Schizoposting

The only arrogant assumption here, is thinking that you understand Plato based off a few half-remembered tertiary sources and doubling down when confronted about it. Some values are superior to others—I already said this. And no, artistic preference is not equivalent to phone preference. I'm sorry, but not every philosophical or scientific concept can be fully explained in just one sentence. For the past few posts, I have literally (not in the figurative sense) already answered all of your objections in previous comments—it has become very tiring to constantly repeat myself for your benefit. Next time, before you respond, I recommend reading what I have already said.

If you actually understood Plato, then you'd know that he believed in the objective from of the beautiful. And Plato was never opposed to poetry—that's a blatant misreading. I say this with confidence, because I have read every single one of his dialogues, including the boring and nigh incomprehensible ones. What does camera preference have to do with art? No, because there's a difference between the particular and the universal; it's a basic concept in philosophy. That would be vulgar empiricism—subjects do not have immediate access to "noumena"—the very act of perception gives us a warped view of the object being perceived. I already made this distinction in a previous comment.

https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/08/10/the-importance-of-the-homeric-poems-in-ancient-greek-culture/ This is just one example. The fact that people believed in the objectivity of art in the past, is indisputable. Advertising. Not all wants and desires are equally valid. The condition under which humans exist. I already answered that question: it's the only way to objectively determine the quality of art. I don't dismiss people's opinions because they disagree with me—I am just as willing to dismiss the opinions of people who like WaT, if said opinions are superficial; I already said this in my reply to @Returned.

For the vast majority if human history, it was common sense that Homer, Shakespeare, or whoever, was the pinnacle of art—it was only with the rise of postmodernism that it was accepted that bad fan fiction was just as good as the great works of yesteryear. It's certainly true that people may have various values, but not all values are equal; despite pretensions to the contrary, everyone implicitly accepts this—"tolerant" liberal multiculturalism is famously rather intolerant of "intolerant" values that don't align with its own. So, good art is art that represents values that are good and is opposed to those that are bad. But what determines whether or not a value is correct or not? Quite simply: a value is valid to the extent that it's a truthful reflection of the human condition—otherwise, it would be false, and misleading. The trick is, all art already reflects the (human) conditions under which it was made. The difference between good and bad art, is that the latter only superficially represents these conditions, whilst the former reflects the human condition as it really is. So, one way of determining the human condition would be through literary analysis. (To be clear, some aspects of the human condition are universal, whilst others are particular to a certain time period and certain social conditions.) I'm not sure what you want me to respond to.

In Yumi, like in other Romantasy, I think that there's a tension between the romance and the fantasy: it's not obvious to me, what the romance has to do with the themes about art, and the struggle against the Father Machine. In regular fantasy, romance is usually just a sub plot to show character growth, or something of that sort—but when both are equally prominent, the story can feel disjointed. But it has been a while since I last read Yumi, so if anyone has different opinion on this matter, I'd be curious to hear it.

The great irony of postmodernism is that saying truth is relative is in itself an objective truth—your assertion that art is subjective is just as exclusionary of other perspectives, as saying that it's not. I don't think that people understand their feelings in general, beyond the superficial. It has nothing to do with their opinion on WaT. Because it's the only criterion that can objectively determine the quality of art—conversely, if we judge a given work by how aesthetically pleasing it is, then it degenerates into subjectivism, since different people may find different things to be aesthetically pleasing. Quality can only be determined by literary analysis, because said analysis is defined as understanding how a given work relates to the human condition. Based on the criterion described above. What critiques, exactly, have I dismissed out of hand? I have repeatedly stated that there are valid critiques of WaT; however, said critiques are nowhere near enough to explain why there is such vitriol towards this book compared to others, especially when the aforementioned critiques apply just as much, if not more so, to earlier entries in the series. I would say the exact same thing to those people. Nor do I think that subversion is good for its own sake: it's only good insofar as the ideal being subverted is false. This is a very dishonest framing—I never said that people were "addicted", "stupid", "belligerent", or anything of that sort; perhaps you think that people are stupid for lacking self-knowledge, but I don't. Saying that refusing to accept people's self-perception to be unconditionally true, makes you contemptuous and denigrating, is a bizarre claim to make. By that reasoning, every great philosopher and thinker of the last 200 years "radiated contempt and denigration", by doing the former.

Which way should it be viewed then? I never said that "anyone who dislikes WaT is incapable of articulating their own feelings and opinions"; nor do I find the question of why this or that person liked or disliked something to be particularly interesting—I am considering individuals in the aggregate. The problem is that the immediate, unmediated, experience of consciousness is an illusion: what we think, and how we feel, is determined by unconscious forces beyond our direct control. That's why an individual's account why they feel, think, or act, in a certain way, is not to be trusted. That's not to say that understanding people's reactions to a certain piece of media is impossible, but it takes a deeper investigation than simply taking their word at face value. The objective quality of a given work of art is determined by how well it reflects the human condition. The only way to determine this, is through literary analysis. Regarding the debate, the reason why Jasnah "seems stupid", is because she's not quite the genius that she thinks she is—people were offended by that scene, because they bought into her delusions of invincibility. Being popular does not give a certain perspective any epistemological privilege over others—far from it. Besides, WaT is hardly despised by the vast majority of readers: just look at the poll results. Obviously, no book is perfect, and one can certainly have valid criticisms of how WaT was executed. The problem is that the backlash in the fandom is completely disproportional to how well the book was actually received by the average reader, not to mention its actual quality. So why is this? Why does a substantial minority of the fandom passionately despise this book? Simply saying that people disliked it because they thought it was bad is tautological. I don't think that it's at all "arrogant" to treat people's perspectives as the object of critique—if anything, it's the highest form of respect to take these views seriously, instead of dismissing them by saying that all perspectives are equally valid. Nor do I think that people are "stupid" for disliking WaT—people like or dislike things for myriads of reasons, which may or may have anything to do with its actual quality. If you read for pleasure and think that Shakespeare is boring, while enjoying Red Rising, that's perfectly fine. But it does not change the fact that the former is far superior to the latter. (Obviously, the Stormlight Archive is nowhere near as good as Shakespeare, but the point still stands.)

Quite frankly, the popularity (or lack of thereof) of a given work has very little to do with its artistic merit—the only way to determine whether a book is good or bad is through literary critique. The problem with the main complaints about WaT, is that they one-sidedly criticize the form (e.g. the prose), while disregarding the content; any serious critique has to consider the interrelation between the two, with the latter being the more important aspect. (Incidentally, that's why a lot of literary fiction is bad—a fetishism of form over content.) The reason why I like WaT, is because of the way it challenges the assumptions and biases of the earlier books: at the beginning the series starts with a rather naive conception of a struggle between a benevolent Honor and an evil Odium; of course, this is complicated by the fact that the Almighty is dead, the Alethi are terrible, Humans are the real aggressors, and so forth (which is why the earlier books are good)—but broadly, the point still stands. But in WaT, this notion is completely overturned: Honor is just as bad as Odium, Dalinar is a tyrant, and the coalition abandons him as soon as they get a better deal; the entire contest turns out to be a farce, etc. Naturally, this is going to upset the people, who feel attached to ideals being deconstructed, which happens to be a substantial part of the fandom. But since these people are not truly capable of the literary analysis to articulate why WaT discomforts them, they randomly latch on to superficial details that they did not like and fetishize them as being the reason why they feel this way. Combine this with the dynamics of fandom, and internet "hyperreality", and you get the sort of backlash that WaT got.

I think that it's indisputable that far more happens in WaT, per page, than in the other entries of the series. But if you don't think so, then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. To be clear, I am not opposed to the change in formula—actually, it's one of the best parts of the book. However, I am well aware that defending WaT is a rather unpopular opinion, to say the least. So, there has to be some reason why so many people disliked it. While there were many different (sometimes contradictory) complaints about the book, most people are very bad at understanding why like certain things over others beyond the purely superficial: if people find the plot boring, or are disappointed by the ending, the real question is why they feel these things. That's why any serious critique has go deeper than simply complaining about the "modern language". And to be honest, I can't really take credit for this specific critique, since I more or less got it from Brandon himself: It's certainly possible that he's wrong, but we should still give his opinion some weight, given that he's the author and likely understands the series more than pretty much anybody. But even if we embrace the death of the author, and completely disregard his opinion, I still think that this explanation works far better than any other at explaining why so many people took issue with WaT. (The effect of fandom on "the Discourse" is an entirely different matter.)

The page space is used a lot more efficiently compared to the other Stomlight books: in WaT there are ten different plotlines going on simultaneously, while in something like RoW or OB literally nothing happens for the first half of the book. Some of these criticisms are fair, but most of them are not particularly unique to WaT—the Stormlight archive has always been bloated, and dialogue has never been Brandon's strong suite. While some of the backlash has undoubtedly been amplified by the dynamics of fandom, for many people there's something fundamental that didn't work in WaT. And the reason, I think, is quite simply that Brandon abandoned the classic Stormlight formula used in the first three books of the series. Which is why he (correctly) anticipated that the book would be very controversial.

Thematically, it's likely to be an inversion of a Desolation, i.e., the Heralds will return and the humans will attack the Singers. Perhaps this will be the result of Taravangian baiting them, but he is incapable of attacking on his own, due to the contract.

I think that the reason why people hate Wind and Truth, is because it's a deconstruction of the Stormlight Archive as whole—for instance, instead of having epic fights, Kaladin spends his time healing others. And instead of having a grand triumphant victory, the ending concludes with an ignoble defeat, with it turning out, that Honor is no better than Odium. While no book is perfect, I think that it's overall, a very strong book. Primary, for its themes, but I also liked its pacing, prose, the lack of bloat compared to previous books, and it had some excellent moments, like the prologue, the debate, Honor's flashbacks, Kaladin's duel with Nale, the contest of champions etc. The biggest weakness however, in my opinion, would be the Adolin plot line, which was extremely predictable, and generic, although it was by no means bad. Overall, I'd say that Wind and Truth is the third best book in the series, only behind The Way of Kings, and Words of Radiance.

From what I remember, when Kaladin was strung up before the Highstorm, his spheres were only charged during the centerbeat.

Presumably they are flying in and out of the ceneterbeat as needed.

Why do you care about reputation anyways? Its only purpose is to show which posts are popular, and which are not. I understand that getting likes can be addictive but tying them to anything other than popularity, will only lead to further perverse incentives.

Magic in the Cosmere is just another form of matter, so saying that investiture is the source of consciousness is philosophically no different from saying that it's the result of neural synapses—as such, it has nothing to do with the philosophy of mind, and questions like the nature of Cognitive Shadows, are left to the reader.

I think that it's pretty clear that the Evil is not composed of anti-Ambition, but of anti-investiture as such. So, its intent is the opposition towards regular investiture, which is why individual Nephilim seek to destroy as much of it as possible.

Well, Brandon only has a finite amount of time and must therefore prioritize certain things over others. It's a sad fact of life, but he won't be able to get around to writing everything.

While the lore may have been interesting, the actual writing was pretty boring, and it felt like generic Sword and Sorcery—The Fires of December is far superior. But maybe you think differently.

Actually, Kaladin saw Szeth kill people in Iri, in his visions. So Taravangian did target them, at least somewhat. As for your question, the Diagram is too convoluted for mortal minds to understand, and we don't have access to all the information regarding the political situation in Roshar, so we don't know for sure. If I had to guess, I'd say that he killed the Prime to weaken Azir, so he could dominate it as part of his coalition, without triggering a full collapse. But obviously, this is all speculative.

Both can be true. While Tanavast is not infallible, we should take his views seriously, given that he has Shardic powers and knowledge.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong: In western culture, at least, love and hatred are widely considered to be opposites. Maybe you disagree, but the way the Cosmere is written, it's a perfectly valid interpretation.

It's hard to say, because I have read a lot of good books so far in 2026, but I'd say that the Otherland tetralogy was one of the favorite things that I've read this year. It's one of those series that you appreciate the more you think about it.

I think the main problem with your list is that you assume that there are only two powers, and everyone must be under the dominion of one or the other. This is unrealistic—even at the height of the Cold War, there were still major independent powers, that pursued their own interests. Today this is even more the case. So, we should expect something similar in the Cosmere: Sel, Nalathis, Threnody, Dhatri, Taldian, Yolen, etc., all probably constitute their own poles. They may be closer aligned to Roshar, or to Scadrial, but they aren't dominated by them and are capable of independent action.

Unlikely, the evidence provided is very weak—if this was really the case, you'd expect to see more foreshadowing than a random newspaper ad, that is only vaguely connected to a WoB about Cultivation.