Schizoposting

I had the same initial reaction as well. But I would hesitate to call him a villain—while he's extremely arrogant and contemptuous, we don't actually see him do anything particularly immoral, at least compared to others. In the grand scheme of things, he's just some billionaire who happens to be immortal. As far as dragons go, I'd argue that the ones from the Realm of the Elderlings are far more odious than Xisis and his ilk. But perhaps, we just haven't seen enough of them yet. The fact that they used mortals as cannon fodder in their wars against each other, does not paint a good look.

I use the word in a purely descriptive sense, to mean the interpretation of literature. In my opinion, all discussion of literature amounts to literary criticism, regardless of whether or not it's formal or casual. Just because its literary criticism is not a hard science, does not mean that it's subjective. For example, if I were to interpret the SA as saying that all men should be illiterate, then this would be objectively incorrect. That's just his interpretation. Remember, just because he's the author doesn't automatically make it superior to others. You can certainly accept his word as gospel, if you wish, but you don't have to. For instance, if Brandon were to (hypothetically) drop a WoB that Ranette is actually straight and not gay, then I would be under no obligation to accept it. Would it not be a retcon then, if it was part of the author's intent? What if we don't know the author's intent, does that mean that it's impossible to determine whether or not it's a retcon? Just because the word emerged from a specific narrow usage, doesn't mean that it can only be used in that way. Only if it contradicts our current knowledge of said event or topic.

What counts as "original continuity"? The secret master plan inside the author's head? I know that it's difficult for many people to accept, but authorial intention is irrelevant in literary criticism; all that matters is what's in the text, no more, no less. This does not make all interpretations equally valid; it simply means that the author's interpretation is not inherently superior to all others by virtue of it being the authors. What matters is how well a given interpretation fits the textual evidence, not who made it. BTW, a retcon is literally defined as:

@Returned, I (perhaps wrongly) interpreted your post as condemning the narrative as being a cheap money grab that is exploiting the "enemies to lovers" trope to get people to read it—my response was that you should not judge a story simply based on the inclusion of a trope, but instead, on how well it uses said trope. But, if this is not the case, then I legitimately don't understand what you're trying to say; you seem to be just saying random, vaguely critical things, without connecting them into a coherent point. But perhaps, this is a just a problem with my comprehension, and not with your post.

I mean, everything is a trope; the problem is when people care more about the tropes than the story itself. There's nothing inherently wrong with "enemies to lovers" if it's done well; the reason why it has such a bad reputation, is because it's often used as cheap wish fulfillment at the detriment of the story (although, misogyny certainly plays a part here as well). I haven't actually read the book referenced by the OP, but I see no inherent reason why the premise would make it bad. Well, they're not a random Fused—they're a Fused that fell in love with a Radiant; this automatically differentiates from the others. Given that there are ~4000 Fused, some of whom have rebelled against Odium, I think that it's perfectly plausible that one of them could act this way. It's not like Singers don't have a conception of romantic love. That's because the story is first and for most a love story, taking away the romantic element would neuter it. This is not necessarily a bad thing; Yumi is one Brandon's best received works, and it's romantasy. Just because you're not the target audience, doesn't mean that it's bad.

Edgedancer was published before Oathbringer, and it adds context to some of the events that transpire in the latter. So, you should probably read the former first, if you want to get all the connections (although I frankly think that reading order is overrated). But this may not result in the best reading experience, as the novellas are very tonal different from the rest of the SA—in particular, many people find the main character of Edgedancer (Lift) to be annoying. (I personally don't have any major issues with her, but I understand why some people do).

I forgot that; thanks for reminding me. Honestly, these details are so minor, that I don't really care if there's some inconsistency. Maybe for you it's different, but I'm here for the story, not for the minutia of the lore. I don't care about plot holes unless if they're so bad that they get in the way of the story. Like, I don't have any issues with Rowling's world building, even though it makes absolutely no sense, because Harry Potter is meant to be a fun whimsical adventure and the world building does a good job setting this mood. Now, the fact that there arises a tonal discrepancy in the latter books, because of this, is a different matter.

1. It's established that Radiant gain their armor spren before they swear their 4th ideal, so I don't see this a problem. 2. It's shown that you lock them for physical realm travel, but we have no indication that this applies to inter-realm travel, especially when the spren are on the enemy's side. You may have a point here, but I don't think that it's as clear cut as you make it out to be. I personally didn't have any problems; maybe I cringed once or twice, but that was it. But I guess this comes down to personal taste—despite everyone praising it, Adolin's plotline was my least favorite, because it was so predictable. Again, I think that this depends on one's taste; I have seen Tress and Yumi highly praised, even above Stormlight. I think that WAT is excellent, and one of Brandon's best works, but I understand that this opinion is pretty controversial. We'll see.

To me magic only matters insofar as it serves the story, so I don't have any issues with inconsistency as such. In Thomas Covenant, for instance, the titular character possesses "wild magic", which by definition, doesn't have rules. In the context of the story, this works, even when it's used to defeat the main antagonist and resolve the conflict. I like Raoden, but I still think that he's pretty basic; and I find Sarene to be just plain uninteresting. While Brandon can be somewhat heavy handed at times, I thought that the dynamic between Navani and Raboniel was one of the best that he's written. What plot holes? I have read WAT at least thrice, and I genuinely can't think of any. Strong disagree. I think that, actually, the prose in WAT, was some of his strongest outside of Hoid's Travail's. He's definitely a difficult read, but the payoff is worth it, IMO. But I have only read 4 of his plays, so I'm hardly an expert. Nah, some of his most original and best works have been written this decade, hardly a sign of worsening writing.

I personally don't mind soft magic, so I didn't have that issue. It's one of Brandon's most popular books, alongside the likes of Mistborn and Stormlight. But I imagine that this may be a matter of taste; those who exclusively like epic or otherwise "serious" fantasy probably won't be partial to Tress, given its whimsical fairy tale style. Putting WAT or TLM in the same conversation as Elantris is absolutely insane, in my opinion; don't get me wrong, Elantris is a solid read, but it's characterization, plotting, worldbuilding, prose, etc., is way worse than ROW's or WAT's. I feel like people who say that Brandon is a bad writer, just don't know what actual bad writing looks like; I recently read one of those popular mystery/thrillers, and was so bad that it made Brandon, even at his worst, look like Shakespeare.

I think that a lot of what is said online isn't really representative of the actual response, to the books; especially since there seems to be a discrepancy in the reactions of casual readers and hardcore fans. Ultimately, it's still too early to say whether or not WAT is a success or failure IMO. Personally, I liked it enough, that I immediately reread it after finishing. These two statements seem contradictory. He wrote 7 Cosmere books in the last 5 years, and two of them—Tress and Yumi—are some of his most beloved, while only ROW and WAT have been controversial. Also, the first 2 chapters of The Fires of December are absolutely incredible, in my opinion. So no, I would not say that he's been getting worse as a writer.

Brandon has always been woke though, like the entire Stormlight Archive is about settler colonialism, racism, and sexism; even back in the day he was relatively liberal, for a member of the LDS church that is—if you read the (now) infamous blog post that Brandon wrote about homosexuality, then you'll see that 90% of it is him criticizing other religious conservatives for being too homophobic. In general, I find that the average reader does not understand why like something or not; so, they latch on to random details; this is what happened with WAT, IMO—people disliked the book, and then retroactively latched on to modern language as the issue. The same goes for wokeness—The Little Mermaid was bad because it was soulless remake, not because they race swapped the main character. The real reason why WAT and ROW (although I feel like the latter has been reappraised to a certain extent) were so poorly received, is because Brandon broke the established formula that, the fans loved; he talks about it more, here. He was right in doing so IMO, because doing the exact same thing for 10 books, would have quickly become trite. (As an aside, I find that Brandon talking about his writing process, and the publishing industry, is a lot more interesting than some lore bomb.)

I'm not (intentionally) trying to ruin anyone's enjoyment; I just happen to be interested in literary analysis, which I take seriously. Establishing what actually happens in the plot, and potential subtext, is a part of that. If you don't want criticism, then you should use the [Support] tag.

This could be said about any character, since Odium represents strong emotion, which is a universal part of the human experience—even otherwise stoic characters, like Jasnah, have moments where they experience said emotions. So, no, I don't think that there is any particular reason why Shallan should take up Odium, compared to, say, Kaladin.

I agree.

True, but Ruin almost won, even with Preservation's master plan. So, for there to be a conflict, the villains need to feel like a legitimate threat, which necessitates that Harmony can't just trivially defeat them. In era 2, at least, Autonomy completely outsmarted Sazed; arguably, the only reason she lost, was because of certain suboptimal decisions that she made (i.e. the entirety of TLM), due to external factors, that I can't get into without spoiling things. My apologies, it contains spoilers for Cosmere works that you haven't read; I should've marked it as such. If you want to see them anyway, you can highlight them, like this. Again, it's very difficult to discuss this topic, because much of the information that we have about shards, comes from outside of Mistborn. I will say this, however, when compared with other shards, Harmony is very unimpressive, even when considering potentially mitigating circumstances; this is all I can say without spoiling things for you.

@AleStaar, I'm not disputing that, as a shard, Sazed has the ability to foresee and manipulate events far beyond that of mere mortals; my point is that when compared to his peers, his performance is lackluster, to say the least. Partly, this is due to structural factors—if Sazed was actually competent, then there'd be no story (or you'd have to make him an antagonist of some sort like in Shadows of Self), so Brandon is forced dumb him down, at least compared to the villains.

So, I just realized, December is likely to die at the end of the book. Why? Because she already lived her entire life in chapter 1—she was only given a second chance at life for a very specific purpose. From a thematic perspective, just like with the Returned, it would make no sense for her to continue on after fulfilling said purpose, because she has already lived her life, and living for another 60 years would feel redundant. So, having her die at the end, would make for a much tighter story, that would also have an element of tragedy to it. (Although, this does beg the question of how Hoid discovered the details of the story—maybe he interviewed her before her death?)

My point is that's it better to stick to a given artistic vision, than to try to please the maximum number of people. The latter is what results in garbage like the Star Wars sequels, or the Disney live action remakes. Popular != good; Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the best-selling novels ever, even though it's just an even worse version of Twilight. Remember, Danielle Steel is the best-selling author alive. At the same time, plenty of good art has been unpopular: films like Blade Runner 2049 or One Battle After Another failed at the box-office. Personally, I think that giving up on an author you like just because they wrote one bad book, is... a strange decision, to say the least. But whatever floats their boat, I guess.

I agree; Kaladin's suicide attempts on their own, would give Stormlight a high rating, and you can't get rid of them without eviscerating the story. That's not to mention the brutality of the bridge runs, or the rape plot point in Mistborn—which are also mandatory. Personally, I strongly dislike the tendency of sanitizing art; this is not to say that everything should be dark and gritty, but if you're going to write a story about war, then it should be brutal, because war is a terrible thing, and it should be portrayed as such. The only correct answer is to ignore what the fandom thinks, and to instead try and create the best art one can. Brandon has shown willingness to make unpopular decisions, for artistic purposes (this is the real reason why the fandom hates ROW and WAT), so I'm cautiously optimistic that he'll be willing to do the same for the Mistborn film.

I'm genuinely curious—why? Is it because you have an aversion to visual depictions of violence and gore? Or is it for some other reason? I ask, this, because I legitimately don't understand why so many people here seem to have issues with an R rating; personally, I think that if books where rated the same way films are, then Mistborn would definitely get an R rating at the very least. Although, to be fair, a visual depiction of violence may come across stronger than a description.

This goes for any socio-political system—just because the nobles are subordinate to the government does not change the fact that they're the ruling class. TLR is just the embodiment of a broader political system; you could replace him with a council of inquisitors, and the result would be exactly the same; it's not like he takes a particularly direct role in running the Final Empire. "Lovers", is a... questionable choice of words. This is the case for any government, which necessarily represses some individual interests; this does not equal oppression, unless if you believe that collective decision making is inherently oppressive. I agree that there can be no compromise, but I think that killing TLR is not enough; certainly, getting rid of an immortal demigod would be hugely beneficial, but simply getting rid of him does not end the oppression of the Skaa. I strongly disagree; like in a horror movie, you want to show TLR as little as possible and only gives hints about how terrible he is. Simply saying that he has an army of terrible monsters, works a lot more powerfully than showing them onscreen, where they'll just be glorified orcs. I think that the series of events went something like this: AppleTV acquires the rights to Mistborn and Stormlight, and (for whatever reason), does not disclose this; the news gets leaked by The Hollywood Reporter; Brandon sees that the cat is out of the bag, and publicly comments, and adds a progress bar for the Mistborn script; Apple contacts him, and tells him to keep quite; thus, he cancels the stream, and removes the progress bar. Now, as to why Apple may want to keep quiet, I think that it's part of some marketing strategy, or because they don't want people to get their hopes up on a property that may not work out (e.g. if the script is bad, or if Brandon is difficult to work with). I assume that they're having discussions right now, about how Brandon's fan interaction will play into the marketing.

There're two interesting WOB's where Brandon discussed a possible Mistborn adaptation: Now, judging from the context, I think it's pretty clear that the second screenplay is the one where Shan is Elend's sister, so the book purists are probably going to be disappointed by the direction that the adaptation will take. Personally, I agree with the decision on a philosophical level, since (IMO) the goal of an adaptation is to make a good film, with faithfulness being a secondary priority.

I think that we have different interpretations of Mistborn; it seems like you put the moral responsibility for the Final Empire, on Rashek instead of on the Nobles; while I agree that he was a terrible person, I think that the nobles are just as responsible for the mistreatment of the Skaa as TLR. I've seen speculation that Apple has forced him to keep quiet; he added a Mistborn script progress bar (at 2%), only for it to be removed. If that's the case, we're unlikely to hear anything until the film starts production.

I mean, Rashek literally does not show up until the climax—that's the point. You can justify Kelsier's actions by showing how horrible the system is, without necessarily focusing on one person. You can have flashbacks or something, that show Kelsier's experiences in the pits, or Dockson's life on a plantation, if you really want to drive home how bad Scadrial is.