Brandon Sanderson

Not universally however, as "Sliverism" is mentionned as a fringe faith practiced by some in the Elendel Bassin.

Not so fringe. They're pretty public about it, and it doesn't seem to get public ridicule. At most, people just wonder why they'd DO that, but in-universe, it's theologically sound. THE BOOK said so.

edited 16th Apr '17 7:51:46 PM by SCMof2814

I think TLR is a Tragic Villain figure more than anything else. He did legitimately think that he was doing the right thing to save humanity, and if he was kind of a misanthrope (to put it mildly), it was mostly because he was tired. It would have been interesting to see what he did with the Well's power had he claimed it again; he couldn't have magically fixed everything, but he would presumably have the benefit of much more experience than he had on his first try. I have no idea whether he would have tried to make radical fixes to the world and do something completely different the second time around, or if he'd just make relatively small refinements and try to stay the course with the original plan, though.

Though considering how badly Ruin had him twisted around inside, I would think that TLR wouldn't have been able to correct his mistakes even if he'd wanted to (and based on the final inscription in Hero of Ages, it does seem that TLR recognized on some level that he'd screwed things up).

I would like to remind the audience that this guy instituted a brutal dictatorship where the descendants of his cronies (those he didn't turn into goo monsters anyway) ruled with an iron fist over an impoverished peasant class, literally bred for servitude, to the point where the nobles and their servants kill the skaa for being in their way. And this was all intentional.

The Lord Ruler fucking sucks.

Not to mention he instituted the wholesale mutilation and mass rape of his own countrymen just to avoid some competition. I think out of all the atrocities he commited, this one really gets to me with how pragmatically and dispassionately evil it is.

Tragic Villain my ass, the guy is a Lawful Evil monster at best.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:26:51 AM by GutstheBerserker

And even if you can blame that on Ruin, one of the first things he did was turn all the Feruchemists—his own people—into mistwraiths because he feared their power and didn't bother thinking of a better solution. And then he started conquering the world. We don't get too much detail on that, but what few fragments we have from that era imply he didn't bother with much diplomacy.

'ed a bit.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:20:31 AM by Discar

Right, but he did these things because he knew he needed to be around when the power of the Well returned, or else humanity was doomed (again) — and he was very nearly right. No one's saying that TLR was a swell guy whose subjects are wrong to oppose him, just that there's more to it than him being a cookie-cutter Evil Overlord. A Tragic Villain is still a villain, after all, just one with some mitigating circumstances behind their villainy. I think TLR qualifies.

edited 17th Apr '17 9:56:11 AM by NativeJovian

Meh, I personally disagree that TLR fits the description. I would actually classify him as a Complete Monster, to be honest:

- His fight against Ruin is more about self-preservation than it is about saving the world.

- The fact that he witheld information about Ruin and only wanted himself to Ascend is both selfish and shortsighted

- If he wanted to ensure continuity, there was no need to institute such a brutal form of government, complete with cult of personality

- The reason he was even in a position to Ascend initially was because of petty jealousy and hatred.

However, I don't want to be contrarian or argumentative, especially if the overall mood of the thread is that he has some redeeming qualities. It's just that I personally fail to see them.

edited 17th Apr '17 10:53:33 AM by GutstheBerserker

Imo he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist Bigot with a severe case of Lack of Empathy (not devoid of it, simply not very much)

edited 17th Apr '17 11:18:41 AM by 3of4

I don't want to come off like I'm defending TLR too much (as I do consider him to be evil by most definitions of the term, and he was definitely a tyrannical despot), but if you want to be technical he was in a position to Ascend because his uncle put him there, specifically to stop Alendi. And I'm also not sure about the "self-preservation as his motive for fighting Ruin" part, as Word of God has indicated he was Cosmere-aware enough he could have left Scadrial if he'd wanted to; if he was entirely selfish I think he'd have abandoned the world to its fate. And honestly, I think he's more interesting as someone who was trying to do good but fouled it up royally because of how twisted he, for various reasons, was, rather than a purely self-interested Complete Monster.

I think Rashek was a Well-Intentioned Extremist (an extremly bigoted one) and during his ascencion he turned into a Complete Monster. I´m not quite sure what best describes TLR during the time we see him. His methods are definitive monstrous but the caves he created to protect humanity even in the event of his death make it difficult for me to call him a complete monster. Probably he was just a extreme racist with a mayor case of A God Am I who saw his way as the only right one and had those traits enhanced be 1000 years of having the personification of Ruin in his mind

edited 17th Apr '17 12:25:10 PM by Samaldin

My general take on TLR's trajectory is that he was initially unpleasant, arrogant and xenophobic, but was also trying to do the right thing by his people as he saw it. Add in Ruin and you get his negative qualities amplified and his positive qualities buried, with the Final Empire as the result (based on some of the snippets of history we get, it seems the worst excesses of persecution of the Terris people and codification of the caste system really got underway a few centuries in, after Ruin had been working on him for a while). However, Ruin was never quite able to quash the desire to protect humanity out of him, hence why he ended up deciding to discard him in favor of people he saw as more malleable.

BTW, based on the forum's Complete Monster clean-up thread (where I lurk often and sometimes post), TLR absolutely cannot qualify. Per the thread's criteria, a CM has to have no redeeming qualities of any kind and has to be in a fit state of mind to make moral judgments of their own will; even if you interpret his opposition to Ruin as being purely selfish, it's pretty clear TLR was no longer in his right mind by the time Final Empire takes place.

Ruin also fails this second criteria, btw; being what he is, he can't not destroy and therefore fails the moral agency test. By the thread's criteria, the only CM in Mistborn is Straff.

Seems about right...

LR-s not a complete monster, but near enough of one that his redeeming qualities are far, far overwhelmed by his personal evil. It was all just so petty and unnecessary.

Ah, that's an interesting point about agency and self-determination. I hadn't thought of that.

I guess in that case yeah, he doesn't strictly fit into the definition. I can accept the compromise that he progressively got twisted into as close to a Complete Monster as you can get without technically having complete control over one's faculties.

Speaking of the moral ramifications of Mistborn character, I recently grabbed the Mistborn [RPG] books from that Humble Bundle a few days back, and man do I want to run a game now. The game is obviously thematically cool as a result of being set in the Mistborn verse, but even mechanically speaking it's interesting how they break up the various powers.

edited 17th Apr '17 2:01:05 PM by GutstheBerserker

I just finished reading the Legion novellas, and they are quite good. Probably my favourite non-Cosmere work by Sanderson.

In particular Stephen Leed's abilities are really interesting. His mind works like a multi-threading computer: he has distinct threads for each of his hallucinations and each of them performs a specific task. He gives priority to some of them depending on the task, and leaves the rest in storage.

He even eventually develops inter-process comunication in the form of cellphones and video conferences.

I've been neck deep in studying for some computer science finals and I just couldn't help myself from noticing the similarities.

edited 26th Apr '17 7:08:46 AM by GutstheBerserker

I feel ya

explaining cosmere magics◊

My favourite was

"Just BREATHE the money, okay."

"You know how stories will have two characters that are obviously gonna get together and everyone knows it except them because they're fucking idiots? This book is like that, except instead of a romantic subplot it's the fact that the main character has superpowers."

Bonus: the best summation of Hoid ever.◊

edited 19th May '17 1:38:43 PM by Ninety

Have you posted something from her before? She seems familiar for some reason.

And continue posting her boyfriend's liveblogs. Or, well, I guess it would be more like live tweeting. Either way, it's interesting.

I think it's just the Tumblr vernacular shining through. There's two more already, with the second half of TWOK and the first of WOR.

I love the part about the Sanderson Avalanche making "p.s. God died" a random sidenote.

In Mistborn stuff

Ettmetal is Harmonium.