Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

And when a lord sets himself apart from his fellows by being more honorable and virtuous, his drive was "let's actually prosecute the war we came to fight and crush these guys once and for all!" Like it's better than "let's drag this war out forever because war is great fun," but still, not heavenly.

Both things all come down to economics (read: money) in the end anyway. Wanna bet one of the reasons Sebarial came along was because with the parshendi wiped out they'd no longer have anyone but other Alethi to fight for gemhearts and he could really build up his monopoly on civilian infrastructure??

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jul 19th 2018 at 7:32:01 PM

True, but it requires an ends-justifies-the-means mindset (especially when fighting a conscripted military) that the Knights Radiant are theoretically not supposed to support.

The difference in tone is not a matter of the number of bad things that happen in the Stormlight Archive relative to ASOIAF (though the lack of gratuitous rape scenes in The Stormlight Archive is definitely appreciated by me). It's that The Stormlight Archive takes the position that moral and ethical actions are right and, if you persist in them, will ultimately have good effects, even if evil and ruthless people will sometimes take advantage of your good actions (e.g., Sadeas, Amaram). The characters are fighting to prevent the end of the world, but unlike Taravangian, they're not willing to kill innocents to do it, and they endeavour to make peace and to spare and reform their enemies when there's a prospect of doing so (Dalinar seeking to negotiate with Eshonai; Kaladin giving Amaram the option to surrender in Oathbringer; Shallan recruiting the deserters in WOR). While Kaladin's rapport with the parshmen had negative consequences in the short term, I am fully confident that it will be a very good thing in the long term.

ASOIAF feels - to me, at least - like it's saying that virtue will only play into the hands of manipulative assholes and get you and your loved ones killed, that compassion is naive and harmful, and that ruthlessness is ultimately better for everyone. After all, if Ned had told Robert about Cersei's affair and let him kill Cersei and her kids, Westeros wouldn't have been devastated by several years of brutal war, right? The constant refrain in the ASOIAF fandom is that acting morally is actually selfish, as you're valuing your own clear conscience over the well-being of others. Which I find perverse and backwards. If you choose to do good, and someone else takes advantage of that to do evil, they are to blame for that evil; you are not.

Edited by Galadriel on Jul 19th 2018 at 11:50:12 AM

It depends on how well you know, or should know, that those people will take that sort of action. Like, giving money to someone desperately begging for it? Normally good. But if said person is the treasurer for a terrorist organization? Probably bad.

See, I just never thought ASOIAF had a "ultimate message." There are themes and ideas of course but, at least to me, I never got the impression Martin was telling a morality tale. He was telling a story about a fucked up world and the poor folks trapped in it.

Sanderson's ethics are pretty hard on display in TSA. I don't mind, he's a good writer so I don't really care if I agree with him or not. And his focus on religion, and respect for religion, and detailing how it impacts culture, is very appreciated. It makes the religions in ASOIAF look simplistic and childish in comparison. This was something I saw in Mistborn too obviously.

But yeah. I've come to embrace the understanding thatall fiction is in some ways political but not everything is intentionally political or trying to push forward an ideal. That's kinda my take on A Song of Ice and Fire.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jul 20th 2018 at 12:24:47 PM

The thing about ASOIAF is that while people get killed for trying to be honorable, people also get killed for being assholes. Basically, any character trait that inhibits you from maximizing the probability of your own survival can be fatal. Take supreme ruthless bastard Tyrion, who gets shot to death because he just had to piss off his despised son one last time while the man had a crossbow leveled at him. I think people just remember the guys who get killed for heroic acts more because that doesn't usually happen in stories.

Eh, killing in war is really just everyone in both sides engaging in aggressive and proactive self-defense, and I'm almost certain I can justify self-defense homicide when it's not three in the morning.

Certainly they know what the reaction's going to be, but as I recall it was kinda treated as "silly foreign aliens and their weird customs about not wearing clothes made of corpses."

Okay, I got this one now.

First off, people have various rights to life, liberty, and so forth. If they take certain actions, they forfeit the full exercise of those rights, this being the principle behind the justice system. Steal shit and you lose your right to liberty for a bit until your jail sentence is up, at which point you get the same rights as everyone else unless you fuck up again. If you're out on the battlefield and all those dudes in enemy uniforms are trying to kill you, they've waived their right to life on this battlefield and you're allowed to kill them first. That principle works both ways, so they're also allowed to try and kill you because you're waiving your right to life by trying to kill them. Once the battle's over, normal circumstances resume and you both have your full right to life again.

There. Means-justifies-ends explanation for why soldiers shanking each other is kosher. Not ideal certainly, but acceptable.

And if those dudes in uniform are conscripts, and are only on the battlefield because they've been threatened with death, imprisonment, or some other horrible fate if they refuse? Y'know, like Tien?

How would you know? Especially when you're probably in the same situation? That sin is on the people who conscripted them and sent them out on the front lines like bait.

Also they're still trying to kill you. Which I have been told is a major moral no-no.

"Terrible things will happen to me if I don't do this" is, after all, an ends-justify-means argument. The whole moral formulation we're working with considers it invalid.

Edited by rikalous on Jul 20th 2018 at 12:21:35 PM

Not everyone in an enemy army is trying to kill you. Lots of soldiers (especially new conscripts) will, when the moment to shoot or stab the enemy comes, not be able to bring themselves to do it. Not unless the enemy is directly attacking them, personally, and fight-or-flight kicks in.

Plus, the Radiants are fighting an enemy which has, twice now, used mind control to bend an entire army to his will. Fighting people who have done nothing wrong, who are just the victims of Odium or one of the Unmade messing with their heads, seems like something the Radiants are gonna have to face.

That's actually one of the reasons I was disappointed that it was the House Sadeas force that got turned.

See I thought at first Odium or the Unmade or whatever was using all of them like puppets. They had no choice in the matter.

Isn't that how it went down? The aftermath didn't really confirm it IIRC. Some were noted to be horrified but others left with Odium's forces I think? I thought they were all sold out by the asshole but I feel like something is suggested later that they weren't just unwitting pawns.

I think that we're supposed to read it in the context of Dalinar grappling with the Thrill, and the image of him stalking back to give the order to burn the village with glowing red eyes. We will hopefully hear more in book 4, but I think there's a strong element of More than Mind Control going on. Odium has to offer you something you want.

That makes sense but the two cases are pretty different. My understanding of Nergaoul was that it wasn't reallya conscious being? The Thrill it spurred on in folks such as Dalinar was just a side-effect of its presence.

The battle in Oathbringer by contrast was obviously deliberate and focused.

I think in both cases Nergaoul just amplified their anger and related emotions, maybe comparable to a (Mistborn comparission, spoiler just to be completely safe) zinc with a duraluminium burst but continious instead of one strong push. Dalinar was just nearly killed when he offered genuine mercy, and sadeas men thought for weeks Dalinar killed their highprince and since not even Amaram was told by Dalinar what was going to happen they probably thought they were just cannon fodder for him. I don´t believe it´s going to take much to push men over the edge in these cases, but while their emotion may have been tempered with their decision to kill was still their own. I think it´s important that they weren´t literally forced, even if they were manipulated hard, since to them it would still feel like their decisions. The sadeas soldier who left with odium probably fall into two categories, the one still incredibly angry and Dalinar who don´t care about anything else, and the ones who just feel to ashamed after what they´ve done to come back to Dalinar.

I'm pretty sure that any of the soldiers who remained behind are going to be forgiven. Dalinar definitely knows exactly what it's like to be caught up in the Thrill. I also suspect that the Sadeas casualties for that battle were significantly lower than they would normally be; after all, Shallan had most of them tied up with her illusory army.

But beyond that, what else are the heroes supposed to do but fight them? Yes, the soldiers were mind controlled and not in complete control of their actions, but they were still killing people. Even if the Radiants had all been willing to quit the field and wait for the mind control to wear off, that would have resulted in everyone in the city being killed. Yes, it sucks that they had to kill soldiers, but they definitely had no choice. Hell, if you asked the soldiers after, I'd bet that most of them would say that they would rather they be killed than be allowed to kill innocent people.

I agree, but if you hold to an ends-don't-justify-the-means worldview, then the Radiants should try to stop the mind controlled soldiers without harming them, since hurting or killing innocent people to increase your chances of success is not acceptable.

Of course, both times mind controlled armies have come up so far, they were either Sadeas's forces (most of whom aren't exactly innocent) or the stormform Parshendi (who our heroes didn't know were mind controlled). But given that Odium has pulled this trick twice now, it seems like something the Radiants will have to deal with eventually.

Further complicating things is that Odium seems to go in for More than Mind Control shenanigans that leave room for an argument that the controlled still have culpability for their actions. Even with stormform, they let the murderspren in. (For clarity, I'm not making that argument any time soon, just saying that it might come up in the in-universe philosophy jams I eagerly anticipate on the subject.)

Edited by rikalous on Jul 24th 2018 at 6:02:45 AM

Bit late, but Oathbringer reread interludes updated. Myths, romance, and Shardplate.

There were plenty of subtle hints about the nature of Shardplate in this book. This was just the most blatant.

Yep, still got questions about voidspren. Seems like there are lesser voidspren (like angerspren and passionspren, but more violent), higher voidspren (like Ulim here), and then the spirits of the ancient parsh. The question is, are those last two groups the same? Could Ulim take a parsh body if he chose and become Fused? Was he ever "alive" in the traditional sense? Hell, it's even possible that he's the soul of a human follower of Odium; in Wax and Wayne Mr. Suit was told he'd continue to serve "Trell" after death.

Madness aside, I imagine the parsh ancestors aren't used to their descendants having spent their entire lives as mindless slaves and having absolutely no idea how to do anything to survive in the wild. The guide-spren should have noticed and corrected that mistake, of course, but they were busy and overwhelmed with the sheer number of parsh they had to get under control.

Braize was my assumption as well. As for "spren of redemption," that sounds like a name for something that was never parsh or human in the first place, but it's too fanciful to know for sure.

I was looking though the lastest WOB from a signing recently, and I saw this one.

I hope this particular trick comes up in canon at some-point, maybe in Mistborn 3 era. More likely in Silverlight though.

Magic systems generally have a lot of parts known to others on each world, so someone walking around with a totally out of context facet or combo would be kinda neat. Especially if they were an antagonist.

Oathbringer reread chapter 33 updated. Shallan and Jasnah.

There's a lot here, but the one I want to focus on is Moelach (the rest of the quote was mostly for context). Moelach was not in Kharbranth. He was simply close enough to Kharbranth for the Death Rattles to be there. The Diagram group even noted that he was moving out of range.

Oh, I didn't notice the symbolism. Yes, that is nice.

Interesting theory about needing all ten Orders. Assuming Renarin counts enough as a Truthwatcher for this purpose, then they're just missing a Willshaper (that's probably what Venli is, but she's not going to be able to hang out in Urithiru any time soon) and a Stoneward (though Taln might become one soon). I have a feeling that if this is true, then once they have all ten Orders in the room the pillar will instantly light up.

Oathbringer reread chapter 34 updated. Dalinar's first shared vision.

Interesting question. My guess is that these are her "combat" minions while the ones in Urithiru were her "civilian minions," so to speak. The former are for when she's been ordered to kill things, the latter for when she wants to interact with the world—but because of Odium's corruption, that mostly means more killing things.

Also an interesting question. I agree that they acted more like animals without a single overriding mind, but it's hard to say.

There's a lot to unpack here (and they skipped the best part, with Fen repeating all the bizarre rumors floating around), but there's sort of a worldwide Crying Wolf situation going on here. Any time someone on Roshar (and on Earth too, really, but let's ignore that for the moment) has tried to use religion as an excuse to unite the world, they've just been another power-hungry tyrant with delusions of grandeur. Or, on a more charitable note, they were wrong. So now they've finally come back for real... and no one believes them. Because why would they? Yeah, there was a weird storm, but whatever, weird stuff happens. A completely inexplicable supernatural event is actually easier to understand than ancient myths walking around.

Thankfully Dalinar has the advantage of being right and having the supernatural powers to back it up, as this chapter shows. Hard to argue that someone is having apocalyptic visions when he can use those visions to talk to you face-to-face from halfway across the world.