Aliroz-The-Confused

Getting rid of one of the Heralds is going to mess up the new Oathpact, and that's going to mess up everything, so I can only assume that I get to go full Sanderson Villain here. Oh, ohhoho.-takes off Aliroz hat, puts on Evilroz hat- Spoilered for gratuitously heinous and impractical evil plan that ends up not having anything to do with actually getting rid of a Herald but is probably what would happen if mister Sanderson wrote a story about the ghostbloods attempting such an endeavor. After that, it's still impossible because, at that point, we're at the end of the story, we're the villains, and it's time for us to get our comeuppance and realize that our noble intentions have lead us to become monsters. Dang it. Looks like we're going to have to go totally off the rails and seek the other kind of chaos. -takes off Evilroz hat, puts on Whimsyroz hat- Oh! This is going to be fun. First, we win Nightblood in a high-stakes game of tower. Then we use Nightblood on the Herald, all sneaky-like, like we're playing hide-and-seek but with pokey metals! As for how we're going to apply "sword" to "undefeatable immortal god-being of legend", it's probably going to require some stuff with time bubbles, several dozen Leechers, maybe a jar or two of that canned Investiture stuff, a garden rake, a trebuchet, a chancla made of aluminum, absurd amounts of coyote pee, enough sedatives to make the Lord Ruler say "what the heck do you need this much of this for?", and the stick that is a stick.

Her name was Ialai.

Quoted from The Way of Kings, page 226, chapter twelve Quoted from The Way Of Kings, page 269, chapter 15 I think these may be relevant to this discussion.

Sure, drop the name on me, buddy, unless it's a character we've met before and it's a massive spoiler (for example: if it turns out that Aanden or Clubs or Llarimar were secretly him despite that not being in any way guessable).

I always called him Sir Biffington Crankyscales Snowball III, Sun-Basking Prince of Eternal Exasperation in my notebooks, because of his dignified grumpy-old-man-who-wants-you-to-get-off-his-lawn-but-secretly-cares manner, him being a reptile whom Hoid is comfortable enough with to talk smack to but whom Hoid seems to sincerely respect (so he's clearly someone of significance but is also enough of a doofus to call Hoid a friend), and, as for "Snowball", he accuses Hoid with "You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow." and his chief concern seems to be that doing things will snowball out of control, also, reptiles are cold blooded.

I'm sorry. I'll call them Rosharans (or the humans on Roshar, or the Rosharan humans) from now on. I didn't mean to bother you. To be fair, no outsiders have ever had the power to do such things yet. And the Set serves Autonomy. For all we know, some of the missing women/babies/children could have been taken to one of Autonomy's worlds. If the Set counts as Scadrian than the ghostbloods on Roshar ought to count as at least mostly Rosharan (those who were born on Roshar, such as Mraize, as opposed to those who were not, such as Iyatil, seem to compose most of the ghostbloods on Roshar). Wait, wait, Yolish? Is that the demonym for whatever the origin world is for Rayse, Tanavast, (almost certainly, but I could be wrong about this) the other 14 who shattered Adonalsium, (presumably... I guess I'd assumed that they all came from different worlds and never thought about it) Hoid, (also presumably) whoever the "old reptile" is that wrote the letter telling Hoid to stop meddling? That was probably revealed somewhere in Tanavast's chapters. My bad for missing that (to be fair, the Cosmere is a remarkably long and complicated series). Or maybe it was in one of the books I haven't been able to get yet (Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Isles Of The Emberdark) or in a Word of Brandon. If I'm understanding you right, it is, and that's a remarkably compelling case you've made there. I mean, assuming Leras and Ati were Yolish, the fact that the happy ending of the original Mistborn trilogy is both of them gone, and the way that Leras's most positive contribution was in sealing his and Ati's minds... And Tanavast and Koravellium Avast's best contribution was imprisoning Rayse... And considering the shattering of Adonalsium... And considering that the "old reptile" looked at what the rest were doing and said "Nah, I'm not doing any of that...". And considering how much of what the Rosharan humans have forgotten is stuff that Hoid (who I'm not sure is Yolish. I've assumed that he was born on Ashyn since he's so attached to the Rosharan descendants of those who were born there) was around for and clearly knows but is not telling... Incredible points. Hmm. This doesn't exonerate the humans of Roshar for me (it's possible to be both victim and perpetrator without either of those things meaning the other doesn't count) any more than being manipulated by Odium exonerates Moash for me or being manipulated by Autonomy exonerates the Set for me, though, because doing evil heinous crud is still doing evil heinous crud and free will is a thing. I mean, the Rosharans could have rejected the use of Fabrials. And I think Ashyn was destroyed by its mortal inhabitants (I'm not certain, as far as I can tell it's somewhat ambiguous). You can be evil or do evil without being the final boss, I guess, is how I see it.

The children of Ashyn betrayed and imprisoned Ba-Ado Mishram at a peace meeting. This was after violating the promise to stay in Shin Kak Nish. This was also after Honor, Cultivation, and the spren all abandoned and betrayed the singers in favor of humanity, leaving them with only Odium and the unmade as gods. This was after destroying their original homeworld and being accepted as refugees. After imprisoning Ba-Ado Mishram, they invaded the rest of Roshar and kept the parshmen as slaves. The only surviving singers we know of are the listeners, who, lived in an area called the unclaimed hills (as though the singers have no claim on them, which is just fascinating when you think about who came up with that name and what it implies) and did not have interaction with the children of Ashyn between the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram and meeting Gavilar. I don't know how much of the above the singers other than Eshonai and Venil are aware of at the point of meeting Gavilar, but if we assume they know very little or none of it, and forget all our knowledge of events that happen after Gavilar's death, and try to put ourselves in the minds of the council of five in those days... Gavilar's expedition makes contact with the listeners. Of particular note is the flashback chapter where Eshonai (or maybe Venli) is shown a map of Roshar, and learns that the humans claim everywhere else and there are no singer populations (other than the enslaved parshmen). Then, after getting them to trust him, working out treaties (which, by the way, I think I remember as heavily favoring Alethkar over other kingdoms, but I don't count that as wrong because yeah, that's how being buddies and allies works) with them, and getting them to agree to become allies, Gavilar revealed that he was trying to bring back the evil gods and make the apocalypse happen. If trying to do that doesn't count as attempted atrocity against the listeners, or some kind of crime against both singer and humanity, I'm not sure what does. So, the listeners had him killed in an attempt to prevent that. Attacking at parlay is one of the basic taboos that no sustainable society can afford not to regard as taboo, and the listeners did this. It is a great evil, maybe an unforgivable evil, in how it destroys the possibility of future peace meetings. However, there is another evil, perhaps like unto it, and that is to knowingly and willfully parlay in false faith, which makes it impossible to trust in good faith negotiation going forward. Gavilar revealed his intentions with regards to Odium and the Unmade only after the listeners had agreed to ally with him and made treaties with him, only at the peace meeting after which the agreements and alliance would be binding... which means he made those prior negotiations without telling them that information, which means that the listeners did not know, which means Gavilar knowingly and willfully parlayed in bad faith, and anything the listeners had agreed to had been agreed to under false pretenses and cannot be regarded as legitimate nor binding. Informed consent is not a modern idea. Even the ancient cultures who most revered oaths as defining truths of reality which the gods enforced had concepts of a leonine contract, and had concepts of coerced oaths or manipulated oaths being invalid. Part of why cultures have the tradition of having people witness such things is to have at least a layer of verification. Those real-life cultures who believed that breaking an oath would mess you up forever also believed that trying to pass off illegitimate oaths as legitimate would mess you up forever. I view it as an attempt to trap the listeners, luring them in and then locking the door behind them.. He seems surprised when they object, but I think that's got to be self-deception, because, deep down, he knew they wouldn't have allied with him if they had known his intentions. If he truly thought they wanted the same thing he wanted, he would have STARTED WITH THAT or at least told them BEFORE accepting and making promises. Gavilar violated the parlay first, placing him outside the protection it gives. The Listeners never explained any of this to the humans because LOOK OVER THERE IT'S A DISTRACTION! Seriously, the best I can come up with to explain it is "Lol, I dunno" or "given that interaction with the children of Ashyn, historically, invariably ended up in apocalypse, betrayal, death, invasion, slavery, and to all appearances the extinction of all singers except these ones who did not interact; and given that Gavilar and Dalinar are atrocity-committing taboo-breaking invaders who became the royal family of Alethkar through killing all who did not submit and also killing a bunch who did submit (it's not implausible for the council of five to have learned at least some of Alethkar's recent history); and given that what seemed to be good-faith negotiation turned out to be a trap wherein the listeners were walled in by their own words and could only get out of it by simultaneously giving the Alethi an excuse to attack them and making themselves (the listeners) look like taboo-breaking monsters (and, if the listeners know about the betrayal of Ba-Ado Mishram at parlay, there's another element of messed-up-ness here in making the listeners reenact the crime that created parshmen); and given that Gavilar was in charge the fact that he was planning on something that big would seem to indicate that the rest of the royal family is in on his apocalyptic plans and given that the fact that none of the humans warned the singers about Gavilar would seem to indicate that the rest of the people in power in Alethkar are either unwilling/unable to oppose such behavior or are actively supporting it, why the heck would the singers think that their explanations would in any way change what's about to happen." If you look at it with the wider context of Roshar's history, but without the context of the experiences of the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion. Similarly, if you look at it with only the context the listeners would plausibly have at the point of Gavilar's murder, the humans come off as terrifying invaders, attempting to complete their invasion. In my view, the listeners did not commit war crimes against the Alethi first, because those negotiations were illegitimate. As far as I understand it, promises extracted through intentional and willful deception, trickery, and withholding of critical and relevant knowledge on one party's end tend to be considered equivalent to promises extracted through force, which don't count. The protections people are obligated to grant to negotiation do not apply when the negotiation is nothing more than a façade for coercion. Or, at least, that's my two clips.

Yep, I remember all of these, too. And these aren't just atrocities by modern standards, massacring surrendering enemies is one of those things that, like cannibalism or killing messengers, is taboo in nearly all human societies (with notable exceptions) across history, and the instances of it are as historically well-recorded as they are because they are exceptions. Modernity lessened the power of many taboos, to the result of great suffering, before it started to create structures to serve that same function of being the guard rails of human conflict. This isn't "Oh, this is unacceptable by our modern standards", it's "medieval mercenaries would refuse to do this", it's "When this happened in Acre, Richard I's allies all agreed that he would go to heck for it when he died", it's "ancient peoples told stories about how doing this kind of evil heinous crap would get the gods cheesed at you and your fate would be the stuff of nightmares. Even if you get away with it in this life, the next is waiting.". It was not modern thought that first figured out "If I refuse genuine surrenders, then I cannot expect any of my genuine surrenders to be accepted, and that goes for my friends as well, and then nobody involved in this has the option of surrendering anymore". If anything, it was modern thought that forgot it, figured it out the hard way, and had to invest significant effort into maintaining that understanding. Not trying to derail the thread, I'm just pointing out that these are atrocities by modern AND pre-modern standards, and are likely against the Codes. (I'd contrast with sieges, which, depending on interpretation and definition, are regarded as war crimes now but were regarded as standard war tactics for centuries in Europe. I don't want to imply that there hasn't been change or progress (I certainly wouldn't chose a pre-modern society over the modern one in which I live), rather, I'm trying to be fair to what those changes and that progress was).

Yeah, it does. That's a change of heart. Good point. I've been too harsh, I think, on Kaladin, in some ways. I'd add that there's a genuine argument to be made that the humans on Roshar are invaders (even if one doesn't count the invasion of the rest of Roshar, the war for the Shattered plains is an invasion, and that the battle of Narak was an invasion of their capitol) and that those singers whom Kaladin spent time with could be said to be his friends, so Kaladin was caught between invaders killing his friends on one side and invaders killing his friends on the other side. I wonder, if the battle had gone the other way, if Kaladin would have remained with the singers he had come to know, and, if so, what things might have gone differently if he or any of them had interacted extensively with Venli. Would he have turned to Odium and become like Moash? Or would we get something like what happened with Jaxlim and company in Wind and Truth, but earlier? Or would he once again find himself outliving people he loved and was trying to protect? My problem is that I don't really see Kaladin as following through on this change of heart in Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth.

Madness? (Sorry, sorry, I know it's an old meme, but I had to, you guys, I had to)

That's why I said "at the moment of truth". Vin, as Preservation, understanding and fulfilling Leras's plan, at the cost of herself and Ati (quoted from The Hero Of Ages, page 711, chapter 81) I'd say it's more than one moment of humilty. Kelsier offers the mysterious orb to Preservation multiple times, he calls Preservation his crewleader, he promises to do all he can to fulfil Preservation's plan and then does so, and his last moment with Leras is, to me, the defining moment of Kelsier's character, the moment of truth. What you see as "his usual tricks", I see as him doing his best to preserve Scadrial and Scadrians. Sazed's moment of truth is when he realizes that the prophecies were about him, that the plan was for him to take up both Ruin and Preservation, and he doesn't think himself worthy or at all desire to do so, but he does so because it is his purpose. These three defining moments of truth are moments of breathtaking humility, faith, and submission to greater purpose. On the other hand, Navani's defining act is subsuming The Sibling. Dalinar's defining act is rejecting Tanavast's plan, and Kaladin's defining moment I'm not sure about, but for me it's probably "Honor is dead; I'll see what I can do"; which is a different kind of thing entirely, and which in practice, I think, has turned out for the Radiants to be "Honor is dead; let's see what we can get away with.", though mostly that's because of everyone else rather than Kaladin himself.

I think, at last, I've figured out how to put into words what standard it is that I see the protagonists of Mistborn as meeting and the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive as failing. The protagonists of Mistborn do things that fit with the concepts of ruin and preservation, and, in the end, they act in accordance with Preservation's plan (their earlier failures are acting in accordance with Ruin's plan). The protagonists of The Stormlight Archive don't do things that fit with the concepts of honor, cultivation, or odium, and, in the end, they act in accordance only with their own plans. The difference is that, at the moment of truth, the protagonists of Mistborn say "Thy will, O Lord, be done", where the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive, at the moment of truth, say "now, listen to me, God, I've got a better idea..." It's almost certainly my religious beliefs (the same faith as mister Sanderson) that make me so averse to the latter.

I don't see Honor as developing a personality so much as accreting something that appears to resemble a personality but is actually the result of layered damage. In other words, Honor's bearers tortured it and broke it until it learned how to scream. I just wanna hug that poor philosophical concept and promise it that I'll find it a good bearer who won't be a promise-breaking piece of garbage until it can go back to existing as a conceptual overlay of fundamental truth and stop mimicking aware existence just to get people to figure out that violating its fundamental purpose causes it strain.

Oh, dang, you're right! I'll fix that. The crux of the argument is that I maintain that Mistborn works if engaged with as an idealistic, absolutist, and morally uncomplicated work and The Stormlight Archive doesn't because the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive are only the good guys if you take a nuanced and reasonable perspective, and that the presence of the children of Ashyn on Scadrial is symbolic of nuance colonizing fantasy, foreshadowing not only a fate for Scadrial that mirrors that of the native populations of Roshar, but a fundamental narrative shift away from the idealism that could be found in earlier Cosmere novels. The Runner is arguing that Mistborn does not fit this framing and was always a sophisticated and nuanced work, so, therefore, there has been no shift because the Cosmere was never absolutist or idealistic in the first place, and thus, no such foreshadowing exists. The discussion of Kelsier and his predecessors in morally-uncomplicated heroic irresponsibility is me arguing that the protagonists of Mistborn are in the idealistic tradition and that the apparent nuance is a façade hung over what is, at its core, a celebration of the ideal over the rational. The Runner argues that Mistborn is, rather, a condemnation of the irrational, and that the apparent irresponsibility I cite is only irresponsible in Kelsier's case and is actually highly reasoned in the other cases. Basically, we're arguing over whether or not I was wrong to engage with the Cosmere as an absolutist, idealistic work in the first place.

We see jedi pilot their starfighters in the prequels, and they use targeting computers. Darth Vader uses a targeting computer. We see Luke do other feats of piloting later, including during the battle of Hoth, and always he uses the tech available. What Luke does in the attack run is without precedent and is never repeated. This is not A Thing That Jedi Do, this is something utterly unique and singular. Also, at this point, I'd argue that Luke does not know that he can anticipate events and react father than otherwise possible. When The Empire Strikes Back came out, one of the huge audience-reaction moments was when Luke pulls his lightsaber from the ice to himself with the Force because back in 1980 nobody knew that you could move things with the Force, and another was when Luke jumps out of the carbonite freezing chamber (each stunt Luke does in Empire Strikes Back teaches the audience that the Force gives preternatural strength, agility, and reaction, but this was a surprise in 1980). The only tangible uses of the force we see in the original Star Wars previous to the leap of faith are Obi-wan mentally influencing the stormtroopers, Darth Vader revoking Colonel Motti's breathing privileges, Luke hearing voices, and Luke saying that he felt something and could almost see through the blast shield. Also, it was expected that it might take multiple attempts to hit the target, X-wings and Y-Wings have the vibes of WWI-WWII fighter planes and bombers, and those very much do NOT operate on "previous guy missed, that means the implements are unreliable, better play this by ear and turn off my implements". Misses are expected. R2-D2, who darn well knows how jedi function and what they can do, does a questioning "what the heck, huh??!" bleep-bloop after Luke turns off the computer. The rebel base guys ask Luke what's wrong. Slavery, especially as practiced in the Final Empire, is a condition of mortal danger for the enslaved. A rebellion would be in no less danger anywhere else. The nations and empires of Europe put immense effort into attempting to destroy Haiti's independence and reinstate slavery. The Final Empire ruled the entire world. Also, you discount the human element, the part that is morale, aesthetics, and perception. Having the capital, the center of administration for the world, the Lord Ruler's own home, has massive implications for the continuity of governance. If they rebelled from anywhere else, whichever noble house ended up controlling Luthadel could claim continuity of governance from the Lord Ruler, but with all of them having only their own domains, such dominion over the other noble houses must be proven. Also, I'm not sure that Kelsier and the Crew can feasibly arrange an exodus of skaa, or that they'd be in a better position after going wherever the heck they would go. The resources, contacts, people, and secret places that Kelsier and the crew have to work with are in and around Luthadel. Cities in pre-modern settings are not placed arbitrarily, they're placed wherever the advantages are, and capital cities are placed wherever the best advantages are. Then all the plans made by protagonists of Cosmere novels are bad plans. Rayse acts entirely in his own interest. Taravangian acts entirely in his own interest. The Set act entirely in their own interest. Autonomy acts entirely in her own interest, as do Bluefingers and Wyrn Wulfden. But only for the nobles of Scadrial do you seem to count this as natural and as something to be understood and accepted. Hobbits have proven corruptible (Bilbo), especially if you count Hobbit-kind as including whatever Sméagol is. The Ring corrupts all who bear it (except Tom Bombadil), no one can willingly destroy it. I'd say that Gandalf and Kelsier both made absurd-but-surprisingly-solid plans that were never going to work because there were no better options, and then those plans worked anyway because 1) a boatload of unexpected things which could not have been predicted happened and 2) divine intervention made up the gap between what mortal beings could do and what was required. Both die, both come back, and both are called reckless and manipulative meddlers out for their own power by their discerning, wise, and fundamentally good-hearted but weary and cynical associates (Vin and Denethor (book-Denethor, not movie-Denethor)) who have to bear great burdens because of the way the bold plans give them horrible situations. They're both seen as the irresponsible child of the bunch by their older peers (while the Hobbits look up to Gandalf, the old elves, who remember a time before he came to Middle-Earth, talk to him with the kind of fond exasperation that the bigger members of the Fellowship talk to Sam, Merry, and Pippin with... which, interestingly, seems to be the same kind of fond exasperation that everyone who remembers before the Shattering talks to Hoid with). They both care deeply about so-called "lesser" peoples (whom they are accused of manipulating, and with whom they spend a lot of time) while putting those peoples in danger--except that the danger was always there and the counterfactual to what happened was far more dangerous and worse. The difference is that in The Lord Of The Rings, the viewpoint characters (most often the Hobbits) know less of what's going on than Gandalf, but even so are still the viewpoint so we're primed to favor their perception of Gandalf over anyone else's and take Gandalf at his word over anyone who disagrees with him; while in the Cosmere the point of view characters with whom Kelsier interacts know as much of what's going on as he does and trust their own judgments as much as or more than his, so we're primed to favor their perception of Kelsier over anyone else's and doubt him when other characters doubt him. Hoid also fits this (including dying and coming back), except that, like Gandalf, we see Hoid mostly through the point of view of those who trust and look up to him (the humans on Roshar), so we're primed to trust those mortals who have known him the least over those immortals who have known him the longest (the original shard-holders, and whoever the "old reptile" is who wrote the letter refusing to intervene... unless that one's also a shard-holder, in which case I'm a doofus). The key difference for me is that Hoid does not take leaps of faith, he does not trust in a power greater than himself, he holds power that is stolen from divinity rather than granted by divinity (he stole the Lerasium, where Gandalf is more or less an angel sent by the gods and Preservation made Kelsier a mistborn), and is cynical rather than idealistic, so he's setting off all sorts of alarms in my head; the same way the protagonists of The Stormlight Archive do. Not that part, after that, the part where Sadeas demands that they all be executed and Dalinar gives up an infinitely valuable shardblade to purchase their freedom and there was absolutely no reason for Kaladin to guess that that would happen. The part where there was no conceivable good outcome for going back to people who keep you as a slave instead of vamoosing to freedom, and if we the readers didn't already know Dalinar everybody would complain that it was unbelievable and came out of nowhere.

I, on the other hand, find it fascinating, and would rather read about the Cosmere's gods than its mortals. It varies from person to person, of course, but I'm hoping for a lot more of this.

Fascinating. I never saw Sazed as emphasizing the Preservation-aspects of his shard. I see Preservation as sameness of past, present, and future, and Ruin as difference between past, present, and future; which would make creation, improvement, growth, healing, and learning Ruin-aspects just as much as destruction, worsening, withering, breaking, and forgetting are; because every end is a beginning and every beginning is an end. For one thing, he changed Scadrial to the point of being almost unrecognizable as what it was before (yes, this was a change back to how it had been, but two changes don't make a preservation). For another, the Wax and Wayne books are all about change and progress, which I see as Ruin-aspects. In the conversation quoted above, Sazed laments about how the people of the Elendel Basin aren't changing/progressing fast enough, and how he sees what he did earlier as a mistake that he now understands as a mistake. I think back to the constancy and so-called 'primitiveness' of the Terris back when they were the people of Preservation, and find parallels with Rashek's admiration of Khlennium and sense of disappointment with his own people. I see Sazed questioning his earlier thoughts and wonder if this is how Shards align their bearers to their Intents, if such a process is what happened to Ati. I kind of think that the main Preservation-aspect that Harmony not-sure-what-verb-goes-here might be prevention (which is a sameness of past, present, and future, since the thing does not happen), and that that prevention is mostly done to himself. So, I've theorized the exact opposite: that some of Sazed's issues have come from emphasizing the Ruin-aspects of his Shard and then "dumping" the preservationist aspects. After all, there's no reason why discordance is necessarily change-themed and no reason why concordance is necessarily stasis-themed, a dissonant pair of tones can be sustained just as long as a harmonious pair of tones.

You repeatedly accuse Kelsier of "inciting" the skaa as if he introduced motivation that did not previously exist. You cannot incite free-willed slaves to rebel, they already want to. What Kelsier and the crew provided (directly or indirectly) was (among other things) weapons, training, opportunity, organization, and secrecy all of which the Final Empire went to massive effort to deprive the skaa of. Slavery, as it existed in the final empire, is a condition of war masquerading as a condition of peace, in which the enslaved reap the fruit of war and the slaving reap the fruit of peace. Kelsier does not introduce violence to a condition of peace, he does not escalate the violence that exists in the Final Empire (if the balance inclines, the number of people Kelsier killed at Lord Tresting's plantation is much less than the number of people who would have been killed in a single year had the enslaved remained enslaved), and he does not perpetuate a condition of violence (Kelsier and the crew didn't start a war that lasted two years, they ended a war that had lasted over five hundred years). You say that he is putting the people in danger, as if they weren't already in danger. Two things. First off, yeah, they would have all been slaughtered, if it were not for things completely beyond Kelsier's control and knowledge. That's the whole point. It's called a leap of faith, and it does not disqualify you from being an unambiguous, uncomplicated hero. Luke Skywalker turns off his targeting computer during the attack on the Death Star, despite that being absolutely insane and the rebels, his friends, and all of Yavin IV, heck, the future of the galaxy, being on the line. All of them would have died if it were not for something completely beyond Luke's control and knowledge (the Millennium Falcon coming in clutch because Chewbacca and Han Solo took their own leap of faith and decided to throw their lot in with the suicidal last stand of a doomed rebellion). Gandalf's entire plan in The Lord Of The Rings is a fool's gambit, a folly that all the wise and the ancient of Middle-Earth call out as being utterly bonkers and in defiance of all reason. It works because of a bunch of things completely beyond Gandalf's control and knowledge, and also implied divine intervention. Bridge Four going back for Dalinar and his men instead of escaping was also batcrap nuts, and Kaladin had no reason at all to think it would end well, and it only did because of things completely beyond Kaladin's control and knowledge. Yeah, it's absurd, and yeah, it's a risk, and there's no way to know ahead of time that it will even work, and sometimes it backfires (as it did for Yeden, and as it did for Kelsier when he had faith in the eleventh metal against The Lord Ruler, and as it did for Vin at the Well of Ascension... and yet, in the end, it all went as Preservation had planned), but it's the apparent absurdity of faith and courage, and its rightness is something outside of the reliable rightness of reason. Second off, Kelsier did prepare the crew to take care of the fledgling kingdom after his death. He chose the basis of a religion because it was the religions that lasted longest against The Lord Ruler; it was, historically speaking, the most solid foundation for resistance to the Final Empire. Sazed, with his copperminds and connection to the Keepers, represents the best knowledge-base advantage possible. The rest of the crew were similarly the best possibilities for their roles. You say that Kelsier acted without regard for the safety of those he would leave behind. I say that he not only made real efforts towards such safety, not only made preparations and plans for such, but made the only possible arrangements that could have resulted in safety because those people were not safe to begin with. I argue that the alternative, submitting to the Final Empire, was worse than what happened during the siege of Luthadel. I'd argue that what happens in The Well Of Ascension is itself the result of divine intervention on Ruin's part, and the result of a lot of effort on the part of the nobility, and the result of Elend's inexperience (note that he, a failure point of what happened, was not someone Kelsier had prepared, and note that OreSeur, another failure point, was killed and replaced by a Kandra that nobody knew house Venture had.). If divine intervention makes the success not count as a credit to Kelsier to you, then divine intervention should make the failure not count as a mark against Kelsier to you. And, also, Luthadel doesn't completely fall. If succeeding because of things that couldn't have been predicted invalidates the success in your view, then failing because of things that couldn't have been predicted invalidates the failure in your view, since, between the two of us, you're the reasonable one. I ended my analysis at the end of Mistborn: The Final Empire, because I was arguing on behalf of Kelsier's character during his life. If we are to include The Well Of Ascension and The Hero Of Ages, we ought to include Mistborn: Secret History, wherein Kelsier saves the world multiple times, comforts a dying god, preserves preservation itself, relinquishes infinite power because it's the right thing to do, and learns humility to the extent of reverently calling Leras "My lord", while receiving absolutely no credit from anyone. I explained why I do not condemn Kelsier's violence against the nobility. As for treating soldiers in his rebellion as tools, yeah, that's messed up, and the point is for him to later learn that the hearts of men are not his toys. But, even with that, I'd argue that he's the only protagonist of the original Mistborn trilogy other than Spook and to a lesser extent Sazed to actually have significant conversations with skaa outside the crew in which said skaa do most of the talking, I'd argue that Kelsier, in spending those hours each day of the later stages of his plan with the skaa, engages with them far more than Vin, Elend, or Sazed ever attempts to do, and the readers tend to see this as manipulative and creepy because we never see these interactions except through Vin's point-of-view and she thinks it's manipulative and creepy because at that point she still tends to assume that things she doesn't understand which aren't named Elend Venture is manipulative and creepy. As for the hemalurgy, that's speculative. As for the kidnapping: because storm you, that's why. I'm unfair and biased, as are all who care about the books they read (in our culture, we are raised to distrust emotion and to trust reason, so as readers we construct reasoned justifications for the conclusions we arrive at emotionally). In the end, a reader's assessment of a character has a lot more to do with pathos than with logic, and thank goodness for that, because otherwise it would be impossible to sympathize with any flawed character. Yeah, I ain't got a reason here, but I got a hope, a stupid idealistic irrational stubborn hope, that, even when it looks like the Survivor of Hathsin's gone to the evil and betrayed the trust the readers put in him, that trust is worth it and maybe there are things going on I don't understand. I know that doesn't hold up as an argument, and concede that you win. You're almost certainly correct and I'm almost certainly wrong. Your points are more convincing.

APOLOGY ONE APOLOGY TWO APOLOGY THREE APOLOGY FOUR Kelsier doesn't so much apologize with words as with actions, and with changes in behavior, but that just makes them more sincere as apologies, not less, and it makes it all the more meaningful when he says the words.

My view was not, and is not, nuanced. I see Kelsier as an uncomplicated hero just as much, if not more than, Vin and Wax. Quoted From Mistborn: The Final Empire, page 130 and 131, chapter 7 Later on page 131, You say that Kelsier doesn't apologize. I say that everything we see him do while he is alive is an apology for surviving. He doesn't say it in words or think it in words, but it's the air he breathes, the sunlight by which he sees everything else, the drive behind his choices. Marsh sees this in this excerpt. I also would point out that he apologizes a bunch of times in Mistborn: The Final Empire, and that he calls Vin out on stuff as much as Vin calls him out on stuff, and it usually ends with them both apologizing, with their last conversation in that book being the exception. Quoted from Mistborn: The Final Empire, chapter 33, page 555 Recall that, at this point, Spook, OreSeur, and the retinue of House Renoux are about to be executed, and Vin, who was willing to risk herself against two Mistborn to save Elend (which also risked the entire crew and everything they were working for, and which Vin did even though Elend had just broken her heart), tells Kelsier not to risk himself for Spook. I don't think the narrative treats Vin as morally superior to Kelsier, and I don't think describing Kelsier as "ends justify means" and Vin as "want to protect those who are close to [her]" holds up when both of them say "Yo, don't risk yourself, you dummy, I'd miss you" and then proceed to launch themselves bodily at the nearest threat to what they love. Also, as far as "ends justify the means" vs "protect loved ones", Taravangian's motivation is to protect his loved ones in Kharbranth. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. You say his motivation is vengeance and nothing else. I say that his motivation is love. Vengeance is the cover story. What actually drives Kelsier is love. Quoted From Mistborn, The Final Empire, page 285, chapter 17: Quoted From Mistborn: The Final Empire, page 286, chapter 17: Kelsier, in his moment of greatest extremity, did not swear vengeance. He swore in his heart to fulfill Mare's dream. His deepest desire was not to break the Final Empire or give it the destruction it deserves, his deepest desire was to heal the world and make it the kind of world Mare deserved. Kelsier spares Elend and actively saves the guy from an inquisitor because Vin loves him. Kelsier hates Elend, but his love for Vin is stronger than that hate. Oh snap, isn't I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right the third ideal? Kelsier dies because he refuses not to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Second ideal. John 15: 13: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. <unwarrantedsarcasm>Nothing motivating this guy but vengeance, folks. Nothing at all.</unwarrantedsarcasm>

Interestingly, I see it the opposite way. I described what he is doing as "not recitation, but conversation", and I'd argue that having a massive fanbase changes the dynamic of that conversation such that the author has less power to steer its tone. I'd say that his earlier works, which had fewer beta readers, are less shaped by the pressure to engage the audience. I think mister Sanderson feels a great deal of obligation towards the readers who have invested so much effort and attention into his work. This is not a bad thing. I don't mean "obligation" in the sense of burden or imposed constraint but in the sense of gratitude, the sense of acknowledging someone else's effort, and the sense of trying to do right by people. I don't know whether the earlier books or the later books are closer to what their author wanted to write, but I would argue against your idea that the mainstream success which removed economic pressure from the situation did so without adding other pressures. I don't want to get into real-life religion here, but in the same way that you can't understand Tolkien's legendarium without engaging with his Catholicism, and the same way that The Chronicles Of Narnia are not separate from C.S. Lewis's Anglicanism, the Cosmere exists and is received in the context of mister Sanderson being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a work from a member of our faith to get the goodwill it did from the people it did is something truly remarkable and exceptional. It's grace across cultural/religious divisions and mutual participation in a conversation that I don't think anybody predicted would happen. Mister Sanderson is, I believe, doing his best to return that grace, to engage with his main body of readers. And that sometimes means disappointing readers like me. The earlier Cosmere books asked the readers to sympathize with people like Hrathen. The later Cosmere books ask the readers to sympathize with people like Jasnah. When the sequel to Elantris is published, its characters and tone will more likely be in keeping with Wind and Truth than with Elantris.

I've been a fan of the books since 2009.

It's funny that Frustration would rather have later release dates and more editing than earlier release dates and less editing, because for years I've been wanting mister Sanderson to hurry up and make up for lost time. Put behind spoilers for excessive prolixity approaching the point of tedium. In a nutshell: I really think that if Sanderson stopped working on non-Cosmere books and focused, between him and his editors and everyone else they could produce a masterpiece each year. I think maybe some of the problems with the post-Oathbringer books could be fixed in a Tolkien-type refining. I'm still salty about that time the Cosmere went on hiatus in favor of The Wheel Of Time.

Honestly, it's neat, and I like it that way.