Immortal Platypus

Really simple answer? Nightblood. Shardblades would probably also work, if you kill him fast enough (separating soul from body should do the trick) he doesn't have time to heal. Aluminum grenades (traditional, not southern Scadrian). A-Aluminum/A-Duralumin southern Scadrian grenades (however that works) would be interesting. F-Copper grenade to wipe his memory? Not sure how that works. Could be cool. Silver might have some interesting effects. if you can soulcast things into silver, you might be able to petrify him by soulcasting parts of him to rock as they're healing (probably the weakest time for their cognitive aspect) and within the rock, small areas of silver or silver dust. Aluminum might also work. I had one more idea that I wasn't sure about, but totally forgot it.

I do remember them being restricted by Honor, I don't recall Ishar doing much. that's what I was wondering about

is that in a WOB or in a book? I don't remember reading that at all

I do like this theory. One thing I would add is that it has long been an open question (at least in my mind) how such a powerful being like Ado was able to be killed by mortals. I think that this could explain it. Instead of defending himself, he sent the Dawnshards away. That might be my new headcanon (until someone inevitably shows me something that I totally forgot about that makes this idea entirely incorrect ).

what's up?

cause I wasn't hungry when I changed my name. otherwise, I would be ookla the hungry. Next year

don't blame me, I'm inactive. It's in the name. also, on a completely unrelated note, i'm really hungry

yep, for sure. You don't even need to specify which Vengeance, cause I'm not here very much. just don't go naming something Platypus, or it'll get really confusing

Don't forget, if he loses access to his metal minds, which I think that the amount of Newtons we're talking about would do the trick there, he starts aging rapidly, and becomes a very very old man (if I remember the end of TFE correctly). Well, this is where the square-cube law would come into play. It might not be applicable, as it seems to be violated in later books, but it probably holds to some extent. well, that only applies if scadrial itself is the ground that is cracking. Having a wooden floor crack is very different from having the dirt and rocks below you crumble. Do we know if scadrial's size (1 cosmere standard unit) is the same as Earth? It's the same as Yolen, but if it's not the same as Earth, that could come into play by making the US forces experience different amounts of Gs, different calibration for missiles and mortars, etc. Even so, they would figure it out fairly quickly, so I agree that TLR is their only line of defense. My question is, can he last against sustained incendiary bombings and other attacks meant to strip him of his metalminds? If that happens, he's no more threat than any other allomancer, albeit one with probably greater skill. He might even be less of a threat, depending on how much his increased aging incapacitates him.

as long as it's not the sword, which I kind of doubt because it shrugged, and Vengeance can't really do that, it's fine that's what I was thinking.

I'd guess it's going to be a skewed sample on the Shard, but I did the same

how intriguing. to be fair, there have been namelesses in the past that weren't nameless returning to life, like the time Subversion became Nameless to duel Platypus.

I figured it wasn't, and that you didn't. it was just me misreading. I do feel like I remember something about that, but I think I missed the naming

I don't think you did anything wrong, I was just trying to say that neither of our views are necessarily right. I was trying to say that we are clear on what each other believe, though we disagree about it. I didn't see it as a win/loss, and it seemed to me that when you said that I was right that you were mad about it. I just wanted you to know I didn't see it as I had to win so you had to lose. I do enjoy it somewhat, but it was also beginning to feel a little bit like a chore, through no fault of your own, you've been wonderful. As for enjoying winning the argument, if that's how you genuinely feel, that's great. I thought it felt tainted because I thought you were simply giving up because you were tired of being on the side everyone disagreed with, but if that's not how you feel, that's great. I'll largely leave @Qianweilian to respond to what you said to him, but I do want to say that it is possible to rethink your beliefs while still disagreeing with someone who you initially disagreed with. I've certainly thought about certain things from a different perspective, and while you ultimately didn't change my mind, I did rethink certain things. That's all I had to say, I hope you have a wonderful day/night/evening/whatever. I mean this whole-heartedly, and thank you for such an interesting discussion. What you talk about about Joan of Arc is especially interesting, I'll have to add that book to my to read list.

well, worrying is the wrong word, but I couldn't think of the right one. I thought Nameless was coming back again (cause adventurer, Nameless, you know). Please tell me the traveler isn't nameless

Let's go, got a name drop I must say, I first read the adventurer instead of the traveler and that was a worrying thing.

That's kind of my point. Personally, I disagree with your characterization of those stories, but that's a matter of personal view. And you're welcome to think that, I just think it's a different promise, but that's ok. That's pretty much the source of most of our disagreement, so I think the best course of action is to acknowledge that we have different worldviews and different ideas of what was promised which shape our ideas of the story in different ways. I'm not saying you're not useful. What I'm saying is that the purpose of this conversation specifically, from my point of view, could not be accomplished without rational debate. That's why I said what I said. You can't debunk examples, but you can offer an alternative interpretation of those examples, or you can offer counter-examples that prove your point. Without evidence, I don't think many arguments hold water. I agree that you shouldn't be expected to know them, that's why I didn't start citing them. I do think that if you're going to theorize about what will happen, you should heed evidence given from any reliable source. And not to be nitpicky, but Brandon has retconned things before, like Kaladin killing Szeth. what? that's not at all what I'm saying. and I agree with @Qianweilian, you don't win arguments, or at least, you don't win in a productive way. However, it seems to me, that you don't enjoy this conversation, and I'm enjoying it less and less, so unless there's something that I think demands a reply, I won't be making any of these longer replies anymore.

I guess calling the protagonist's behavior the protagonist's culture was not the right word, and I should have been more clear about who I meant. I did mean specifically Kaladin and the other members of Bridge 4 because that's who we were talking about at the time. Shallan and Dalinar's beliefs are quite different from theirs. In addition, I do think that any culture is comparable to others, the comparison just has to be on a scale that makes sense. In this case, I think you're right and that I did overreach. From what we've seen of their society I would agree. However, what I was talking about was in contrast to Aliroz's idea that Bridge 4 should be executed for taking the carapace, which the Listeners did try to kill them for. My example was hyperbolic, but I believe the principle remains true. As for them being elected positions, I don't think we know how they're chosen. What we do know (I'm pretty confident about this, but not 100%) is that they can choose someone to succeed them when they go out on missions in case they don't return, so it doesn't seem to me like they are elected (which is admittedly, a relatively weak reason to think that). I wouldn't necessarily say their culture was best, that might belong to the Horneaters (we haven't seen a lot of their culture) or the Herdazians (I don't remember how much we've seen of theirs, but from what I can recall, it seems pretty good), but it was overall good. Overall, you're right, I should've been and will be more careful. Thanks Nameless

Does it mention anything about her exerting a lot of effort into making the web and that taxing her too much. I thought I had read at one point in the past (though it was long ago) that that had something to do with it, but I could be wrong. While that is a good example of setting boundaries, I mostly meant in terms of her hastening her death, but if that's not accurate, than my criticism can be ignored. It would probably take one more versed in Charlotte's Web than I (at least having read it) to truly make an argument for her not being perfect, so if you are willing, I'd like to set that example aside. Yes, I would probably not count Aslan as he is both the side/mentor character and is supposed to be the Savior, so it's kind of a grey area. I also don't think that it was the best way to write it, I would have preferred someone die, but I do like the renouncing of oaths. I don't see what you mean by it being to absolve Navani though, as we already saw a beloved spren die. I think the readers feel the aftereffects of her experiments, but I don't necessarily think they were a bad thing. For example, planes were developed in a sort of similar way, and have been used for great destruction, but I'm still grateful to have them. How into WOBs are you? We still don't know too much, but we do know more than is revealed in the book. I think the most important thing is that she is about change which you can tell from her name alone, but also from her in-book actions, which I personally think reduces the extent that Stormlight can be construed as morally absolute. I believe that you don't mean it in bad faith, but the fact of the matter is that it is, at least to an extent, a bad faith argument. I think I can agree with that being a moral center, but I think there are others like "Sometimes the prize is not worth the costs. The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself," that I think are also worth calling a moral center. Even so, I don't interpret any of these to be promises of moral absolutism. Part of that is that we just interpret things differently, but part is that I still don't think that there is a perfect Law-giver present to make moral absolutism possible. For the record, if we didn't have rational debate, then this whole conversation would be useless, hence my insistence on it. I wouldn't necessarily say I insist on granularity, but I do insist on having specific examples. I'm happy for you to talk about the overall tone, feelings, etc., as long as you provide specific examples backing up each claim you make. And for the record, I think that if having to have examples makes to back up your opinions makes it extremely difficult to defend what you say, perhaps you should rethink those opinions. The same idea is true of me providing examples to back up my points; I provide examples so that you can debunk what I'm saying, not to make it harder. I don't think that that is a fair request to make, as most characters (across the Cosmere, but also on Roshar specifically) are not cosmere-aware (aware of other sapient peoples). If I can provide examples of them being kind to specific Singers or Listeners under the same conditions, is that good enough for you? Also, I think it's important for me to ask you for specific examples of other worlders doing the same thing you ask me to provide examples of Rosharans doing. Kelsier is obviously Scadrial-focused, the number one purpose of the Ghostbloods is to help/defend Scadrial. It is natural to feel a sense of allegiance to your home planet, just how we (or at least I) feel allegiance to our home country. Actually, you can see if a post has been edited (at the bottom above the quote box, I'll attach a picture at the bottom of my response) and you can see that my posts have not been edited. I find it an unfair tactic to edit a post after you've already criticized something about that post to fix the object of your criticism. If I do edit something, it will usually be for spelling/grammar. You're right, it can be moving the goalpost, I was saying that it was not my intention to do that. I don't necessarily think that that is exactly what happened here, but I can absolutely see how you would come to that conclusion. I couldn't definitively say Charlotte is a side character, but that is what I believed at the time I wrote that. I would caution that just having a lot of dialogue doesn't make you a main character, nor does being the eponymous character, but it's very possible she's the main character. I never tried to say that Jon of Arc is a side character, my points against her were different. a) we don't know if adonalsium was a perfect Law-giver, I personally would argue that he wasn't because he wasn't perfect (as evidenced by him being killed), and b) I don't think that counts like you say it does. The other thing is that if it does count, it means that moral absolutism should hold everywhere in the Cosmere, including places like Scadrial which you said is entirely different. I think your definition is close enough to use for honor (I would use Merriam-Websters definition of "high moral standards of behavior." It also links integrity "firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values") , but I think it's very clear that Honor doesn't care about morals, sincerity, or integrity. To use the example Nameless used, if you made an oath to kill 100 people and kept it, Honor would think that was good. I don't think that matches the integrity standard you include. I also don't think it meets acting in good faith or keeping to customs and tradition, but those are more debatable. Can you see why I think honor and Honor are different? I think that's why Brandon wrote it the way he did, it's a major point of Adolin's arc. Promises and oaths being different is a symbolism for honor and Honor being different, in my interpretation. You are somewhat right about me restricting the genre, though I do hold the idea that main characters shouldn't be perfect and should have flaws for all genres. I don't think moral relativism and nuance are required in Stormlight, I think it could be written with moral absolutism, but I don't think that's how it's written, and I don't think that it was promised that way either. It is my personal opinion that nuance should be in pretty much everything, with very few (if any) exceptions. You are welcome to feel that way, but that doesn't mean that moral sophistication and nuance don't belong in Stormlight. I think there could be a very compelling story told with moral absolutism, but I don't think it's the story Brandon wanted to tell, or signaled that he wanted to tell. (lowkey almost accidentally sent the emoji flipping you off on accident cause I couldn't tell if it was a thumbs up or not) I think that critical thought is a moral prerequisite before you can make moral judgments, but I also think that you don't necessarily need it to engage with the material. However, I can't help you with this, so there's really not much for me to comment on. I think we may have to settle for clarity but disagreement.

I disagree. Brandon didn't write it as a personal attack, so it's not one. You can feel attacked by it, but that is a different thing. If an oath means nothing if you renounce it, than renouncing it means nothing. There must be some meaning to it, but what that is is open to debate. However, the ideas which produced the oaths are still there, and you can still live by them. He has violated part of what her spirit is made of, and has fulfilled the other part. Only part of her is Honor, the other part is Cultivation which you repeatedly ignore. And again, anti-Oath is anti-Honor, not anti-honor. I want you to answer, would you prefer if Vienta had died, rather than him renounce his Oaths? In my view, him renouncing his Oaths, renouncing his personal power to save his spren is the ultimate fulfillment of his Oaths to protect others. You're also creating a false dichotomy. You can believe that oaths are important, while not thinking that you should have to die for them. Or you can take my position, which I would say is even more nuanced, and say that Sigzil was willing to die to protect Vienta, which was the highest possible fulfillment of his oath to protect those that cannot protect themselves, therefore, his only course of action to preserve his values (which are represented by his Oaths) was to renounce his Oaths. Vienta could not protect herself, and so if he didn't protect her, that would be a violation of his Oath. There was no other way for him to protect her, so by renouncing his Oaths he followed them. My prior argument attests to this as well. IMO, he did the only thing that followed his Oaths. He never swore an oath to not renounce his Oaths, so doing that broke no oath. Did you just say that nuance has little business being in fantasy, or am I misinterpreting what you're saying? If that is what you're saying, we approach this from such different frameworks that I do not think there can be any resolution. Fantasy can speak to the mind just as much as the heart, and patterns can be whatever they want. If you restrict what a genre is to what it should speak to, you restrict great stories from being told or understood. I'm sure we would agree that Tolkien's works are fantasy, and they have plenty of nuance. I do not regard scripture as fiction, Christ is the Risen Lord and perfect because he is God. I don't accept this as an answer. I haven't read it, but from the admittedly small amount of research I've done, it seems like she has a volatile temper, which would make her not perfect. Remarkably, this is another I have not read, but I do know that she is not the main character. I don't believe I specified that I wanted main characters, but if you look back at the context, that was my original intent. I did talk about side/background characters being different, and I include mentor figures in that category. I promise I am not using this as an attempt to move the goalpost, I was simply not specific enough in the first place. I would also say that it doesn't seem like she is good at setting boundaries (again, I haven't read it, so take what I say with a grain of salt. or 20), being so self-sacrificial that she dies as a result, which I would consider a flaw. In addition, as a spider, she is carnivorous, so if the flies and other bugs are sapient like the barnyard animals (I don't know if they are or not), that poses major ethical problems. I was not making a direct comparison of them to communists, I was giving an example to prove my point of some cultures being better than others, a point that you didn't respond to. Do you agree or disagree with that idea? Let's avoid making sweeping generalizations like "everything" because a) it's a bad faith argument, it makes it extremely difficult to debunk anything you say and b) it isn't accurate in nearly 100% of cases. If you can provide specific examples of Stormlight promising moral absolutism, I would be happy to talk about it. As for examples of stormlight not promising moral absolutism, can there be moral absolutism without a perfect Law-giver? I need an answer to that question before proceeding too far. One example I can give is Kaladin's struggle of if Killing to Protect is a real thing or not. We still don't have an absolute answer to that. I would say that it is, which is what he decided, but Lirin is still on the boat of it not being a thing. Then can you define honor for me? Or you could define Honor, as you believe they are the same.

Honor couldn't really do anything, he was storming DEAD! In addition, as Nameless has pointed out, in the Era that Stormlight takes place in, Honor doesn't care about being honorable. He cares about keeping the oaths you make, whether they be good or bad. Because not all cultures are equal. The Soviet Union's communism was and is worse than American capitalism, freedom is better than slavery, etc. I believe that the protagonists' culture (which is different from Alethi culture, I want to clarify that I don't particularly like that), wrong as it is in some spots, is better than the Listeners' culture, especially if their culture requires the execution of people who so much as touch their corpses. I vehemently disagree. For one thing, characters not changing is different from them being perfect. Characters being aspirational is not the same as them being perfect. Characters cannot be moral absolutes. They can be absolute in their morals, but that is a different things, and some morals are worse than others, meaning that if they are absolute in bad morals, they are still bad people. If a character goes through their story without changing, they have no arc. What is the point of a main character without an arc? (This does differ slightly with side characters and background characters.) I agree that not changing (in certain ways) is a valid story, but a perfect character has no reason to change, there is no situation that can properly demand it from them. Most importantly, ideal heroes ARE NOT PERFECT. Please, name me three perfect characters (I ask for three, partially because one can be a fluke, partially in case I haven't heard of the character). The different points of the archetypes you name are valuable, but they are not accomplished by making your character perfect, they are accomplished by making your character great. I disagree with your appeal of fantasy, but that's fine. Different people have the same thing appeal to them for different reasons. It's just important to point that out, as it shows we're coming at this from entirely different frameworks. Right and wrong things matter in every story, but to have true moral absolutism, you must have a Law-Giver that gives perfect laws. This doesn't exist in stormlight. The closest they have is Honor, who is, as previously discussed, intrinsically flawed. The problem is, Honor and honor are not a one to one correlation. Most people in stormlight are Honorable, but many are not honorable. I also think that even absolute morality includes nuance and is context dependent. For example, was it morally right for the US to nuke Japan in WWII? There are arguments to be made for both sides, but it is clearly a nuanced question. You seem to be forgetting about Cultivation, a Shard (god) about growth. The guidance from Dalinar's visions comes from Honor, but the spren guide from both Honor and Cultivation. If the characters were already perfect, there would be no need for Cultivation. Failure to live up to ideals isn't "Making Apocalyptic Choices", it's reality. It's them growing, being cultivated. Personally, I don't think that stormlight feels more dissonant at all, but that might just be a me thing. no, honor is incredibly difficult to live up to. In this case, Honor is not that hard to live up to. All that needs to be done is make an oath and keep it, and you live up to Honor. Living up to honor is much harder. It requires morals, a sense of right/wrong, and the ability and willingness to do what is right. Honor and honor are different. To quote Stormlight itself, "Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing." The POV characters are not supposed to be perfect, they're supposed to change and grow. They do care about what's right and true, they just don't always know what that is. Their oaths don't restrict their actions because they are of Honor, not of honor. Their beliefs are what restrict them, because those are actually of honor. I disagree that Stormlight promised moral absolutism. As I said earlier, you cannot have moral absolutism without a perfect Law-giver, which I thought it was pretty clear Roshar never had. I think calling the main characters soulless is a very large stretch, technically I don't think they've broken any Wartime Laws, so they wouldn't be war criminals, I think they have been repentant, I don't think they're truly hypocrites, and they are imperfect mortals, which is the most they can be. They cannot be perfect or they would simply solve the conflict and there would be no plot. So do you think abandoning oaths to save a spren is a bad thing? I would've thought you would like that, it seems truly honorable to me. Just because you renounce the oaths doesn't mean that you don't live by them anymore (in this specific case, I think he still lives by them, he only said they renounced them to save their spren, but that they still intend on living by them). I don't really know how to respond to the last part, because it feels to me more like a personal rant than a critique of the books, so I guess I'll just say that Rosharans being on Scadrial is not a personal attack, and neither is Moash being alive.

to be fair, they didn't know that Rlain was a Parshendi at the time. They thought of parshmen about the same thing that we think of cows. If I skinned a pig in front of a cow, I wouldn't feel bad about it. surely this has to be ragebait, at least to some extent. calling for the execution of people upon the sole basis of desecrating the dead is terrible. The punishment must fit the crime, and this doesn't. Besides, they're not supposed to be perfect. They're trying. If a character is perfect, it defeats the point of the character being there.

Having the sandwich is nice, but I'd rather be able to eat something. I feel very attacked. I didn't even do anything to you. I'm beginning to think none of you are capable of being civil. In other news, holy Moses you people post on here way too much. I used to be number one in this thread for post count, and I'm not even close anymore.