king of nowhere

in addition to all the true things everyone else said, i add that almost every main character in the wheel of time is power-hungry and dismissive/suspicious of those who should be his best friends and allies. this brought to be some of the worst parts to read. ultimately, all those characters end up being very heroic. They are all deeply flawed, but when push come to shove they choose to put aside personal concerns and do the right thing.

And then that young author pulls off the mask and reveals that he actually is... brandon sanderson! He faked his death because, as a literary exercice, he wanted to try to write in the style of someone else trying to imitate him; he also wanted to see if his books would still be liked without the recognition of his name.

This is what I hope. Unfortunately, I am a bit of a pessimist on these kinds of topics, but the non-pessimistic part agrees. If instead of a christian god there is an evil god then you are screwed no matter what you do; you may as well do your best. If there is a super-lawful god, sort of like nale, then you have really no way to know what god actually wants you to do. You may end up screwed whatever you do, but doing your best gives you more chances anyway. If there is an uncaring god, one who may care about humankind as a whole but gives no more attention to individuals than a gardener gives to a single blade of grass, then it won't probably matter for the afterlife, and you should do your best. If there isn't an omnipotent god but there are spirits and such, then nobody knows the answer, but you still need to do something, you may as well have your try. This is the main reason I stopped looking at religion for moral guidance. there are lots of religions, and all contradict each other on everything but the simplest questions. Believing in an intangible something greater than me requires a leap of faith, but it's fairly easy. Believing that among all hundreds of religion the one I pick will have figured out that something and all others won't requires a much bigger leap of faith. I can make a leap of faith, not two. there are already enough ifs and buts in this discussion to not wanting to further complicate it, but I tried to give an answer above. So I'm not the only one...

I have to jump into this even though time zones and work kept me away from the main discussion. I am an agnostic leaning towards atheist, so I can count towards atheist for this purpose. If I were a believer, though, I think I'd still believe in a shifting morality. The reason is that the world is so vast and complex that I cannot believe in general principles that always hold true. even the simpler, clearer moral absolute, "thou shalt not kill", is not that absolute. there is acceptable justification in self defence, and in war you can always assume an enemy to try to kill you and so it counts as self defence, but then again war is one of those things that are always wrong, except if you are attacked; and while in some cases passive resistance will be the proper response, shaming an invading army until they will give up, with people like nazis or the isis you don't have that option... all this to mean that you can't make a morality like "X is wrong, Y is right, do X and eschew Y, end of the story". absolute morality of that sort was made for a time when people were more ignorant (so many things we take for granted are the product of mass schooling) and you needed to give them clear instructions because they could not be trusted to correctly interpret the complex ones. Heck, as a teacher I've done similarly many times, telling my students that something is X or Y while I know that there are exxceptions, simply because I know they will not be able to handle those exceptions; I do mention occasionally that what I teach them is an approximation of reality, but I learned that trying to go into too many details actually confuses them rather than helping. If I believed in an omnipotent god, I'd believe god knows all the answers and can see all consequences and figure out the best course of action. but in any case, answers are not easy and depend on circumstances, and humans have to do their best within their limited capacity of judgment. If there is a christian-like god, he'll see that you tried your best and forgive you. Furthermore, I believe absolute moralities like those in the bible, the ten commandments and similar, are the same things as the rules I teach my students; crude approximations meant to be usable by people with limited understanding. Intended to be replaced by better knowledge once they have the capacity to handle it. Humans were much like children at the time, fighting wars on a whim, knowing very little of the consequences of their actions. the only thing that kept them from self-destruction was that they didn't have enough power. they needed clear rules, like children. I believe however that if there is a god, and we are his children, then like any parent he would want us to grow and mature and learn, and that therefore we must never shy from questing and testing new answers. And so rejecting the simple rules as too simplicistic is not an offence to the god who sent us those rules, but rather a sign that we grew enough that we can do better than that. After all, why would god give us a brain if we were not meant to use it? Why give us the capacity to search the answers if the answers were all written in a book already? If we fail, we will be like kids who think they are grown up and do something stupid. Eventually, we will learn. If we don't try, we'll remain children forever, and I can't believe that can be god's will. I was raised christian, and I came to all this reasoning when I realized I were doubting faith. Eventually I decided that deciding whether to believe in god or not was not necessary to decide what to believe was right or wrong. Now, speaking of mr T, he is like a terrorist; he performs heinous actions because of his religious beliefs. He himself acknowledges that the only god he worships is the person he was when he wrote the diagram. As such, I'd be ready to dismiss him as a mindless zealot... except for all the grief I've seen him express in his pow. and the fact that he has actual proof, all the time, of the diagram's validity. Ultimately, I believe he is dead wrong, because I find ridiculous the idea that to save mankind from a big war you have to start with killing a large portion of it. that should make him question the diagram. If at the end of your calculations you find an absurd result, go double check the calculations, because almost always you got something wrong there. that's something I often telll my students. On the other hand, I can't help admire him. He is a man who is doing something that brings him pain, because he believes it will benefit others. He does not expect a reward for it - unlike a terrorist, he does not expect he'll go to heaven. he bears the burden he believes he must. he is a deeply tragic figure. I can't figure out how to feel about him. I condemn and forgive him at the same time.

I think at this point there is no need to prove shallan insane, the burden of proof is for claiming she's fine.

Or about shallan and risk-taking. she shares some similarities to an adrenaline junkie. it probably refers to both.

Would have been better with a bridge 4 patch/tatoo. I'm not good at those things or I'd do it myself

Are you sure brandon did not mean that stormlight is around the middle among the pubished books, so most books are 10k years after the shattering and that "middle" only refers to a few centuries? Or maybe it could be read that the cosmere we've seen so far is 10k years, stormlight current is near the end, and stormlight prelude is 5000 years after shattering. Without the exact quote there is no way to tell, and someone else brought better quotes anyway. Now I am picturing rosharans watching jurassik park, seeing the tyrannosaurus and calling it "a giant chicken-mink" I believe taln got ccrazy and lost congition of time and sense of self. That's the only way I find it plausible, and it's quite in line with what we see of him. Also, the capacity of the human mind to adapt is impressive. I doubt he really felt pain by the end; or anything else, for that matter. Now, now, that's not fair to mr T. We've been in his mind for a whole interlude. We know he dislikes what he does, and it brings him pain to do it. We know he does not seek power. I believe he is horribly misguided, but I give to him that he's sincere. And that "I'd hang all four" is very in line with the rest of his actions. "misunderstood good guys" is a bit exaggerated as depiction, but it is very rare nowadays for a villain to not have some passable motivation. And it is a big progress, considering that in the old times villains were in it for the evulz! A misguided villain is much more believable than one who does what he does... why, exactly? Also, the stories we tell ourselves are a mirror of our fears and hopes. In the past, we were told that people different from us were evil, and our stories reflected that. We've progressed past that point, and now we see that a lot of times the bad guy is the hero of his own story. And society started to look inward and ask itself, what if I was the villain all along? Modern villains are the result of society warning itself of the dangers of being willing to hurt others for a good cause. Just like all the dystopias that currently fill the bookshelves are the product of society asking itself what happens if we let our technology go out of control or be used ffor repression. Just like there has been a decline in postapocaliptiic worlds once the risk of a nuclear war waned.

So it could very easily have been than he only died once by a thunderclast. I don't see anywhere else that makes it seem like he died many times, other than his relief and disbelief that, this time, he actually survived. Ok, you got me there. Still, regardless of that detail, the prelude gives the idea of many, many desolations. Enough that the heralds didn't remember anymore specific ones, but they all became a blur. Now, 9 could be possible if we stretched it, but no less than 20 seems more in line with the tone of the chapter. On the other hand, if we have to fit it all in 500 years, then even 9 become too many. It took "generations" to rebuild, and desolations were near-mithycal. The alethi were tasked with conserving the martial prowess from one to the other, which implies many lifetime between desolations. Not 50 years. So, something there does not add up.

When you stumble across the quote "you can't have a physical transformation until you have a spiritual transformation" and you immediately think it's about realmatics

The reason is that the book descriptions are made with marketing considerations in mind. They are supposed to entice a reader who knows nothing of the book into reading it. As such, they must be short, simple, and mysterious. Brandon's stories are all but simple, and so a simple description will never really get the story. It is figured that a longer, more accurate description may either scare away potential readers, who will move on before reading all of it, or tell them too much of the story, so that they will not buy the book because they no longer feel the curiosity. There is also the intentional process of catering to specific tastes of a specific niche of public; the same mistborn book can have a description putting emphasis on the heist to be marketed to fans of heist and spy stories, or description focusing on the dystopic nature of the final empire to cater to fans of dystopias, or it may focus on the figure of vin and her personal travel and be sold as a book for young adults. It actually happens that a publisher changes the end book description and sells the book in a different category.

I don't think the desolations can be as little as 9. In the prelude we have kalak remarking that he was killed many times by thunderclasts, that death was rarely pleasant, and that most times 5-8 heralds survive the fighting. Now, the way he talks of death make it seems he died many times, and only some of them were by thunderclasts. So if he died "many" times by thunderclasts, there must have been more than 9 desolation. I'd put a minimum at 20; that way, kalak may have died 3 times by thunderclasts, 10 times total, and be one of the most killed heralds. with 9 it becomes too much of a stretch.

I was feeling linking a thread I started would be crass. but then, I advertised it anyway, so here is the link

well, somebody will have to revive the "if the stormlight archive was the wheel of time" thread. can't be done right now because oathbringer spoilers are not allowed outside of this subboard

best chapters so far I'd say. great performance for all characters involved. Dalinar just finding he can communicate with people through the stormfather seems just too convenient, but hey, it's not like it wasn't foreshadowed. And goood thing the big spren starts to pull his weight on the team. Shallan being terrified of revealing veil to adolin... damnit shallan! open up with someone already! I suspect every unmade is a twisted version of a normal spren. moelach, the one connected to death rattles,is probably the counterpart to the truthwatchers' spren, whatever it is. And I REALLY was expecting lyn to die in that fight.

and hey, i keep reading and see that Lyn has just been added to the group of adolin, shallan and some bridge 4. why do i see her wearing a red shirt?

quick! someone go make a borg meme of bridge 4!

The deserters scene worked exactly because deserting sadeas is a title of merit. Still, persuading the soldiers to fight for her with a single speech is a bit of a stretch, but believable enough. The first GB meeting... they didn't have much of a reason to kill her. She hadn't done anything wrong, and it is bad policy to execute minions without good reasons; you'll soon find yourself out of minions (it's even in the perfect evil overlord list). the alethi court was also unlikely to work, it all hinged on sebarial backing her up. shallan took a big risk there. All in all, none of the scenes breaks suspension of disbelief. Shallan gambled a lot, she got lucky where she needed it; other things she accomplished with her means, which are extensive (lightweaving, memory, pattern as spy/lockpick, jasnah's notes). Taking all her story arc together, she pushed her luck a bit too often, but it works fine, especially if she has problems now

I'm not aware of any immediate visual clue, but at any sign you can identify easily a sharder. when he can ask brandon a question, a normal person will go like "who is hoid?", while a sharder will be like "if I use a shardplate as a metalmind to store an attribute, then animate it with breath, what would happen to a mistborn burning it?" sharders are realmatically aware, and they make complex questions delving deeply in stuff that is only brushed in the books. When brandon visited italy and I asked him my question, he immediately figured me out for a sharder. Also, a piece of paper to take notes and post them on the forum is another big clue.

I also felt a deja vu from the story, and I haven't read that specific one you linked. there are, however, a few archetypes that can ring in it: the hystory of an ancient prohibition and somebody disobeying it, which could resonate both with the adam and eve myth (climbing the wall as akin to eating the apple; notice how in both cases the person gains the capacity to discern good from evil) and with prometheus (somebody disobeying a prohibition and gaining powerful knowledge, but also a punishment). the idea of someone pushing the boundaries of the unknown could also be related to ulysses, and possibly to some more myths I don't know about. As for the idea that the wall is the shin mountains, it makes sense and several people suggested the idea in the chapter discussion. I doubt it's so simplicistic, but there's probably something there.

calling shallan a mary sue is definitely exaggerated. If nothing else, she got very lucky so far. She got lucky that she actually manifested radiant powers after stealing jasnah's soulcaster. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have come back in jasnah's good graces. She got lucky surviving the shipwreck, both when rescued by the shantind and when finding tvlakv. She got lucky that the deserters only deserted a few weeks before and were still mostly decent people. She got lucky that sebarial supported her bluff. she handled the ghostbloods and tyn very well, on the other hand; that goes to her credit. She also handled the deserters well, it just wouldn't have been enough without luck. She also handled well taking power, but I don't think that is a good idea; I believe she would benefit from working more with people and less through them, especially now that she has several trustowrthy and capable allies. That does not make her story bad. Heroes can get lucky sometimes (Mat from WoT is a different matter, because he was supernaturally lucky; in his case, consider his luck a magic system that he used to overcome problems). Kaladin himself went several weeks on bridge runs without any sphere on him before he decided to take charge, those times he could have died very easily (unless he was draining spheres from other nearby bridgemen?). Dalinar could have easily been killed by Teleb instead of merely wounded, on that battle 35 years ago. It only becomes a problem if the hero does everything, or too much, by it. If shallan suffers some major drawback in the future, and the story seems to be pointing in that direction, that it will be all right. As for prejudice, it is nigh impossible to make comparisons there. Certainly prejudice exists, but how can we assess it regarding female and male main characters? there is nobody which is exactly like shallan, and for every character brought in comparison one can highlight some difference that makes the comparison moot. And every character ever written has people liking him and people disliking him, so it's also difficult to make comparisons there. Different kind of people also tend to congregate to different kind of forums. I'd say pretty much the only way to prove there is a bias and quantify it would be to write a book in two identical versions, except with genders swapped between the two; the main characters would behave the same and do the same things, except the women of one version would be the men of the other and vice versa. And then you'd have to get a lot of people (several thousands at least, to get statistically significant data on a matter like this, properly randomized and with all the trappings of a good statistical sample) to read one of the two version, without suspecting that there is another, and then you'd have to collect all their opinions, and then if one character is more liked in one version than in another, you probably spotted a real prejudice, and you can say by how much % the prejudice influences the liking. But it's pretty much unfeasible to do all that stuff (starting with writing a whole novel) and get your readers without anyone knowing it is a test on prejudices - as knowing it would affect perception and invalidate the test. But this forum seems fairly progressive on that account, and I doubt gender stereotypes influence significantly a large number of posters here.

I was reading your post as meaning "those of you who think shallan is too successful are thinking so because of prejudice", which sounded, as you put it, "dangerously close to personal accusation made for no valid reason". In which case a prolonged answer on why accusing people of prejudice is neither fair nor appropriate is proper. When somebody brings out arguments on prejudice in a discussion where nobody is showing any, I often read it as a personal accusation, and it makes me flare up. If I misunderstood your post, I apologize. I don't know if I am the only one who read an implicit accusation in your post, or if it was poorly written. Regardless, a more proper response would have been to ask for clarification. Especially since I have traded words with you in the past on similar topics, and I've never seen you hand out accusations to fellow posters.

If we start going down the road of "you think so because you have prejudice", or its close associate "you can't understand because you've not been through it", then we may as well stop the conversation. We think shallan is too successful because we are prejudiced. The only way we can stop being prejudiced is by agreeing with the offended party, and trusting them in everything. Most of all, we must not try to argue with them, we can't avoid being wrong because we haven't been through their lives and so we can't understand. As an example of how prejudiced we are, take an example (possibly unrelated or irrelevant) of how a bunch of other people unrelated to us are prejudiced (by the way, those women in WOT are jerks and get crem for it. Perrin isn't a jerk. Neither is Mat. Rand is, and he also get crem for it. Mat had his luck because he was fated to it, so that passed; last time I checked, Shallan is not ta'veren) Incidentally, it's all right to call men as a whole prejudiced, or to remark how men have on average a greater propension towards violence and how they tend to have worse behavior in high school. Try to make a similar bad remark about women, or about just any other minority, and it doesn't matter how many statistics you can show to back you up, you'll be dubbed in the best case as ignorant and prejudiced for not understanding because you aren't one of those other people. In the worst case, you'll be labelled a racist/sexist/whatever and ostacized. I'm not angry at you, maxal, but at the whole system of politically correct beliefs that got established in the last decade or two. A system that is threatening freedom of opinion, as it systematically encourages disrespect for those expressing different views. Sure, everybody has unconscious bias, but you can't use that as an excuse to dismiss their arguments. Especially, you can't pretend unconscious bias is only something affecting other people. In fact, I've seen women openly expressing a preference for strong female leadership and be open and vocal about it, because, guess what? bias in favor of men is not politically correct, but bias in favor of women is. Now, we were having a nice discussion about the nature of shallan's success and failures and its difference with the success and failures of other characters, and how that impacts our perception of her personal plot, and how different character personalities can read differently and make it seem like a character is being more or less successful because of that, and it was an insightful discussion where everybody involved was discovering new depths he had missed to the whole issue. Can we please keep the whole "prejudice" part out of it? I am probably souding harsher than I intend, but prejudice being called upon unnecessarily is a pet peeve of mine. A big one. That's because a good arguments should be based on facts, proof and logic. And then someone say "oh but you're saying that because you're prejudiced". How can you defend from that? It doesn't matter whether you are or not, as long as you are expressing a negative opinion on a woman/minority, you must be. Even if you can quote a plethora of positive opinions you expressed about other members of the same minority (like, how I always had good words for jasnah - well, except earlier in this thread where I said she should have shared more of her work), they can all be dismissed for one reason or another. In the best case, it shifts the discussion from whatever it was about to your supposed bigotry. Unless one is clearly showing prejudice in the face of evidence, calling a witch hunt is never good for a discussion. Now, bringing the wheel of time into it is not very useful, because of the whole ta'veren business; yes, those youth should never be as good at the stuff they do, but ta'veren! and haveing memories from previous souls too. You can't really say what is possible and what is not when put that way. In the stormlight archive, you have spren bond. You can justify improbable skills with it. shallan got memory, which makes her an awesome artist and scholar. Her being the one to find the pattern in the shattered plains make perfect sense. fooling tyn and the ghostbloods? persuading the deserters to fight for her with nothing but a speech? well, all of them taken individually were possible enough, but taken together it seems like she's stretching her luck (it worked with the deserters because they were actually decent people who got sick of sadeas, and tyn saw through her disguise, but she assumed she was a con artist rather than a shipwrecked protoradiant). Kaladin got fighting and leading capabilities. There is one thing where he comes across as too skilled, however, which is surgery. Amaram was tended by the best surgeons in the army, but kaladin sees his broken leg and thinks he could have done better. Dalinar got the best surgeons in the army to tend kaladin after he comes back from the chasms, and kaladin yet remarks that he could have done better. Those remarks always left me perplexed. Kaladin studied hard until he was 14, but it makes sense that those other surgeons also studied hard until they were 14, then they studied some more in karbranth, then got decades of experience on the job. There's no way kaladin, who specialized in something else, is also better than them at healing. However, it has never been a big enough thing to remark upon. Incidentally, I also got the same feeling of "this guy is too accomplished" with kelsier, before the rebellion leader got himself killed in a premature unplanned attack. raoden, sarene and hraten would have given me the same feeling taken individually, but all three scheming together worked just fine; every time I was feeling one of them was too accomplished, one of the other two would take him or her down a notch. So maybe, as I said a few hours ago, when in years future I will read the whole stormlight archive, I may remember how I thought shallan was too successful, until problem X slapped her. Ok, this makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, kaladin is trying to find out where the parshmen are congregating, and that could happen at any time. I expect a cliffhanger like him discovering a voidbringer army, and trying to persuade his group to not get recruited, or something like that; it may happen at any time now. On the other hand, I can't envision Shallan and adolin plots being resolved in a couple of chapters. This new supposed unmade has just been introduced, I expect setting and springing a trap is going to take a bit of time at least, and possibly not work at first try.

But that's exactly my point: brandon can choose the alethi laws so that the scene makes sense. When I read the scene, I thought "he could just force amaram to relinquish the bond... but hey, if dalinar does not, then probably it is forbidden by alethi laws." We already saw alethi laws protecting those in power with that kind of circular logic, so why not assume the same mechanism works here? you can force a shardbearer to relinquish his blade only after making a trial and finding him guily; you can put him at trial only if he participates to defend himself; if he does not comply, you have to imprison him, but you cannot take the blade from him, so you have to imprison him with a tool that can break free of any prison... seems exactly like the kind of garbage that let sadeas get away with treason. Not to mention that amaram was not subject to dalinar's autority, being a vassal of sadeas. Probably dalinar must even ask permission to sadeas to arrest him... or he could have used force against amaram, breaking the law and possibly risking opeen war with sadeas. My point is, don't say that a plot does not make sense if it can be justified by in-world constraints. that's clearly a misclick, and yet it's still correct

Ok, you persuaded me, I was overstating my case. Still, I can't believe that shallan is no more accomplished than the others. I don't buy into that "gender" distinction (I wasn't the one to bring up male and female main characters), and shallan clearly feels like she accomplished more and failed less. Maybe it is because she never spent much time suffering the consequences of her failures? Kaladin killed syl, and he spent chapters being powerless and anguishing. Dalinar got outmanuevered at the tower, and he spent chapters looking like he was going to die; the next book remarked several times how his army wasn't as big as it used to be because of all the losses he took at the tower. Shallan got discovered by tyn, she killed tyn in the same chapter and nothing worse happened. probably if tyn had wounded shallan, left her for dead, stolen her books, and escaped, and shallan was forced to spend some chapters tracking her down and recovering her stuff, it would have felt more like a loss on shallan's part. Notice that in WoK shallan spent a few chapters being miserable after being discovered by jasnah, so it feels like she failed at something, so she doesn't come across as too accomplished. All protagonists eventually recover from their defeats, maybe the difference in how we perceive them is simply in how long they spend being defeated before they come back on top.