Mason Wheeler

Wait, what? There were three of them? I saw the first one because the premise looked interesting, but it turned out to be an abysmal, audience-insulting piece of garbage, one of the worst movies I've ever seen. How did that ever do well enough to merit a sequel, let alone two?!? I'm serious. How in the world does a movie that literally insults its target audience and calls them evil by 1) stereotyping everyone into a specific personality trait and then 2) taking the ones whose trait is "intelligence" (ie. the real-world demographic most likely to actually read the book or go watch a sci-fi movie in the first place) and turning them into the evil Slytherins? If that premise somehow failed to utterly bomb, I don't want to live in this world anymore.

I'll start it off. For me, the obvious choice is Pug, from Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar books. The Riftwar saga was quite long, comprising multiple series in an epic overarching narrative that spanned multiple generations. Pug was one of the main characters in the first book, a kitchen boy who was discovered to have some talent in magic and ended up apprenticing with the local wizard. Through a series of plot events, various things happen to him and over time he becomes one of the most powerful wizards ever known. The books change viewpoint characters as time progresses on Midkemia and the other worlds of Riftwar, but Pug remains more or less in focus throughout. At one point he And that seems to objectively be a feat of magical power far beyond anything we've ever seen Rand, or any other Channeler, be capable of. (Warning: the above is marked as a spoiler for a reason! If you haven't read the Riftwar books, go read them!)

The question came up in today's livestream about fantasy protagonists more powerful than Rand al'Thor. Brandon mentioned that he couldn't think of any at the moment. A few ideas were put forth, and others shared in the chat that never got read out loud on the stream, but none he could really unequivocally agree on. The rule is, viewpoint main protagonists only, no side characters, gods, etc. Can anyone think of a good example?

Sadeas was a traitor and an unrepentant murderer, boasting to Adolin about his plans to commit further treason. Given the way Sadeas's high social status insulated him from consequences, what other morally justifiable course of action was available to him? Adolin did the right thing, and as near as I can tell the only right thing he was capable of doing.

It got exactly the reaction it deserved: virtually everyone who is not Dalinar either not caring or pointing out that Adolin did the right thing. What more needed to be said?

Characters in the Cosmere do behave pretty realistically, given the reality they're in. There's nothing actually realistic about a grimdark civilization full of backstabbing sociopaths; in fact it's difficult to envision such a society realistically ever giving rise to civilization in the first place!

You don't like Elantris, or Stormlight, or Wax & Wayne, or Brandon's interactions with his fans, or the most popular character in the Cosmere, and think the Cosmere overall doesn't measure up to some obscure series a lot of us have never heard of... taken together, the larger picture painted by those details is "this person does not like Brandon's work."

Wow! Why are you even on this site when you don't appear to actually be a Brandon Sanderson fan at all?

Wait... what? Moash murdered Wayne?!?

I hope Brandon doesn't do it! That was easily the worst part of the original trilogy. A brutal mass-murderer is not redeemed by simply refusing to let an even more evil mass-murderer murder his son.

There is a word for "giving aid to the enemy in time of war," which is precisely what Sadeas did by abandoning a winnable battle. Interestingly enough, the same word also covers "attempted violent overthrow of a high government official." What Sadeas did was treason. And he was openly planning further treason and bragging about it to Adolin. He was an unrepentant traitor and murderer who was insulated from formal consequences by his high position in society. In such a situation, what Adolin did was not only right, but quite possibly the only morally correct option available to him.

Jasnah is quite clearly a pro-social psychopath. (Ie the charismatic type that in our world ends up running cults or Fortune 500 companies. Apparently on Roshar they end up running kingdoms.)

And for half of that equation, we haven't seen anything from Cultivation's POV yet...

Thanks for the tip! I just checked on there, and apparently the forum is no longer active and they're shutting it down 2 days from now.

The topic description says this is for aspiring writers and artists. Do video game developers count? I just launched a very ambitious campaign to build a high-fantasy space opera RPG. Right now the biggest challenge is getting the word out. Everyone I've talked to about the game loves the idea, but it'll take a lot of backers to get this project working. I'm under no illusions that this will be easy; I just know it'll be worth it! So check it out, and if you like the idea, a donation would be appreciated, but spreading the word would be appreciated 10x more! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/galactic-plane/x/24834557#/

On the recent Shardcast he was a guest on, Brandon said that a WoB is basically what he plans to do in the future, but those plans can change as the stories evolve. The only canon is what actually shows up in the published books.

Perhaps the most definitive thing of all was in book 4, when she gave a big rant about doing away with hope. This instantly calls to mind the words Dante famously placed over the gates of Hell! Which seems more likely? That Brandon, a notably religious author, is completely unaware of a well-known quotation from one of the most famous pieces of classic Christian literature ever written... or that he knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote that?

You know what I mean, though. When someone's first instinct to resolve any and all problems is "murder someone," that person is what we call a psychopath. And even though Jasnah doesn't always follow through with it, that always seems to be her first resort. Suspicious woman marrying the king? Hire an assassin "to keep an eye on her." Thieves terrorizing a local neighborhood? Use magic to slaughter them in cold blood. Figure out that the Parshmen are the Voidbringers? Bitterly complain what a shame it was that her ancestors enslaved them rather than genociding them as they ought to have done. Hoid shows up unexpectedly? Point a Shardblade at him. Something seems off about her cousin's spren? Clearly he needs to be murdered! Learn the truth about the Desolations? Let's go hunt down a few Heralds and murder them! Even in book 4, when she decides to do something unambiguously good, she goes about it in arguably the worst possible way, invoking a villain trope that tends to backfire badly both in fiction and in reality: "Not a paragon of moral virtue all the time" is the understatement of the century. She's a flat-out evil villain who happens to be fighting on the good guys' side, what TVTropes calls the "Token Evil Teammate." WoK Prime's version of Jasnah wasn't. I liked that one a lot better.

Wow, that's kind of horrifying, and makes me want to read the back 5 a lot less. If I wanted a villain protagonist story, I'd be reading villain protagonist stories, not heroic fantasy!

Ugh, I hope not! Where did you hear that? I'd always heard that the back half was going to focus much more heavily on the Heralds and emphasize the modern Rosharans a lot less.

Yeah, just that one minor detail...

The thing I've always wondered about (always since Brandon wrote that, at least) is, if "Surgebinding" is their term for magic in general, then what's up with "the Old Magic"?

We know that Odium was already "injured" in some form due to previous conflicts with other Shards. This most likely means that its power, rather than being stronger than all of the others, was diminished somehow. Rayse won those fights with others based on skill and craftiness, not raw strength.

Are you sure? There are a lot more real-world historical civilizations and cultures that no longer exist at all than there are ones that exist today. The vast majority of past civilizations have been wiped out, either by natural disasters or by their enemies. Our modern view of genocide is colored by a very specific event that proved a spectacular failure, but it only failed because half of the planet worked together to stop it. But from a historical perspective, that's very much the exception rather than the rule. If genocide didn't work, people wouldn't keep trying to do it. Which vision? Can you cite which book and chapter contains the vision in question? Because you appear to be the only one here who remembers reading a vision that portrays Singers fighting on humanity's side.

What exactly were you expecting? For him to turn on Dalinar? Try to kill his father? Raise an insurrection against him in the middle of a war?