Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

I mean, as slave revolts go the parshmen ones are pretty peaceful, even when they don't consist of formally lodging a request for fair wages. The Thaylen ones just grabbed ships and fucked off, and even with the Alethi when Kaladin was trying to figure out what the fuck, he noted that the "Voidbringers" weren't wreaking the sort of havoc he'd expected. And on the human side of things, all the countries we've got a decent look at seem to be helmed by basically reasonable people. That could easily have been otherwise (young Dalinar, for instance, would probably have just rode out and killed people until they agreed to be slaves again), but as it happens we've got a bunch of rulers who can accept that parshmen are people now and should be treated as such.

I think Elhokar probably wouldn't even remember the event in question.

I dunno... it was a fairly major event. Dalinar apparently wanted to execute Roshone for his role in things, but Elohokar begged mercy, and Dalinar wanted to encourage that trait in him, so he allowed it. I suspect Elhokar remembered it, but the question is whether he learned the right lesson from it. Like how Amaram, after being shunned for his crimes against Kaladin, decides he should never have let him live.

I wonder, is the knife that killed Jezrien is a hemulurgic spike now? What property would it have stored?

Oathbringer chapters 45-46 reread up. Moash in the singer slave camps, Skar struggling with Stormlight.

Kinda reminds me of how Shallan is using Lightweaving. "I'll just draw up a new persona whenever I need one." Though Autonomy can probably make their personalities far more permanent and independent.

The impression I got was that the squires were a bit of a convenience for the spren. They watch their Order's squires to see who would best fit the bond. So it's kind of like a foot soldier getting promoted to officer; it doesn't happen automatically, but they're in a position where it's easier for them to prove themselves.

Mraize also told Shallan that Nale would occasionally force burgeoning Radiants to become Skybreakers instead of any other Order. Though the fact that we only saw him straight-up murdering people implies that after a certain point the decision becomes fixed and much harder to change.

My question is if the squires are specifically Kaladin's squires or any Windrunner's squires. When Teft swore the Third Ideal and revealed his powers, did every squire in the area suddenly get access to their powers again? Or does it only work when they're near Kaladin?

I'm following the reread and I like it, except for the way they usually talk about Moash.

It's strange, because they do a good job of highligthing how all the other characters, heroes and villains alike, are nuanced and complicated. Moash, on the other hand, is either a Badwrong Person at fault for everything wrong with his life, or a Poor Faultless Victim Of A Badwrong Society, depending on the specific rereader.

Oh, well.

Edited by Cozzer on Sep 22nd 2018 at 6:59:21 PM

I don't think that Aubree considers Moash a poor faultless victim so much as she's acting as a counterweight to the other two rereaders who think he's evilbadwrong, end of story. Hell, one of the first thing she says in her introduction on the previous reread is "I wouldn’t say that Moash did nothing wrong, but I definitely think that he gets a raw deal from the fandom".

Seriously though, some of the commentary is incredibly uncomfortable. They're quite literally blaming Moash for not kowtowing to what Alethi society expects of darkeyes, and then simultaneously blaming him for letting others define him. Darkeyes are literally second-class citizens, and blaming him for not being deferrent enough to his social "superiors" is seriously messed up.

This is an actual quote from the novel:

Followed by their commentary:

This whole sequence just left me screaming. No, Moash isn't perfect, and he certainly let his hatred of lighteyes become an excuse to do bad things, but holy shit do not tell someone that it's their fault for being oppressed because they don't act meekly enough and it scares their oppressors.

Edited by NativeJovian on Sep 26th 2018 at 9:28:26 AM

My read on the Moash quote was that both darkeyes AND lighteyes found him intimidating and the fact that he made no moves to not be a scary big guy, again to both lighteyes AND darkeyes, was something that contributed to his being ostracized. Even darkeyes didn't want anything to do with him.

Moash's flaws are more apparent when you compare him to Kaladin, because their plot arcs match almost step by step, but Moash is making all the wrong choices. Kaladin was the Scary Black Man who made his own life more difficult by being justifiably annoyed at everyone. This is especially apparent in WoR at the Shattered Plains and later in the chasms. Kaladin is scowling at everyone on the plains and is a dick to Adolin. Shallan's like "WTF man, he went to prison for you." Then in the chasms he blames Shallan for everything the lighteyes ever did to him. Explicitly. He says it's all her fault for being a lighteyes.

Moash does all these things too. The reason people don't forgive him is because he refuses to learn any lessons. He refuses to stop blaming everyone around him, he refuses to actually try to change anything, and he directly screws over multiple people by his own choices. Moash and the friend who brought him to the lighteyes is a good parallel for Kaladin and the sick slave. Kaladin was going to let the slave die, but tried to convince Tvlakv he could be easily saved. Moash let his friend get beaten because he couldn't be bothered to say one word in his defense.

Remember, Kaladin is still a dick a lot of the time. That hasn't really changed. He could be nicer (and Syl keeps trying to get him to smile more), but he isn't. But since he's spending all his time trying to save the world instead of wallowing in his own pity any more, we're more inclined to forgive him.

I think a large part of the Moash hate is almost a meme at this point.

Especially on the Cosmere reddits where people really bandwagon-ed the Moash hatetrain.

It's a bit unfortunately really, since Moash is a pretty interesting character in my opinion. Especially in how he compares to Kaladin.

I agree Moash is interesting, he's just not likeable, and is alike a diagram for 'how to make the worst decisions'.

Pretty much this. Moash is basically the Shadow Archetype to Kaladin — he's what Kaladin could have been if he was motivated by his hatred for the lighteyes rather than his desire to help people. I don't think that Moash is right, but I don't think he's pure evil incarnate, either. Plus Moash is clearly at the start of his own arc. Whether he ends up correcting course and becomes a Radiant in his own right (probably one of the Orders we haven't seen yet) or goes full villain and starts working with Odium and using voidlight in some fashion remains to be seen, but I strongly suspect it's going to be one or the other.

I personally think Moash is probably going to be on the side of Odium for at least the next book.

I think it's likely his arc will conclude in Book 5 and then we'll see which side he'll fall on.

Or he might die, probably as a indirect result of him letting Kaladin go or aiding him in some way.

Yeah, my problem with the reread is not that they think Moash is wrong - I mean, he clearly is -, it's that as soon as it's about him their willingness to see complexity in characters vanishes. The fact that the new one exaggerates Moash' excuses to counterbalance how the others exaggerate his badwrongness doesn't make her any less annoying, in my personal opinion.

Oh well, I'll just skim these parts of the reread. It's a pity, because Moash' situation is one of the more interesting plot threads of the series for me. I love him as a Shadow Archetype to Kaladin, especially because he makes a lot of good points while still making bad choices.

Oathbringer reread chapters 47-48 updated. Moash meeting the parshmen Kaladin helped, and Jasnah recompiling her notes. I don't have much to say about the Moash stuff (which makes up the bulk of it), but Jasnah has some interesting parts.

I suspect that it's just people won't talk about it, since the Alethi place a lot of importance on appearances. As far as everyone else is concerned, the treatment worked, and there's no need to sully her reputation by bringing it up again. Except that Alethi psychology is still crap, so it's more like she recovered despite the treatment rather than because of it.

It's also given a brief mention in one of Dalinar's flashbacks, with him asking Gavilar is Jasnah is feeling better.

In Oathbringer, at least, Moash was more closely a foil for Dalinar's character arc than Kaladin's.

Dalinar embraced the fact that it was his choice to do all of the evil stuff he did, and therefore also his choice to be better. Even though Moash's faults up until that point weren't anywhere near as bad as Dalinar's early life, he couldn't accept that responsibility and so he falls further into being 'evil'.

I suppose you could argue that this isn't a fair comparison, since Moash genuinely DID have adverse circumstances and prejudice that made him who he is, while Dalinar was privileged from the start.

Edited by LoniJay on Sep 29th 2018 at 11:17:54 PM

Eh, he was privileged, but in a system where that privilege comes with constant, violent competition with everyone else who's equally privileged. As we saw when Dalinar tried being a different kind of Highprince in Way of Kings, Alethi nobles who take the high road have a way of being backstabbed by all of the less scrupulous Alethi nobles.

I like the To Be Lawful or Good thing the honorspren have got going on. One of Jasnah's chapters mentioned that all the other spren were convinced the Windrunners were gone for good, because the honorspren had sworn never to bond humans again. Then Syl happened.

Well, if *Highspren* would make a law making binding Humans illegal, that'd be more binding ^^

Which makes sense, since Syl was unconscious and non-participatory when they made that oath.

Oathbringer reread chapter 49 came out a few days ago. I don't have a lot to say about it.

I swear every time we learn more about Gavilar he becomes worse—not least because everything is in the context of a man clearly trying to do the right thing. He's like Amaram except vastly more competent. If he had lived, would he have given the entire kingdom to Odium when he learned the secret behind the Recreance?

You know, designating a particular specialty to each country may, in hindsight, not have been such a great idea. Especially when it includes a whole country whose specialty is killing people.

The REAL Kholin family motto: FUCK Subtle.