ParaTulip
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If in the first installment of my series I introduce Dave, who goes about being nice to people on his way home, and in the second installment I introduce Dave's freezer full of human body parts of all the people he has killed before the events of chapter 1, I have used the literary tool of retroactive continuity to produce an artistic effect in the reader by forcing them to change how they understand the character. It does not matter if I intended killer Dave from the jump, the sequence of works is such that the reader went from having one kind of interpretation due to a prior and was guided by a later work to have a different one. And after this I am done arguing about the definition of a retcon. If someone brings up the point again I am unwatching this thread.
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I feel like this might become tedious but: "after the fact" what does this mean? After what fact? Things like Shallan's mom in WaT are retcons even if they are planned from the beginning. This is not me trying to make a value judgement, I am not saying "Secret History bad because retcon" or "Shallan parentage reveal bad because reton". Supposing that it can only be a retcon if there is a re-issue of the text that changes the actual printed words is something of a retcon but it is not the common sort. Most retcons in fiction are not due to republishing the same story with version differences. Any time a story does a flashback or a character explains a backstory, that is retroactive continuity. It is information that shapes and re-contextualizes prior narrative. Twist endings and reveals are often retroactive continuity, with the rush of feelings about how the newly reformed canon being why they are emotionally impactful.
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Mr Sanderson could have everything in his mind from the moment of his birth and that would not change how things were published or how I read them. Please reconsider what I wrote. I think you are misunderstanding my point about the nature of retcons. I could use the example of Homestuck or western comic books to try to expound on the topic more, but I fear that is off topic.
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This looks like an ethics discussion with some clear thesis points. I hope you do not mind me stepping back in: It seems to me what is questionable here is how a moral judge would assess Szeth's actions, and there is the option to imagine if that judge was himself Szeth or someone with access to Szeth's memories and using the culture of Shin as Szeth was raised in to be the one to judge him. Using that as a guide, this post will address each case one at a time, first a moral judgement based on my understanding of moral philosophy (I got an A in a 200s level Ethics class, that basically makes me an expert on this! /joke), Szeth's own feelings as I see them from the text, and what could be imagined as a sort of Shin jurist. First, what would the two most popular moral theories of the modern world have said about Szeth. I am just going to run a quick test on Kant's Deontology and Bentham's Utilitarianism. Okay, Szeth did a long wrong there. The oathstone is kinda insane and dumb under both of the big Enlightenment moralities. Having killed people because of the oathstone just fails to compute in those systems, obviously what he did was wrong by those measure. Deontology has this blindness to cultural circumstances, so it is easier to just notice how murder uses people as a mere means to achieve an end and call it a contradiction of the good. I think Kant was okay with people killing murderers though, so if anyone Szeth killed was already a murderer he can reduce his guilt by that many ghosts. I do not think Roshar was a happier place for the Assassinations in White so Bentham is also not going to approve; Unless some of those people he killed were really sad and going to stay sad and miserable for the rest of their lives, then he could feel less bad about those ones. But what about the standards of Shin culture? Well, that is where it gets weird. Shin culture hates doing violence too! Szeth hates himself for killing people to the point where most of what happens in his head before his therapy road trip of miracles is the screams of his victims. Sorry, I thought there would be more here, but... no. Shin culture seems to love to doom people to lives of moral evil while making a big deal of it. It is a really dumb society. Shallan is right, they do resemble children. -
This has turned into a bit of a discourse around the nature of retro active continuity, I so I hope no one minds me sharing my ideas on that: To me, the essential thing to see is that Mistborn has been big on retcons since at least Secret History, and anything about Atium is a smaller change. Sure, there was nothing to demonstrate that Kelsier was not a helpful spirit pushing along the events of HoA, even some scenes that could suggest it, but having him be literally walking around in a parallel dimension for the whole book was a retcon that changed the meaning of his bodily death in key ways. There is a way to see retro active continuity as having two forms: When a character's backstory is told, that is a retro actively canon event. If it is handled poorly, such backstory can clash with their prior canon actions in a way that produces dissonance in the reader, but it does not contradict the told narrative itself. Then there is the purely dissonant retcon that comic books are famous for: Whoops, there was a time wave and now what you read didn't happen or at least did not happen the way you and others read it at the time. The atium change is a lot closer to the former, while in my opinion Kel being around in Era 2 and stuff is closer to the latter. As for understanding what refined atium does: The Allomancy chart DOES say "Pure atium grants the Allomancer an expansive vision of the future and enhances the mind's ability to accept, process, and hold information." It seems the Electrum alloy focuses it on the immediate future and gives it the form of the electrum ghosts that overlay with the present, though the characters think of these as atium shadows due to having experienced the alloyed god metal version first. But malatium sees the alternative or past versions of others... so I guess that is more leaning into the enhancing the mind's processing or something. Okay, now to talk about Feruchemy... wow the Feruchemy chart says practically nothing about Atium or Lerasium. That's nuts. It is weird to think about the relationship between Determination and Youth. If you put a gun to my head I could probably explain it as "The determination to live/ to oppose the force of time." but that feels sketchy so I don't think I am getting out of this one.
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The book is selling itself as a bunch of single session situations that can be worked into an existing game. I think what you are used to reading is Adventures books, things meant to take characters through several "levels" over multiple sessions. Module books tend to be more about being fit into an existing game. Sure, it would be nice to include example NPCs for either end of the romance, in case this is a relationship between NPCs and the players will just be fujoing Shallan style, but I would find it weird to run that way unless I knew my players were into it.
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Yeah, I felt like either of those were about as plausible as the other. Leshwi and Kaladin do actually share a decent amount in common and they basically just do weird little dates that end in Leshwi being killed during battle. Okay, so I looked into the context on this, and the big of ad copy I found was So, what I would imagine a story teller/game master would read the scinerio, figure out if there is a good existing character in their roleplaying game to be either part of the romance, and then either make up a new character who is suitable or use that existing character? Roleplaying game content is a bit hard to compare to something like a novel; The person buying the novel is not expected to modify it to be used in a sort of improvised theater game with friends.
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No. I don't think she should do that. Thinking that someone is worthy of being seen as a God just because they have a bunch of power does not fit with Jasnah's deal. Somehow, probably because Mr Sanderson has only encountered atheists who are really honed on Christianity, she thinks that a true and worthy God is only one who is all powerful, all knowing, and all good. I have a small rant in me about the oddness of her focus on omniscience in WaT, but I will hold it. Maybe someone with enough Shard and/or Dawnshard power could attain a supreme power to shape the Cosmere, but that power will not come with innate goodness. There is probably a theme to be had with the whole Retribution vs Redemption thing. Every time I think of redemption in this context, I find myself recalling how the word is used in chapter 6 of certain versions of the book of Exodus, especially since the Great Leader of the Faithful tropes Dalinar had going on are very Mosses vibes to me. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 6&version=NIV And since the context of all of this is slavery, another idea also going on, it all does have a certain ring to it. I think the better version of this is for Jasnah to suppose she simply has a virtue that Taravangian lacks that is part of being a good bearer of power: She is capable of forgiving people. She can let harms done to her pass. Can Taravangian call himself Retribution but also do the same?
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I do agree that the scriptures of Christians and a lot of other cultures do sometimes make me wonder where the mystical snake transmutation duels fit into all of it? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 7&version=NCB this time verses eight through eleven of chapter 7 of Exodus. Magic certainly does seem to always retreat from definitive tests. I would be amazed to see conjured serpent duels, but somehow those never happen with reliable video recording.
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Not to preach or do blasphemy or anything, but I actually do recall now the biblical passage which is meant to answer something like this, I think: from the book of John chapter 20, verses 26 through 30 in the New Catholic Bible as accessed from https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john 20&version=NCB There is supposed to be a blessing that is specially created for those who come to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the ministry created by God, without being witnesses to the signs of God the Son. It would make you or I, in a way, more blessed than the very apostle who touched the wounds of risen Christ. At the point of bringing up such imagery there is a keen emotional affect; at least to me there is one. The viscerality of putting hands into an incarnated God's open wounds excites me personally.
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I did not see this before, it is a much better topic than the niche issue of the reformation, so I will address it. First, on the matter of other commenters like @pureintonation@Pathfinder and their dismissal of the idea of willful belief. I understand how the Christian world view interacts with this a bit better than most since it was made a focal point during a sermon I attended: It is, in that mysterious and divine way, somehow better for a believer to hold to faith against evidence than to hold it because of evidence. This is the essence of the valuing of faith in itself. Faith is not meant to be free from doubt, but instead it is meant to be a struggle that somehow ennobles the believer to go through. Why does God want believers who suffer from doubt? I have never heard a great answer. If this seems incomprehensible, compare it to the concept of having faith in the virtue of a person. If a father is caught in a lie by his son, the son cannot rely on the evidence to believe his father is an honest man anymore. The son must use faith in order to believe despite that evidence in his father's virtue. With God, the issue is not to have faith in God's virtue alone, but also to have faith in God's existence AND virtue. Now, for my own response: I have my own concept of God. It is not much anything like the Christian God. But also, this concept of God is not unlike pantheism, such that "the sum of all things as they ever are" could be another way to refer to God in my concept. However, I see it as important to living a good life to deny the concept of life after death, and this is impossible to reconcile with Christians.
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Some of the history that occurs due to those disagreements is a bit more consequential than the current peace between denominations might imply. For a time, I was a member of various Baptist congregations in New Jersey. As a part of one of them, I think it was Calvary Baptist in Hopewell, I went through the ritual process of "baptism at the age of knowledge." While the book of Mark does start with a recounting of Jesus' baptism by water, the notion that baptism is to be done to infants as an initial granting of salvation is not really there. It was the defining trait of the baptists to not abide by infant baptism but instead to do this baptism at the age of knowledge, where a child who is expected to remember the event is taught some concept of what Jesus Christ's salvation means. The child then is baptized. The teaching portion was multiple distinct lectures given by the congregation's pastor, not just a quick briefing before the ritual immersion in the baptismal fountain. And I explain all of this to point out that, in the early days of the Protestant Reformation, people killed each other over that. Denying that infant baptism was divine law freaked people out. The notion that being baptized afforded an infant protection from damnation or some other eternal doom was REALLY important to people who did not have modern medicine and thus suffered immense infant mortality. I find it interesting how this is no longer so serious that people are doing heresy trials over it, at least among Christians as I know them.
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My understanding is that Biblical literalism and/or inerrancy is a spectrum of beliefs. For example, the Catholic Church does think that the "original" writing of the bible was in any way in error, because it happened exactly as God willed insofar as God wills for salvation as a spiritual process. However, that does not mean the Pope thinks the texts recount literal history or scientific truth. Those things are seemingly unimportant to the "error" of the text.
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Well, I would imagine you either agree with Luther, that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the Christian world was mere tradition and not eternal divine law? Actually, does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have bishops? Or any kind of professionalized clergy?
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Since no one has spoke in over 4 days, Does anyone have feelings about this event in religious history or its related events?
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Is... is that the name for the mysterious dark figure?
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Do you frequently see these around when you are waking up? I have had experiences with sleep paralysis and the infamous "Sleep paralysis demon" sensation; both times I have experienced this I had dreamt just before waking of my mother coming to wake me as she did when I was young, and both times the incongruity of such a thought with her death being some years ago mixed with my half-awake mind to bring me to a state of confused terror at the thought of this impossible dark figure looming over me while I could hardly move. Oh, and since I have your time, if you had that same experience and circumstances come to you (no offense to your mother), what would you make of them?
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Could you describe these experiences? My own sense of the mystical only seems to get set off by ceremonies like tarot reading (and then only some of the time) and maybe a light sense of such in important religious ceremonies. Specifically, I recall that sense being aroused when undergoing baptism at an older age in the Baptist or Anabaptist tradition of an informed right, but to be honest it was a weaker sensation than the memorable encounters with tarot. Are you saying your sense of a ghost is a visual or auditory sensation, as opposed to a more general sense of mystical importance or something? My reading into the mystical experiences of modern Christians only brought up the cultivation of an awareness of the sense of the mystical and an attendance to its accompanying events/environments.
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Cosmere Adaptation Announcement
ParaTulip replied to Treamayne's topic in General Brandon Discussion
I have been told that's offensive. That word does have the same grammar as Catholic, being a adjectidal form, but alas I don't like using offensive names for others. I would make a point that Roman Catholics would say their relevant equivalent name is "The Church of Christ" too. I am trying to distinguish between two groups of people who both cite to the apostle Paul. -
Cosmere Adaptation Announcement
ParaTulip replied to Treamayne's topic in General Brandon Discussion
I actually think LotR has a really simple direct comparison with what @Aliroz-The-Confused wants from the Cosmere adaptation: Did you notice that the world and text of LotR has strong Roman Catholic undertones? If you don't see it in the movies, but think you would notice if they were there, then that is a problem. Mr Tolkien really was huge on being Roman Catholic. Even though no one in LotR takes the Eucharist or heeds the words of a Bishop of Rome, it informs his writing in what I think would be similar ways to how one might understand Mr Sanderson's writing as being informed by his... what is the grammar that matches "being Roman Catholic" but for members of the Church of Latter Day Saints? I am genuinely unsure how to phrase that. I have been told before that there are definitely wrong ways to do it. -
It does seem like the more interesting property of trellium is that it seemingly splits mixed investitures back into the forms of the 16 shards. If someone put a shardblade or the CR body of a Spren (uhh, maybe a Cryptic who is really curious, willing, and doesn't have any future plans) into the electric current machine and then poked them with a bit of trellium, then it might do the funky thing of splitting the Invesiture (and cause a large explosion, I hope that Cryptic really didn't have anything to look forward to). This makes it seem like you might also be able to do something neat, like getting Taravangian into a state where he is feeling the competing natures of his Shards and poking him with the stuff (Maybe get him to sit in the electricity machine? I bet it could be disguised as a fancy chair!) then it might make him explode in an impressive way. I also wonder if it could be used to induce further Shatterings? Like, no one tried putting Lerasium or Atium into the electricity and trellium machine to see if Preservation and Ruin don't contain sub-assemblies which can be inmetalliated (incarnation implies fleshy to me, embodiment in metal has to be another thing) as distinct forms.
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Designated marksmen with all aluminum rifles seems like the obvious thing here. Gonna have to give them a lot of training on shooting targets that are more evasive than the median bird, but the basic setup of the marksman with aluminum is would probably be part of every platoon sized element to counter the prospect of encountering an iron or steel allomancer who would spoil everyone else's fire. Having them be 1 to a platoon (20-50 guys) would seem excessive, but if primer cubes are not that uncommon in the south than having specialists to counter them would make sense at a small unit level. Also, apparently primer cubes charged by an aluminum gnat create no-magic zones in how Mr Sanderson had things figured in 2021. I know there are no metalborn to spare for combat, but seeing as an aluminum gnat isn't actually that useful on the front lines without a cube, maybe they should be deployed to the rear just to charge up the anti-magic field generators.
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Cosmere Adaptation Announcement
ParaTulip replied to Treamayne's topic in General Brandon Discussion
I think you just shoot the scene so that it is mostly implied. A shot of the camera moving towards the guy's head, a splash of red against a wall with the shadow of the now headless man still holding Vin on it. The next shot is closer to the ground, maybe some blood dripping and then the corpse falling which we cut just as the remains of the head enter the frame. Cut to reaction shots. Then a shot from behind Vin until she can wipe her face off or something. This is easier to do in anime since you can shift things into pure silhouettes, and considering how much CGI will be needed to pull off the falling ash, the mists, the iron/steel movement, Atium, and other stuff it might not be a terrible idea to do some kind of stylization in scenes of intense violence. But then for The Hobbit they just tended to shoot everyone on green screens and composited them together. -
This is funky to me, since when I think of religion and Descartes, I have two paths of thought that return to me at once. In one, I am thinking of Georges Berkley and his assertion that all experience is mental and the seeming continuity of experiences is thanks to what we take for objective reality actually being the interior of the mind of God. If it was just in the mind of Georges Berkley, he would be able to kick through rocks a lot better, and that would have let him win an argument. The other path is thinking of how much Descartes' dualism or any form of pure idealism is deeply wrong. As I have said in the thread "Do you believe in God?", I do think that a God in the form of Spinoza's God as all extant matter, energy, observed and unobserved, everywhere, all at once, is hard to refute. Since our material bodies will always be part of the universe's materiality, there is a sense in which all who die are destined to become one with this God without exception.
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Okay, so I have tried to read that, and I think it's answering a different question than I was asking? I do understand that there's a lot of discourses to have about the question of "Does Scripture mean this", but I am largely willing to simply accept the proposition "God wants to elevate us to be like unto itself". My question is more: What does it entail to be made so? I see hints of this, God is presented as more one who arranges the conditions of life than brings about all things from nothing. But I would assume there's something more to becoming like God than simply being empowered to engage in terraforming. Saying it is a great joy does not cover it for me. I am much like Friedrich Nietzsche in that I get a lot out of hiking. I love the tiredness and exhaustion of it, pushing my body to carry itself through cold and up hills and so on. This is different from running, which I also did enjoy, because it cannot be intensified in cadence. Either the terrain must get steeper or I must do it for longer duration. Were I given more power by which to do this, it would simply delay my joyous state of exhaustion. How then, could I ever find joy in being like an infinite God? Would I not have to be changed as a person? This is my real question put short: What are the boundaries on the nature of such an exalted one?
