her kids and drive them immediately to the theater so they could see it, he didn't say "wow, the characters were so memorable", he said "You've got to see it. There were spacemen, floating cars, barfights, a giant bear-thing, it was like a western crashed into a sci-fi!"). Of course, that was before Good Writing became the absolute prison that it is today, and part of that is due to mister Sanderson teaching a generation ten million unbreakable laws for storytelling, probably as recompense for his crime of Not Being Good Enough At Prose And Characters. My sense of humor is broken enough that I wouldn't get it if it was well-written comedy, so I give him a pass for that. The funniest thing in the cosmere is, and will always be, the stick that is a stick, and he didn't even intend that to as funny as it was. If you try to turn books into paper towels I will beat you up and stop you to rescue the books. I will die on this hill. Whoa, whoa, whoa, we have Kelsier and Vin's father-daughter relationship, Vin's learning to trust, and all of Kelsier and Marsh's interactions. Also Marsh in general is great. That bit where Marsh says "Sometimes I wish it wasn't you who returned from the pits" and Kelsier says "So do I, every day" is the best character bit mister Sanderson ever wrote, and in retrospect The Crew being not-very-deep characters means they serve their purposes well without clogging up the book. Also Mennis is the realest hombre in the Cosmere and every page he's in is peak literature. And Sazed is MAH BOI and deserves all the happiness and none of the suffering. Tindwyl deserved her own book, and in talking down to Elend both her and Yomen earned permanent spaces on the Opposite-Of-Hate List. Tensoon and Vin is well-written enough that Tensoon showing up and talking about her in the Wax and Wayne books is a highlight, same with Marsh and "he does my brother's work". And Spook is the best portrayal of my own sensory processing issues I've ever read, though that's more the magic and worldbuilding so it counts under that umbrella. Wait, on the other hand, we also have Elend. Yikes, I've got to put all of that last paragraph in a parentheses and multiply it by zero. And we have Zane, so we have to add a negative kajillion to the calculation... Dang it! The numbers don't lie, on the average, you're right! Warbreaker has the best iteration of Hero With Bad Social Skills / Jerk With A Heart Of Gold / Brooding Loner archetype in Vasher, because he genuinely isn't endearing, charming, witty, or immediately likable, and is perfectly contrasted with Denth and his buddies. Vasher's whatever-the-opposite-of-charisma is, especially when it comes to trying to explain what he's trying to do, is frustrating and relatable in all the right ways. On a first read, Denth and company are genuinely more likable until the other shoe drops, and on the second read you see the warning signs. But, on the other hand, part of this might be residual goodwill from the experience of turning the page and escaping from the Siri/Susebron situation. Hoid was just set up too well as a mysterious figure, and the Chapter Epigraph Letters and the "you must not trust yourself with me..." was too good for anything that follows to live up to, I think... though, we haven't really had the payoff yet, so I'm still fascinated to learn more. If nothing else, I want to see him get wrecked kind of like how I want to see Moash, Navani, Bavadin, and Sja-anat get wrecked. Freaking Lerasium-stealing !#%@$%@#$%. Wait, no, I just remembered the Hoid/Jasnah chapters.... gaaaah, no. Less Hoid is better, less Hoid is better, less Hoid is better. Kaladin isn't written for me, he's written for my cousin, like many of The Stormlight Archive's characters are, and as much as I talk smack on them, I do so knowing that my cousin loves them in the same way that I love Mistborn's crew. Making my cousin happy in real life > any bad thing you do in fiction, cause Real Life > Fiction. Szeth, yes. Szeth and Steris think in my thought-patterns sometimes in ways that no other fictional characters ever have, making them fascinating and unique. A lot of my beef with The Stormlight Archive is that it does Szeth dirty in Wind And Truth. Yeah, ignoring them is a setup for getting proven wrong later. Good point, Immortal Platypus.

Oh thank goodness, I thought it was canon for a second there. Phew. I can save the panic for if it becomes a thing in print.

Doesn't work that way with planets, in my opinion. Can't explain why, it just doesn't. But since this thread has gone over such terminology disputes before, I'll concede the point that precisely zero people agree with me on this. Fine, Kaladin is Rosharan. Wait, what? I don't remember this ever being a thing? Was this in a WOB? This is absolutely terrifying and shatters what I thought I understood. Okay, fair, Syl and Pattern are Rosharan (though, to be fair, Syl's point-of-view content, added to Singer point-of-view content, is probably still less pages than Kholin Romance Subplots / Love Triangles Making Me Want To Barf content. And, to be fair, I'm not sure I consider Syl to be entirely free-willed because the Nahel bond makes me incredibly uncomfortable for reasons I don't want to get into), I was just being salty about the lack of Singer content. If The Stormlight Archive didn't exist, I'd be writing salt about Zane/Vin/Elend content taking up pages that should have been more skaa points of view. Mister Sanderson's biggest flaw as a writer has always been his romance subplots (outside of Raoden and Sarene, and perhaps Tess and Charlie), and his second biggest flaw as a writer has always been his inordinate fixation on characters over worldbuilding as the core of stories when worldbuilding is what he's good at and the magic systems are what made the Cosmere a success in the first place. Guy thinks that his worlds and magic systems are enjoyable-but-not-the-point structural necessities to write stuff about characters, when the Cosmere's characters have always been the weakest part of the books and function best as enjoyable-but-not-the-point structural necessities to explore the possibilities of the imagination. Poor mister Sanderson thinks that The Stormlight Archive became popular because of its characters. It became popular because epic canyons with giant enemy crabs are freaking awesome. Everybody wants to read about fossil-resembling megafauna in the fantasy equivalent of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona, but we're all just too prim and proper to admit to liking Hype Stuff That An Eight Year Old Thinks Is Cool, so we gotta smuggle it in in a crate full of Thoughtful Commentary On the Human Condition (which is also good, but the Coolest Thing I Ever Read to Good Writing ratio is far too skewed towards Good Writing in the later books of The Stormlight Archive for my taste).

No, that's how modernity insists all governments work (and modernity insists that that's how all governments always worked), because if it wasn't the legitimacy of all modern governance would be threatened. Spoilered for tedious rambling. I do not think that Elodi of the Singers and Gavilar Kholin of the Alethi are meant to be the same sort of all-authority-is-just-power king, and if there is anything that I get from The Stormlight Archive, it is a profound ache and sorrow that Elodi's world became Gavilar's, the same profound ache and sorrow from all of Sazed's recollections of extinguished religious traditions and Mare's dreams of flowers. Perhaps The Stormlight Archive is a lamentation, a funeral dirge for the dying genre of fantasy as it succumbs to nuance, an elegy for Roshar. Or, in other words, nuh-uh! Authority's not just power. I got... metaphors and stuff... and feelings about fairytales. Just wait, it's gonna be a whole thing when some cool monarchs show up instead of these Kholin upstarts. I always found Breeze and Alrianne to be utterly terrifying, in some ways more than the Steel Inquisitors. No, it's a story about the children of Ashyn. The Rosharans get less pagetime than Ashynite love triangles do. I never really felt like Rayse was defeated (until his death), same as I have never felt like Bavadin was defeated. The murderer of Uli Da, Aona and Skai (with Bavadin's help if my theory is correct), and Tanavast, defiler of worlds (responsible for Sel and Threnody being the way they are), arch-enemy of Hoid, creator of Sja-anat, and architect of the main characters' pain and suffering, was still plenty threatening, especially knowing how many books there still were remaining. On a logarithmic scale of 0 to 100 scariness, Rayse got up to 91 at peak and never dropped lower than 76. It's just that Taravangian went from 0 to 80 the instant we figured out what kind of person he was in The Way of Kings, stayed there, and then went to 100 on the last sentence of chapter 114 of Rhythm of War. EDITED TO ADD: That's exactly the kind of framework I'm criticizing Jasnah for having, though. None of that matters in terms of keeping power for now, perhaps, but in terms of Not Getting Your Face Stomped At The End Of Your Story, that kind of illegitimate tyranny makes promises that it just can't keep in a fantasy series. You can't play tyrant games without winning tyrant prizes in this type of fiction, you know? (Not that she's gone that far, but it's early years yet, give her enough power and a thousand years and she'll give Rashek a run for his money). What do you mean, "her book"? EDIT: WOOT WOOT MY 256th post! 16*16, yeah!

I was, a few posts back, told that information without context (a few pages of conversation) is insufficient grounds to condemn a character. We never get to read a Ghostblood point of view, except, technically, Kelsier's in The Lost Metal. I base my guesses on how the Ghostbloods act on non-Roshar worlds on The Lost Metal rather than on The Stormlight Archive. I believe this is intentional, and done for the same reason as the near-absence of Singer point-of-view content (as well as the near-absence of Spren point-of-view content): to curate the reading experience to be maximally sympathetic to the children of Ashyn. When mister Sanderson includes perspectives like Taravangian's, it serves to remind us why the reader ought to root for the Kholins against him. When he includes perspectives like Moash, it reminds us why we hate Moash and want infinite suffering for him. The absolute lack of Ghostblood points of view in The Stormlight Archive implies, to me, that mister Sanderson is worried that including them would in some way compromise the framing which keeps the Ashynite protagonists sympathetic to the reader. Interestingly, even The Lost Metal lacks Ghostblood points of view, which to me implies that mister Sanderson doesn't want to let the reader start liking them too much. This reminds me of the near-absence of certain skaa points of view in the original Mistborn trilogy. I do not agree with you about Axindweth. (Also, "it's" is a contraction. You mean "Uruthiru and its Oathgates".) They stole the limelight from the Singers. Taravangian even stole Rayse's role as Final Boss, and after such an incredible buildup over so many books and so many years! (I can't even be mad about this one since it was done so well, but still, a massive bummer for anyone who wanted to see the people of Sel interact with the butthole who killed Aona and Skai). Anything that contains the children of Ashyn becomes about the children of Ashyn, and anything that threatens their dominance over the story is ignored, downplayed, erased, shifted to be revealed multiple books later in a flashback, revealed to be wrong, hidden in a couple of paragraphs blanketed by hundreds of pages of love triangles and inner angst, undercut, or repurposed to fuel their stories. The Stormlight Archive proves exactly how stories where Ghostbloods and Ashynites interact go, and how much limelight Ghostbloods get to have. It's entirely different. Emotional allomancy wears off. Interaction with The Stormlight Archive's protagonists does not (see: Kaladin convincing Sigzil to kill his conscience). Ten days with Kaladin rewrites your entire personality no matter how stubborn you are, and, as far as we can tell, it's permanent. At this point I give it a few weeks before Ala switches loyalty to Shallan, given existing patterns. Also, emotional allomancy was always presented as a terrifying magic and one of the most horrifying things in Mistborn. The Windrunner Main Character Energy being that times infinity is presented as wholesome good influence. Spoilered for overly-wordy unreasonable flailing. EDIT: Frustration said it better than I could have. JASNAH HATE GANG REPRESENT! *High-fives, backflips, poses*

At this point, Kelsier could pull out a death ray and disintegrate an adorable kitten and my reaction would be, "Oh my gosh! You know what this means? This means kittens can be evil now!".

Yeah, it's obviously not going to happen. The reason I used it as an example or point of comparison was to quickly and simply express the idea of reputation damage as a result of doing/participating-in/being-a-party-to Evil Heinous Crud, wherein sometimes when Jasnah, Kaladin, Shallan, or whatever-currently-living Knight Radiants try to make a good first impression on the inhabitants of other worlds, the reputation of what they did/participated-in/were-a-party-to precedes them. Going from "first contact" to "friends now, peace treaty, allies" to "we have killed a quarter of them and have no plans on stopping" in less than a decade as the most recent point of comparison for "meeting new peoples/species" does not make people like Jasnah (whose brother and father were the kings in charge of this) come off well to potential new allies. At some point, whoever they meet with is going to have to learn of these things because it's critical context for how things got to this point, and it's better they learn it sooner and from the Ashynites than later and from Retribution's minions or later and from some other source. If it just gets swept under the rug and doesn't matter to anyone except the singers, I'm going to be quite disappointed. The narrative of the Mistborn Trilogy harshly judges Kelsier for spending his youth thieving and living it up while Marsh tried to rebel against The Final Empire, because Mistborn presupposes a moral obligation to actively rebel against authority that does Evil Heinous Crud no matter how risky and no matter how powerful the authority. But people like the Kholins (outside of Gavilar and Elhokar) and their associates face no such narrative condemnation for not rebelling against Elhokar for the Evil Heinous Crud that is the genocidal campaign for the Shattered Plains. It seems to me that the Mistborn trilogy does morality on hard mode and The Stormlight Archive does morality on normal or easy mode. I mean, surely Hoid must have known that the "Parshendi" were brain-trapped Singers, and Hoid clearly knew that the Alethi were extinguishing the last free population of the planet's native sentient species, so on the reread him showing up in The Way Of Kings to be a courtier to the Kholin monarchy comes off as an inscrutable trickster trying to play ???-dimensional chess against Rayse, and his "And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I want, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen." bit in Words of Radiance comes off less as a warning and more of an understated confession that he's already chosen to let what happens to the Singers happen without trying to to stop it and that he's starting to choose to let horrible things happen to the humans without trying to stop it. Indeed, it wouldn't. I wouldn't come off very well at all, I think, and it would showcase my worst qualities, the very qualities that would make me unsuitable as a negotiator or diplomat, which is why I'm neither of those things. Having no other context, you'd have to conclude "this person is no good and should probably not be in charge of anything of life-or-death importance, ever.". As sympathetic as these heavily-traumatized and realistically-flawed characters are, a great deal of that sympathetic-ness comes from the framing, from having a pipeline into their intentions via their point-of-view chapters, and from flashback chapters, crucial context which the in-universe inhabitants of the Cosmere do not have in the way we have it. The Radiants are, in ways that extend to the mind, the heart, and the soul, broken-and-put-back-together, wounded-and-healing. They're learning how to do right by themselves and right by other people, and it's natural, I think, for many of them to struggle with the sort of social interaction that might very well be urgently needed soon to get others to trust them. Vasher is kind of the same way in Warbreaker; he's not charming, witty, or endearing like Denth and his friends, and it takes time for Vivenna to trust him and to figure out that he's a good person who is on the level but struggles to communicate effectively. If mister Sanderson wants to explore these themes of mental illness, redemption, and troubled individuals in a multi-world context, it seems apt to explore the experience of "making new friends and getting people to trust me is an uphill battle, and it doesn't come as easily to me as it does to other people, leading to me having to work harder for the same result. Not everyone is willing or able to understand or connect with me.". However, he seems to have a tendency to have the Radiants talk to people, then have the people agree, and a lot of the time the Radiants seem to me to talk at people rather than with them (I do this, it doesn't work as well in real life or on the internet, it just alienates people and gives everyone an urge to prove me wrong). It works, but I'd like to see it NOT work on people who aren't on Roshar. I'd like to see "the ghostbloods have probably been active for centuries, in many places around the Cosmere" + "the children of Ashyn don't have a precedent for long-term good-faith interaction with anyone except themselves and beings spiritually devoted to them, and are just barely having their first interactions with other worlds" = "experienced/inexperienced, respectively, in making-friends/manipulating-or-scamming-people from other worlds". I thought Cusicesh more or less went "I like you guys. Ba-Ado Mishram's about to crash out. Get out of here while you still can! Don't be on this planet tomorrow!". Or, in other words, Charlie Ba-ado and Cusi van Pelt, football denial except the football is people. If it turns out that the Ashynites aren't on Scadrial I will be happy as a clam at high tide, because that means that the Ghostblood series might not actually be about the children of Ashyn like I thought it was going to be, and that means I only have to worry about Autonomy and Retribution, who are respectively slightly less scary and much less scary in terms of "likelihood that the Author's going to let them claim Scadrial".

I bet they're sad about having to leave Roshar and Cusicesh so unexpectedly. Especially when it's entirely because of other people's actions. Honestly, I'd really like if the Ashynite humans found themselves viewed unfavorably by others in the Cosmere. Considering that Dalinar intentionally escalated the Odium situation to make it everybody else's problem, there's bound to be some resentment, or at least some good salt, from the other Shards, and from anyone who doesn't want to get wrecked by Retribution (which is just about everyone). If all we knew of Shallan was the pages of chapter 147 where she interacts with Ala and talks to Kelsier (which I quoted on page 4), we'd see her much differently, and much less positively. Frustration confirmed earlier in the thread that mister Sanderson intentionally writes so as to downplay the unsympathetic aspects of his protagonists to keep them sympathetic to readers. Considering the genocide of the Listeners and the invasion of the Unclaimed Hills and Shattered plains, considering what happened to the Listeners and the Singers, and considering the timeline, if there are Ashynites on Roshar in The Lost Metal they are the same generations as in The Stormlight Archive. I'd really like it if their atrocities towards the Singers ended up having consequences for how the children of Ashyn are seen by everyone else, for example, if "Aleth" became a linguistic root on several worlds for the concept of genocide, or some variation of "Kholin" became a linguistic root meaning "war crime", just as how "vandal" became a root referring to what the Vandals did. I'd also really like it if the Scadrians managed to have an advantage in making friends and allies (paying off Kelsier's tendency towards trusting even when it's risky). It would fit the theming of Harmony, and it would throw a much-needed bone for the guys and gals who have the weakest magic system, the most constrained god, the lowest population, and who have gotten no advantages (only nerfs, disadvantages, and bummers) from mister Sanderson since 2009 (technology doesn't count, it's obviously a setup for a rug-pull when Invention shows up, and anything the Scadrians come up with can be reverse-engineered by others). It would also fit the theming of them opposing Autonomy, rejecting her Isolationism and "all must be separate" themes for the power of friendship. It would fit how the ghostbloods have gals and fellas from all sorts of worlds. But that would require giving the Scadrians a W and the Ashynites an L in some way, and that seems quite unlikely given the existing patterns. Also that would be an uncomplicated win against Autonomy, which is unlikely to happen because Bavadin is, from what I've heard, one of mister Sanderson's favorite characters. If we get plot-important distrust, resentment, or ill-will towards the children of Ashyn from the rest of the Cosmere, it will likely be as a setup for the Ashynites to have Character Development and prove themselves. A setup for apologies and "learning not to judge people" Character Development for whoever judges the Radiants (like what we see with the Honorspren of Lasting Integrity and with Rlain). A setup for making unlikely friends because the threat of Retribution is so bad that you have to ally with people you might not want to, and then realizing that they're more like you than you thought, for speeches about "we did bad but we're trying to do better". In other words, a setup for the children of Ashyn to get what they want and be absolved for their wrongs, just like they always seem to do.

Raoden Only, No Items, Final Destination. (Dang, do people even remember the old memes?)

If that is the logic of power than it is not worth having. No framework in which treating people like that is normal is acceptable. Also, no, it does not invariably lead to anything, people have free will and choose. The atrocities are not inevitable. Ignoring the obvious moral issues with this "logic of power" for the moment, I'd dispute that it's actually reasonable to apply game theory or game theory-adjacent frameworks in this context. Game theory is rigorous within its own mathematical framework, and accurately models simple interactions between perfectly "logical" players, but outside of that tends to be tautology, both prescriptive and descriptive. It has predictive power only within its own assumptions about the decision-making processes of thinking beings, assumptions that, when applied outside of its scope, fail to describe the actual behavior of thinking beings, because it was never meant to be applied outside of the contrived zero-sum-game thought-experiments of game theory. This is due to its weaknesses as a predictive multivariate analysis from a combinatorial point of view, failing to account for "illogical" confounding factors in decision-making. More than that, it tends not to have room for the distinctions of short-term, middle-term, and long-term outcomes, presupposing only a single "result", a single score for its games with an inevitable end. In other words, I don't think your "logic of power" has predictive power in the context of real people, and I especially doubt its applicability in a universe where Whimsy is as fundamental to reality as Reason. Furthermore, if "enlightened self-interest" justifies the Scadrian nobility, then, logically, it justifies Rashek's restrictions on them (because preventing the nobility from becoming too powerful is in his interests) AND the skaa rebelling, so there is no basis in your framework to hold the nobility as both wrongly treated AND as guiltlessly doing only what the inevitable logic of power demands.

Having witnesses for contracts is very common in pre-modern societies. Even in our secular modernity, we have witnesses and lawyers. As for censorship, this very forum has rules on what content can or cannot be displayed, and certain things are not allowed. Having boundaries on expression is a feature of all but the most anarchic societies. Censorship, being preventative, is thus of Preservation. Monogamy is, to be fair, established by Tindwyl as something the skaa want and value. It is heavily implied to be either one of the last surviving echoes of the traditions and ways of life that existed before the Final Empire or a desperate desire for some form of social protection against abuse (both of which would be of Preservation), and the profligacy/abuse of the nobility is one of the depredations the skaa are forced to endure. If anything, the vilest part of the Final Empire is the (relative to anything acceptable) lack of restrictions on sexual abuse. I'm not sure how you read the books and think "Man, these nobles are unfairly kept from exercising their natural rights and it's unfair that they can't have what they want, there are too many laws restraining them in matters of consent". Scientific Research is a thing of change, and thus of Ruin. Furthermore, most if not all real-life societies place limits on scientific research on the basis of ethics. If Scientific Research was an inherent good, we wouldn't have the Mad Scientist/Evil Scientist archetype. As for Atium, yeah, that's messed up, but it's messed up in a way that still places the nobility at the top of society. Just as any governance inherently represses some individual interests, it must also repress some group interests. Rashek, in my view, is arguably written less like a modern dictator and more like Narnia's White Witch, keeping a conquered beautiful world blanketed in colorful stuff that falls from the sky, claiming a false spiritual jurisdiction over all who live in that world, and enslaving the world's inhabitants in a "always winter, never Christmas" stagnation without hope of a better future, while prohibiting even the mention of true divinity out of fear of its return, and, in the end, failing to prevent the fulfillment of prophecy. Alternately, Rashek can be taken as a Dark Lord figure in the vein of Morgoth and Sauron, with Scadrial's conquest and The Final Empire being a look into the kind of "Bad Future" that the heroes in fantasy strive to prevent. Scadrial might be seen as "Middle-Earth, but if the ringbearer had failed and become the new Dark Lord". The ashmounts and barren harshness of the land can be seen as something like Tolkien's descriptions of Mount Doom and Mordor. So, being both the White Witch and the Dark Lord, Rashek is the Black-And-White Sorcerer Tyrant. And guess which two colors he wears in the books as The Lord Ruler? Yes, the servants of evil tyrants do not get true joy from it, only pleasure and pride, because wickedness never was happiness, but evil being cruel even to those it sets above all others is basic Fantasy Villain stuff. The interplay of being subordinate-to-the-tyrant but oppressive-over-the-masses is already structurally baked into the very idea of nobility under an evil king/pharoah/emperor. I mean, we get the dynamic from the word "nobility". Focusing on the perceived restrictions his rule places upon those he raises above all others is... questionable theming for a story revolving around the skaa rebelling against their abusive masters, a story that is already likely going to lose much of its color, richness, worldbuilding, and depth in being trimmed for film. If anything, it's more important to set up Straff and his ilk for The Well Of Ascension.

Quoting this again because I missed the implications. Are those the ones that worship Cusicesh and had their temple destroyed by the collector guy who tattoos his writings about spren on himself? I thought they were Ashynites, I didn't know that they were a separate population of long-term planetary nomads. If they only arrived after the false desolation, then that makes Cusicesh helping them vamoose feel less like consequence-dodging for Ba-Ado-Mishram's justified crashout and more like Cusicesh making sure to get unaffiliated homies out of the danger zone for said crashout. Almost like a subtle karmic reward for being able to live in a setting without becoming the main characters of it. If you don't get involved with Important Plot Stuff, then sometimes the Important Plot Stuff doesn't get you. Honestly, I was a little frustrated with the idea of Mishram waiting 4500 years to go all Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera on the inheritors of the taboo-breakers only to get Charlie-Brown-football-denied at the last second by Cusi Van Pelt. Ah. See, I read it as 12124 trying to protect or "protect" (depending on your poitn of view) Szeth from Kaladin-and-Syl, and Syl-and-Kaladin obliquely manipulating/"manipulating" Szeth into removing himself from a good/bad influence that might counteract their own (note how Kaladin has an "oh crap" reaction when 12124 shows up with Nalan and Szeth is no longer safely isolated from not-Windrunner-approved views). But this reading would have Szeth refusing a bond that would be bad rather than convince the spren that it is good, making him the opposite of Navani with regards to the Sibling and Dalinar with regards to the Stormfather (as Aeshdan pointed out in this post:) (Sorry for not replying to this before. Yeah, this is a really good point Aeshdan makes. Dalinar also bullies the Stormfather a fair bit in Wind And Truth, and even at points before Rhythm of War.) And it would also make Szeth kind of an opposite of Sigzil, in that Sigzil breaks a bond that he thinks is good while Szeth breaks one that he thinks is bad. Teehee, I can imagine the meme.

I guess I don't really understand the exact relationship between ideals, oaths, and the spren. It seemed to me that he did pretty much the same thing that Sizgil and Dalinar did. But if it's a different thing than I ought to consider it differently. And that means he might not need such extreme measures to recover as I thought. It'd be beautiful if he can re-swear the ideals, but I'm not sure a being actually can re-swear the ideals (I don't think we know of any who have done so), and it'd be pretty lame if you could just renounce and re-swear and renounce and re-swear whenever it was convenient. I'm hoping that rededication is something that can be done, but only in full sincerity and/or if it wasn't the oaths themselves that were abandoned. I will regard him as Szeth again and accept it if he re-swears the ideals, but he better live them and not renounce them like Dalinar and Sigzil did. It would be wonderful if the next Stormlight archive book allowed for Szeth to find a community of people who share his absolutism and for it to be okay to be the kind of person that he and I are. I don't want him passing on Kaladin's teachings to them and acting like a Windrunner. But that would require mister Sanderson to validate Skybreakers and I want that too much to risk jinxing it by hoping for it too hard. Good points, Isilel and Frustration. Well said. (I'd still like him to find his Oathstone again, though, if only to use it as a paperweight or something, because the idea of his hypothetical kids playing with it gives me a lot of happiness. Or putting it somewhere special because it's a historically significant rock and my Preservation-loving heart wants things that are important to be remembered and preserved (it can be put right by that one rock that Tien liked that was two different colors)). Oh my gosh, that would be utterly hilarious if I've been worrying about a red herring this entire time. Classic Mistborn surprise, an apparent clue being a cover for a different thing. As Kelsier said, "there's always another secret". Also if it was Axindweth specifically then we can add "framing innocent people for the presence of Chouta" to the list of her evil deeds right by "torturing one of the coolest characters in the whole setting", "giving Venli the voidlight sphere and setting her down the path that would lead to the Everstorm", and "kidnapping a bird".

If he hadn't renounced his oaths, I'd agree with you. But he has completely abandoned those tenets by renouncing his oaths. I won't regard him as Szeth until he cares about rules again like he did before Kaladin got to him. I refer to the presence of Chouta as a street food. The symbolism of such a thing outcompeting and replacing the native culinary culture, combined with The Lost Metal comparing Autonomy to an invasive species, combined with the children of Ashyn being EXACTLY THAT on Roshar, combined with the events happening during a time when Autonomy decided Harmony didn't need seeing-the-future privileges anymore, all read as terrifying symbolism/foreshadowing to me of a fait accompli.

I do believe that this is the very first time someone has looked at a situation and said "this society should develop to have more people like Straff Venture and it's oppression that it didn't."

Spoilered for unnecessary rambling and incoherency, as well as double standards and unfairness. I don't like what they do to neat fictional settings, and any number upwards of zero of them showing up in a cool fictional world is a sign that everything's about to become way less interesting and a lot worse for whoever's already there. So it only being a few of them isn't any real help unless I can be confident that they're not going to become the main characters of Scadrial. I just... don't relate to them like I used to (especially with each book revealing more and more horrible secrets about them). I relate more to characters like Sekeir and pre-getting-"fixed"-by-Kaladin Szeth, because I, too, exist as the one who is wrong and needs to learn better. I'm basically the Sekeir of this forum.

Not on screen, no, but I think we need Dockson's speech/backstory/monologue to Vin about him, Kareien, and the Devinshae plantation. It's one of the only times we get a glimpse into the experience of a plantation skaa from the mouth of one who was such. If we're going to cheat and have flashback scenes (something which the original Mistborn trilogy doesn't generally do, for reasons outside the scope of this thread), I'd go for something a little like the first few minutes of UP, with hope and love and years condensed into moments to make us feel for them, culminating in what happened (the actual happening can be offscreen). In fact, maybe start the film that way, as a substitute for the book starting with Lord Tresting's utterly horrifying thoughts and general unvoiced evil to teach us what kind of world and what kind of people we're about to be dealing with (we still need Kelsier, Jassa, Tepper, and Mennis at the Tresting plantation, but the tone of Tresting's point-of-view doesn't come across as much in film unless he speaks all of his thoughts. Even then it would come off as "wow, this specific guy is egregiously terrible" more than "this is a nightmare world with little or no hope, and these nobles are some of the vilest antagonists in fiction".). As far as non-sexual violence: If we're going to tone down the violence against the Skaa, then I think we ought to tone down the violence Kelsier/The Crew commit(s), in order to keep the same sense of "any violence is met with a hundred bazillion times more violence" unfairness. And if we do that, then we ought to tone down a lot of Stormlight, because the nobles in Mistborn are very intentionally made to be the worst evil in the Cosmere outside of evil gods. If there's any point to go all-out, if we're reserving the upper limits of how extreme the imagery can be that the Cosmere as a whole will have for any point, it should be there, early on, so that the audience knows how horrifying the Cosmere can get and thus can get the point without ever needing to see it again (I believe this is part of why things like Dalinar's burning of Rathalas is off-page... mister Sanderson didn't want to go back to depicting such human-perpetrated-against-human horrors). Going too far risks being exploitative, but not going far enough risks whitewashing slavery, which is its own kind of exploitative. It's a hard balance and I'm not certain what the right way to do it is. I'm fine with the screen-medium iterations being generally more restrained in terms of content, but I think such restraint ought to be applied consistently and evenly so that the overall "shape" feels the same.