ParaTulip

Because spiking the dragonness out of a dragon would be cruel if that dragon wanted to remain as such. Sure, the stamps might need to be reapplied, repaired, and even replaced from time to time, but does the fact Elantrians eat food to maintain their sanity diminish them? Those who insist on a distinction between true and false dragons in such a world would be as wrongheaded as people who engage in transphobia in ours.

Where it that Adonalsum had a purpose in making mankind, mankind would be the most justified in killing Adonalsum for such an Adonalsum would be evil. To treat a person as a mere means is to negate their existence as a living being, it reduces them to the same level as a hammer or a knife. Thus, the murder of Adonalsum would not be for the making of the Singers in this hypothetical, but might very well be for the justice of reducing Adonalsum to the status that Adonalsum ascribed to its creation, a lifeless thing. Also, if humans and singers can interbreed, there is no more a replacement there than the passing of generations. It's the logic of racism and fascism to see replacement in the succession of generations and the intermingling of peoples.

Replace it in doing what?

Aren't dragons already another species? Also, I doubt the 17 who did the shattering all came to it with the same reasons for doing so. Like, Rayse probably just wanted the personal position of usurping the highest power he could find, considering how he has behaved. The others probably wanted other things. Bavadin seems like she is committed to just wanting there to never again be a mono-god, assuming the way trellium interacts with harmonium and the way she seems to have conspired to wreck Scandrial mean what I think they mean. I actually find this immensely understandable, I think the efforts to create a universal faith in human history have all been disasters in my view.

I actually am the type to enjoy the clash of convictions. I think there is nothing more worthy an expenditure of time than the sounding of idols by using one's own as the hammer to test another. We are all capable of being superiors to Abraham in this way, taking the blows to even our final idol in a hope it will prove itself living and true but accepting we will be without a scapegoat for our wrongs should it fail.

What is plausible and implausible in a world with so much magic is very loose. Hemalurgy seems able to bend forms, and there seems to be plenty of possibilities in the surges for shape shifting with enough meditation. Forgery simply lets a person go from knowing about how those techniques work to using them to create false histories in which their "natural form" is a false imposition that is to be cast off. Think of Zhaung Zi and his butterfly dream, with magic running around, it is not hard to make it seem plausible that the butterfly in fact physically became the man and might elect to return to that form. I admit that plausibility and implausibility are always dicey topics. Let me suppose a more concrete hypothetical: What if some forger gathered in one place a number of dragons and the means of doing a great deal of hemalurgy. Suppose they discussed with the dragons the procedure of turning a human into a dragon via the use of hemalurgy to remove their humanity and to impose a dragon's nature in its place. This discussion could go on for a while, refining the notions of the technique, figuring how to do it without killing anyone involved, etc, but it is ultimately never done in fact. Then imagine the later making of a soul stamp which says "Ah, but what if I did?" This is a single change in event, one which the user could describe in great detail, and thus must be felt as plausible, yes?

Freedom is not had purely by counting votes. There is plenty of oppression that happens in even the best of democracy as we know it. There are myriad solutions to the pains of differences, but I might ask why these categories would remain fixed? Why can't someone be a dragon in the morning, a human in the afternoon, aertherbound for tea, and end the day as one of the Elantrians? Forging is my favorite MoI because it seems to be the best promise for allowing people to exist, if only temporarily, in forms which they were not put by pure chance. If the fantasy of intrinsic difference does not allow for its overcoming, then that is a flaw of imagination.

I am hoping for a Kandra who picks up Soul Forging myself. The Emperor's Soul is still my favorite books in the canon, and seeing how it worked alongside strong investiture sources in The Lost Metal just made me think combinations like forging the contents of a Kandra's spikes might be a path to all kinds of interesting moments.

Cold wars are funky. They often don't have winners, just one side have some internal matter take its attention away from the proxy wars. People running around doing Metal Gear Solid stuff to each other with random assortments of magitech is how I see that going. Sure, eventually both Roshar and Scandrial will just be blasted ruins unfit for anything humans can see as life, but colony ships seem really doable for both groups.

No, you have misheard: I am denouncing your morality as false for the reason that it is the fruit of the same tree as sexism, racism, and slavery. I think you should understand the most vile people you can imagine. Study the writings of rapists like de Sades, converse with child murderers like [pick a living US president], and imagine why you could become Hitler himself under his circumstances. They are as human as you. If you cannot do these things, you are at risk of becoming like those you hate without knowing why. If you understand those people from their example, you have a chance to realize when you are on that path and thus you can depart it. What kinds of ideal/value/moral do you find acceptable? I simply state what I know as truth yet seems to be unstated in as clear and bold terms as I can. I don't think my ideas come from such sources, but instead from my experiences in life and my efforts to study the shape of society. I am a materialist in the way of Georges Bataille. If you want, though I am an atheist, I can make an argument which appeals to the book of Genesis. I imagine you use a notion of God to justify your position, since secular homophobia is rare.

I am most interested in the potentials of Hemalurgy. It is the most egalitarian form of magic we have seen, as having access to books that guide Intent and metal enables anyone to do it. I could imagine all kinds of fun and interesting potentials in combining biotechnology with hemalurgy to allow people to trade out aspects of themselves with one another. Sure, there are a lot of ways this can be abused, but Steel Pushing has probably killed more people than Hemalurgy ever has, nevermind guns. I actually just got out of seeing No Other Land, a documentary which included a scene of a mother saying that, were it that she could give her life to reverse a spinal injury inflicted upon her son, she would be glad to be able to do so. My mind, perhaps in craving for the chance to think of anything else but the horror of that, did produce the reaction that this would not be an issue with a magic like hemalurgy, and that it is a shame we are not provided with such an elegant tool in our world.

This simply requires the following program to be adopted: Shatter the shards until they are in enough pieces that no sapient being is without their own Splinter of infinity. Let not one immortal thing exist which tramples the grass.

This kind of issue has been something that I have been bothered by in the broader cosmere books for a while now too: Revolution is never given the presentation it deserves. Jasnah's reforms make sense to our modern, post-Enlightenment Revolutions, way of thinking. Everywhere in our world has been touched by the flames that were lit in the USA and France in the late 18th century (and I might say the USA only truly knew Enlightenment when the Civil War began), with my understanding being that their burning through in China happened from the fall of the Ming Dynasty through to the Cultural Revolution and in Japan with the Meiji Restoration through to the US Occupation after WWII, and with many more places being subjected to this force we recognize as modernity through the cruel implements of colonialism. However, people, especially feudal land owners, tend to HATE this kind of revolutionary moment because it tears away their special legal privileges. We saw tiny amounts of this with how the Mistborn books played out after the death of the Lord Ruler, but then the mystical end of the world showed up and seemingly replaced the years of terror that are needed to replace plantation aristocrats with industrialists. Jasnah did, at some point, do the thing of intimidating some noble down, but the actual patterns of history that we know would have her cleaving through thousands of lesser nobles in order to get them to stop acting like they own people. She would have to become a legend as terrible as the Blackthorn, a true Napoleonic figure, in a story which wanted to tackle the hardships that come with the pursuit of liberation. Also, on the moral nuance front more generally: I wish the battles of the book had all been told from the perspectives of Singers. It would have made the "Finally, the singers one! No more desolation!" note of the ending a lot more interesting.

I think proving or disproving this is impossible, since it is trying to read specific intention into a single word, but I do think the general thing of "someone is going to be putting mono-God back together" is a theme we will be seeing more and more of going forwards. Honestly, this just feels like the obvious arc when you consider the theology that is ken to Sanderson is one where the it is great there there is a single God. I am not versed in the distinctions between how members of the church of LDS handle the trinity matter compared to the other Christian churches I have experience with, but I do not know them to identify as polytheists. I can't know the man's hearts, I have never even seen him in the flesh, but I imagine part of why he has made such an effort at inclusivity and diversity in his books is to try to develop an argument, not in logic but in example, of how one can synthesize the attributes of a singular god who is superior to a multitude of gods. So, yes. I think the reading where Rayse was saying "God is dead and we have killed him. How can his reincarnation be before me? We divided the body so as to ensure it could not be reassembled, as Osiris without Isis to gather his remains from the underworld." in far fewer words is a valid reading. I don't think confirmation on this is likely, but it will probably be a standout moment for setting the stage for the rebirth of God later in the grander narrative.

I have realized this does not mean doing the Randy Orton move of a running kick to the head of kneeling person, which I was going to say "not sure I feel like giving brain damage to fictional characters, kind of vindictive" and instead probably means ejecting the character from the story. Am I allowed to kick God out of Bible and the related works? I think that would be fun to see how it effects world religion if suddenly three of the world's most notable religions suddenly were all made atheistic by some ontological shift caused by me. Plus, I could go around telling people that Nietzsche was wrong, we didn't kill God: I personally did it. Everyone else just watched. Otherwise, I am not usually huge on franchise or larger serial media anymore. I still check out seasonal anime, but I have developed a sense of taste which sees art as needing to be bound, to be contained within a frame, in order to be properly appreciated. People and art must be finished before a lasting judgement is possible.

I actually liked the parts with Szeth when Kaladin wasn't being a weird amateur therapist. He's really interesting to see as this innocent soul that the world mangled to the point that he is possibly literally haunted by dozens of ghosts. Also, Shallan being as much as fan of the inter-species boylove as me was just so funny. I feel like she would like Homestuck. She'd probably see herself in Vriska. I was a bit disappointed by the Recreance. I had imagined that it had been a more gradual thing. Or it had been something like a civil war among radiants that actually wrecked a bunch of the world. I have been toying with trying to tell an AU where Garith takes the "I must do right by those I love" ethos of the Windrunners and pollutes it with "And so I must war against the other Radiants until I can right this hideous wrong" because of the hideous pain he felt. Imagine a world where Honor had not given the Radiants the vision of them destroying the world, but instead it was a war among the Radiants that actually did ruin civilization again, like a desolation that didn't end. Imagine the horrors of people who know the oaths and what they mean of other orders using that knowledge as weapons against one another. Maybe even stuff like Odium enabling these avenging radiants to swear hideous oaths, sealed with sacrifices, like "For I so love this world, I shall not rest until I have restore what is fairest in the world to me or ruined those who ruined that which is most beautiful in it" which would make the hate and rage of people like Garith a well of investiture in return for driving them into deeper and deeper madness by literally removing their ability to sleep in this case or other things which enable people to be at peace for others. To be clear, I think the book was more than long enough, I don't actually think the book would be better if it spent dozens of pages describing this, I just like the idea for a story on its own. There's a lot of cool imagery of someone with the Windrunner vibe going crazy because he is failing to save the one person he truly loves even though she's still technically alive and not in direct physical danger. The big problem I have trying to work this out is that a lot of the conflict would be structured by people basically trying to screw with each other's oaths while corrupting their own, and I did not get the "Ars Arcanum lore dump telling me what a bunch of the orders whole slate of ideals are" that I had hoped would be in this one. If anyone has tried to speculate on this stuff, please let me see it. I never have correctly anticipated what an ideal would be before it was spelled out.

Since you brought this up under "philosophy time" I need to point out that this is using an argument from nature. What is natural need not be taken as good. We have seen multiple characters decide that they actually don't want to go off to the Beyond. I have my own fiction I work on where I imagined a society that has nobles who inherit the memories of their ancestors, but in order to assume their full power they must bring about the death of the rest of their family, and this must be repeated in each generation or it will diminish them, and thus they tend to be few in number. I could imagine a line of Hemalurgists who pass a spike down their line, parent to child, hoping to give the next generation ever greater power at the cost of needing to exist without their parent and the pain of the transfer. Even without safe Hemalurgy, this would allow for the development of astounding amounts of capability without needing multiple spikes or anything complicated like that. Sort of a cultivation of power over generations.

Honestly, I would be really happy with gold. The ability to see into other lives, other people I could have been, and to know what it is like to be them, would be really interesting. Pewter would be neat for enabling me to get back into working out and go insanely hard with it, but I would feel like I was cheating relative to other people. I would be so uncomfortable with having access to soothing or rioting. I have a terrible "manipulation as a defense mechanism" instinct, and so that power would become immensely tempting for all the wrong reasons.

If you are really big on character performance for this stuff, I think you should check out Masque of the Red Death (the Roger Corman movie). Vincent Price plays the leading villain of the piece, and he is just SO good. Movie villains tend to be the best, since the actor can give them a real charm and sense of enjoying what they are doing, and video games can too. I think Ocelot from the Metal Gear series has to be one of my all time favorites. He just has so many crazy schemes going, and he manages to backstab basically everyone while always being loyal to his own ideals. Also,

I would immediately aim to have the reputation for making people read the most difficult books. Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs is still one of the most worth reading texts of the 20th century for me. It is also a book where most people go "Yeah, so you start reading a chapter, and then you eventually lose all sense of what the heck is going on, and it starts feeling like you might be re-reading a section from before in the book, but it is always super unclear why this is happening, or even if it is actually happening in the story or if someone is just hallucinating the events due to their opiate addiction, and then the chapter ends. So you start over next chapter." Then it's Catch 22 because I find that books really funny and the fact it is also told without chronological order would make my students think this is the theme. This way I can sneak attack them with The Tale of Genji but I need to find a version that drops the use of names for the non-Genji characters, because the actual Japanese version of the book, as I have been told, refers to everyone by their social position, and I think this is a vital part of the texture of this, the first true novel. Anyway, then I am lying about Finnegan's Wake being the last book, because actually it's Homestuck. That might not be a book, but anyone who wants to fight me on that can try to understand Finnegan's Wake instead.

Scadrial has the ability to make nuclear bombs if someone can source trellium. The goals and conditions for the war matter a lot when weapons like that are out there.

I think the themes of that story are meant to be a contrast to the Watchers on the Rim. Who do these watchers guard against? What do the people held behind them feel about the rim? Shallan and Mishram both are easily seen as "too dangerous to be free". So are a lot of people and things. Trying to find the "one meaning" is going to mean missing other ones.

I feel like people need to broaden their horizons and be more interested in understanding those who are different from them. If two guys kissing is going to set people off, then I can only suggest that they be subject to exposure therapy in the form of the works of Yukio Mishima or William S Burroughs so that they can at least have a sense of what is worth of leaving an impression. Rlain and Renarin are a kinda cute, with their mutual social awkwardness, but they are the kind of boring, safe, queerness that the need to garner moral sympathy during the AIDS crisis made the mainstream of the movement. The are honestly too pure and good to be satisfying representation for me, even if I see it as well intentioned. Let me suppose something that might shock some people: In art, representation is either pointless or harmful; expression is what is meaningful. It is well and good that all human minds contain multitudes, every merciful god and every wrathful asura can be housed in a single mind. What thus has meaning is the expression of those parts of the self which are able to see the intimate beauty of those with whom having children is impossible. Feeling this is a threat to the structuring of society in a way that makes an endless chain of "uses" out of the world and everything thing in it, you might hear Aristotle inventing God somewhere in that, and thus priests will threaten you for it.

This critique is one I don't care for. Eternal imprisonment of Odium was not working out, it was only making Roshar a world where more and more people became keen on genocide as a solution to their problems. Someone has to shatter that thing so that fighting it isn't a world crisis, but no one on Roshar can do that. Making Retribution feels like a way to make something that is actually more vulnerable to being torn apart by its internal contradictions than Odium ever was. Basically, Wit is an idiot.Listening to him about how it is such a good idea to use Roshar as the Odium containment pit was a mistake. Dalinar realizing this late is better than him realizing it never. And yeah! Everyone who died in the desolation was a waste. The thing that they should have done on the first day of the dang thing is pursued making peace with the Singers by rejoicing at their return to sapience and giving them proper rights. But Jasnah didn't murder her way onto the the throne in time to abolish slavery and formal class privilege before the desolation, and no one else was even trying to make a society with ideals of equal justice for all people. I know I complained that the book is tedious, but I really think having more perspective of Singers would help explain how the PoVs we have been following are actually mostly the baddies or the unhelpful associates of such from a distant perspective and applying modern notion of justice.

I often find my thoughts become easier to see when I am writing them out. If anyone has seen my posts about WaT so far, you should probably know I am pretty negative on the book. I kind of felt like I should stop reading the series because I finally felt vapidity in what I was reading, and thus I thought I ought to turn to the meaningful classics. I have seen some people giving grief to the book for what I see as wrongheaded reasons too, so I hope to make my position on the text clear as not just "another hater" but someone with a perspective on speculative fiction, and, in lesser extent, serial narratives. Why read speculative fiction? The idea that it is purely for entertainment is a simple one, deflationary though it is. But this then begs the questions of why not real accounts of exciting historical events or listen to music or any number of other idle occupations. JRR Tolkien supposed Fairy Stories, which is how he saw his own works, were joyful because they provided an elaborated escape from one's own circumstances that enabled a new perspective on those circumstances. This notion is one that forms the basis for what is specifically good in all manor of stories which produce rich other worlds of imagined possibility. It is also where WaT begins to fail itself in the worst way. There is a lot of focus on the notion of reform and restoration in the text. The climax is the best place to look at the theme in its clearest form, and working backwards from there exposes the failure to elaborate the imaginary. The resolution of the story comes in the form of Kaladin becoming one to give his life to undo the wrong of his brother-in-arms treason against the most ancient king at the same time that the contrasting notion of Retribution takes over the world. There is a clear contrast of the notion of redemption and, this could not be more explicit, retribution. The presence of Nale and the High Spren also makes it clear that this is also exploring an idea of justice. The frame of the events being part of Szeth's crusade makes this a certainty in the mind of the reader: Redemption is justice, wrathful retribution something else. It is thus a shame that the means of redeeming people are so woefully poor. Kaladin the therapist is where the imagination of the story falters so brutally that it spills past the scenes where Kaladin himself is trying to be such. There is a point where Shallan thinks to herself that the spiritual realm is hurting her "mental health". The use of that exact phrase is, to this reader, the piercing wounds which exposes the other world as hollow. Psychology has had a long and complicated history. If a reader of this post wants to understand this better, consider reading Foucualt's work on the matter, his work on the history of medicine is also interesting for anyone who imagine more vividly other ways such practices might be. In short, the idea of the mind has skipped ahead on Roshar from the model of the sanitarium straight to the modern self-help book. In reaching this same stage as the world the reader knows, the potential to gain a new perspective is lost, and this is the most damning criticism of the book. Beyond that highest critique, there is the issue of how this book mishandled being the payoff to 4 books of build up. Simply put, there's too much crap going on. Until I found out that Sizgil had become the protagonist of another book that I had not noticed, I had no idea why he kept getting brought up. The whole business of the prior books insisting that there would be no trickery based on the letter of the agreement, and then there is trickery based on the letter of the agreement, just made every bit of drama with Adolin fighting for his life feel hollow until he got traumatized by having to actually fight like a soldier instead of a fancy lad. I was actually relieved when The Mink only got a single chapter of "Well, that didn't work" because it all felt so tedious. The fact Shallan, Rlain, and Renarin had to dance around in the background of Navani and Dalinar's historical reenactment quest so much also made things drag. In short, the book could have been about half as long imo, and it would have been better for it. Also, Venli felt like she was spending too much of the text reminding the reader of her arc from the last book, which is, again, tedious. Except there was not enough Leshwi. She's my fave minor character. I love her as trans rep because she actually has the awkwardness of "Ah crap, do I need to shave? Can literally anyone else do this for me, I hate being aware that I have stubble" business going on, and that is really relatable to me. I am additionally never that thrilled by how Sanderson, or most anyone other than myself actually, writes action scenes. I did martial arts as a child and have been fond of watching combat sports on and off for some time, and almost no one captures the vivid details of space and time that I feel in a fight. Action scenes in film and television only sometimes approach this, with oddly enough animation tending to be the place where people get it right the most often. This makes Adolin's long, elaborate, battle scenes the worst thing to read for me, since I was mostly just annoyed that he was even doing this, and I was not into stuff until he was doing hard drugs to push his maimed body to fight on even after clearly reaching the point of getting PTSD. I think having Yanagawn be the PoV for most of the battle, slowly watching Adolin get worn down as he comes to befriend the man, only to then show Adolin's PoV as he crosses the breaking point, could have given far more oomph in far fewer words. Simply put, a tighter, more focused, and more literary WaT could have been an amazing capstone to the first half of this saga. But the book we got was inelegant and overlong.