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BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Wheel of Time should be taught alongside Chaucer.

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BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
We should start at the same place every Radiant does, with the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant. Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. On the surface, this seems like a fairly cut-and-dried distillation of a code of ethics. Rules to live by, to guide people faced with difficult decisions. As it turns out, the two of us have very different approaches to the deeper meaning of these words.

Ross:
Life before death, the Words say, and I hear never kill your adversary when leaving them alive is possible. Killing is the easy way out. We can all change, right up to the point where death obviates the possibility.

Paige: Life before death has different connotations for me. I have not only had suicidal thoughts at times, even oftentimes, but I’ve actually longed for that specific escape from the pain and chaos in my mind, so I consider the onerous task of getting through day after agonizing day of life before finally attaining the rest and peace of death. However, on the rare occasions when I feel uplifted, this phrase relays the idea that if I find something to live for, then perhaps I can stave off the ever-present desire for escape.

Ross: Strength before weakness seemed to me like a generic positive admonition. Don’t quail in the face of difficult challenges. Pour your entire strength into opposing whatever stands against you, and, while you may not prevail, you’ll certainly stand a better chance than if you’d given up. Basically a more graceful version of, “you miss every shot you don’t take.”

Paige: Strength before weakness, to me, feels like an unattainable Ideal. We all have a primitive fight, flight, or freeze response when the brain senses danger of any kind, and I am definitely the flight or freeze kind of girl when my amygdala lights up. Note that I don’t make a conscious choice to do this—rather it’s a symptom of my illness which allows emotion to gain too much power over my behavior. Add anxiety to that mix and it’s often difficult to function.

I’ve been referred to as a doormat more often, and by more people, than I care to admit, and it’s rare that I find strength to defend myself. However, call this the Windrunner in me (a title which came from Ross, by the way, because I never would have claimed it myself), but the only time I do feel the urge to fight is when I am moved to defend someone else.

Ross: I absolutely named you a Windrunner of the Third Ideal, and I stand by it. You had stuff going on in your life, and you acted precisely as a Windrunner would. Those behaviors are an inseparable part of you, and you deserve the recognition.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

StonecutterJoe posted:

An average novel is 90k words. A WoT or Sanderson doorstopper is a few times that, but let's look at that for a baseline.

To write a 90k word novel in one year, you have to write the awe-inspiring, shocking, unbelievable workload of... two hundred and forty six words a day. For WoT/Sanderson levels, you could be looking at (gasp) maybe even a thousand words a day. Which, if you assume eight hours behind the keyboard, is a back-breaking hundred and twenty-five words an hour. Sanderson seems amazing because he actually treats writing like a full-time job, and we're accustomed to a ton of writers who don't and play up the drama of the job like they're Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain in Hades because they managed to sit down and work for an hour or two last Tuesday.

lol

BananaNutkins posted:

The entire genre is incestuous to a shameful degree, and that's why I try to encourage people to read outside the genre if they want to write fantasy or sf. Brent Weeks cribs from the Wheel of Time ALOT in the last two Night Angel books. Scott Lynch was inspired by Final Fantasy 6. Joe Abercrombie is pretty savvy and steals from other genres to subvert fantasy genre expectation, but he still follows the hero's journey very blatantly in his first trilogy.

What fantasy genre expectations does Joe Abercrombie subvert?

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Walh Hara posted:

I agree with the assertion that writing a fantasy novel is more comparable to writing the script of a movie/tv show, while writing a literary book is more comparable with creating a true art paintwork. So it makes sense somebody like Sanderson can write much faster than more literary authors.

Movie/tv scripts, famously meant to be cranked out without regard for quality.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

BananaNutkins posted:

Genre expectations = regularly used tropes. To subvert a trope, you employ it for a different than standard effect, turn it on its head. The kindly old wizard being the true bad guy is a subversion. Whether that makes it clever or not is subjective.

The kindly old wizard in Abercrombie turns out to be exactly what he appers to be. There's no "subversion" with Vulvei or whatever his name was.

It's not even a particularly strong "trope". Merlin in Le Morte d'Arthur is a complete prick for example.


BananaNutkins posted:

Genre writing is hard work despite your lack of appreciation for it. If writing a bestseller was easy, everyone would do it. Literary criticism holds little merit. It's a tightrope. Can you grab a large fanbase by giving them what they want while twisting things enough that it leaves them hungry for more? You personally may not see the point, but your lack of respect for hard working people speaks to your immaturity.

bold of you to equate profit with artistic success

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Proteus Jones posted:

You are not a gatekeeper of what is and isn't art.

Correction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msqUsa2I_OA

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Is the Gatekeeper the next form of the Shardbearer?

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Cicero posted:

No. Bayaz definitely comes across as the trope of a benevolent but mysterious old wizard at the start of the book. It turns out later on that he's much less benevolent than he initially appeared. He's not, like, pure evil, but his alignment on that axis is neutral at best.

That's not subversive. Thomas Malory beat Abercrombie to this half a millenium ago.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Cicero posted:

It's subversive compared to the standard trope. It doesn't have to be totally unique or innovative to be subversive.

There's nothing inherently rebellious in "subverting tropes," which is a nonsense phrase cooked up by a wiki with an index of Rape Tropes and a list of homoerotic relationships in webcomics.

A subversive work would be something that undermines authority instead of inspiring weary resignation about how bad everything is like Abercrombie does.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Nov 12, 2018

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Getting back on Sanderson, I remember someone pointing out something along the lines of how the few instances of sex in his books are rape. Is that still true or did he stop being a weirdo?

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Odd how people forget the genocidal rape in Mistborn.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

CharlestheHammer posted:

I just finished mistborn and that doesn’t happen no. Literally the only sex even implied is between the married couple, and it’s implied.

Hell characters hardly even kiss in those books.

What exactly do you think a "breeding program" entails?

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

CharlestheHammer posted:

Oh I thought you meant in a positive light, why didn’t you bring up the fact slaves were raped and was a pretty big plot point. Especially in the first book. That’s actually stated. The breeding programs are more eugenics.

So sex in Sanderson's work is either rape or married chastity.

A rather bizarre dichotomy.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

CharlestheHammer posted:

[Sex] is there mostly to serve the plot or world building.

I don't think you realize exactly what a depressing thing this is to say.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Captain Monkey posted:

You're considering things like 'context' and 'story' not just trying to derail a thread with wild accusations of rape fetishizment against the staunchly Mormon author who barely even mentions sex.

No one is accusing the author of rape fetishism.

What's being criticized is what Charlesthehammer inadvertently observed: Sanderson's fiction is ideally sexless, and rape and consensual sex are equally unspeakable things in it.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
I'm not requesting anything. I'm observing that in Sanderson's fiction, rape and consensual sex are equally shameful things.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

CharlestheHammer posted:

No your being critical because he isn’t giving you the details you need. Luckily if you go on Amazon.com their are ton of books to feel your need.

I'm not critical because of a lack of details. I've observed, as others have, that Sanderson treats rape the same as consensual sex.

The reason why he's so popular is the same as for other de-eroticized fantasies, like those of Tolkien and Steven Brust: the sexlessness is the show.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
People have internalized the mindset of Sanderson's mormon fans: fiction can be either sexless or it can be erotica self-published on Amazon.

Erotic imagination is an important thing for an author to have. Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino owe a lot to Borges, but are fundamentally more exciting writers because they're not monkishly celibate in their writing like Borges.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Nov 21, 2018

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
“We had this fellow called Magnus. Count Magnus Wolfram. Who was bald, tattoed, looked like a comic book hero. And I got them all in a room, and I said, ‘Look, does anyone in this room know a count? No. Does anybody in this room know anybody called Magnus? No. Does anybody really want to be in this guy’s skin? Since this is a first person play, why would you want to be in this man’s skin? Why would you want to play [as him]?’ And so we threw him out, and I said, ‘Look. You’ve got a gay man in charge here. Bring me somebody I want to sleep with. Bring me somebody fabulously sexy.’

Sanderson's characters are the same as Count Magnus Wolfram. Absolutely unfuckable.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
The quote is also extra relevant because Sanderson has written a hundred aristocrats without ever knowing one in person.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Big Bowie Bonanza posted:

Anything romantic or erotic Brandon Sanderson has written was already done in a 19th century Franco Prussian land transfer document and way better

:iceburn: on sanderson

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Torrannor posted:

This has some good points, but also some errors. From the currently known timeline, there were a lot fewer spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation showed up. Their investiture, and/or a mixture of said investiture, led to the formation of a lot of new spren. But even so, those spren either didn't form bonds with the Parshendi, or those bonds didn't grant the Parshendi surgebinding (the latter seems unlikely, considering Venli and Timbre). Whatever the case, there was apparently no surgebinding before humans came to Roshar. The humans then bonded with certain spren and got surgebinding. Then the Heralds noticed, and Ishar forced the structure of the Knights Radiants on them.

So Honor actually had nothing to do with how the Knights Radiants worked, apart from him being on Roshar (together with Cultivation) led to the existence of the surge-granting spren in the first place. Nohadon speaks about not all spren being as "discerning" in choosing their partners as the honorspren when discussing the surgebinder(s) who caused so much destruction. And this seems to be confirmed with the Dustbringer spren, both in the past and today (Malata and her spren not caring too much about the True Desolation, being more interested in just destroying stuff).

It's actually a good question how Ishar forced the Knights Radiants structure, complete with the various oaths, on both humans and spren. Of course, he could have killed any human who refused to comply. But he's no longer able to enforce this, and wasn't able to enforce this for the at first hundreds of years he spent on Braize between desolations. What could he have done to the spren to force them to grant powers to humans only after they swore acceptable variants of very specific oaths? And why are they still following this command, even now that he's no longer around to watch for compliance? Did they swear some kind of oath for them and all their children, honoring the Immortal Words? Why has no spren apparently bonded with a human without following the Knights Radiant model?

Odium's voidspren don't fall under this category, and are free to bond humans as they wish, if the personality types match.


This is complicated. As far as we know, spren (and Shards) can't break an oath or promise. At least not without breaking themselves. Syl must be bound by some kind of oath, that's why she broke when she granted Kaladin that last bit of surgebinding to save him from dying in that fall. But this ties into my earlier point: Something still binds the spren to behave in certain ways when bonding with humans. How many of the things we think are the "rules" for human-spren bonding are part of that oath/agreement/promise, and how many of the "rules" are just custom/tradition at this point is unknown for now. Granting surgebinding to humans who violate their oaths is definitely forbidden. Is bonding people only within the Knight Radiants framework also part of whatever binds spren, or is that just a custom that might be violated? Personally, I think it's the former, but I won't rule out the latter.


Not quite. She warned Kaladin of Szeth, because he was carrying a honorblade and thus had access to surgebinding without a spren to guide him.


This also might give us a clue why there are unbreakable rules in the human-spren interactions. Spren imitated what Honor did with the Heralds. He gave them parts of his own soul shaped like swords, and this gave them surgebinding. Presumably, they had to swear some kind of oath to get those blades. Spren can mimic that to also grant humans surgebinding to humans who swear certain oaths? It would explain a lot, though the formation of the Knights Radiants structure is still mysterious.

Also, Ashyn was destroyed by "surgebinding". Whether that's just the term Rosharans used to describe any kind of investiture (like they would call Seons or Threnody Shades spren), or if there really was some kind of surgebinding on Ashyn, possibly very different from Rosharan surgebinding, we don't know yet. Some use of investiture destroyed Ashyn, that's the most we can say with any confidence right now.


It's clear that the actual act of swearing an oath is not required to become at least partly a Knight Radiant, as long as you live in according to the ideal of your order. Both Kaladin and Dalinar displayed some surgebinding abilities before formally swearing the First Ideal. As for Shallan, since Lightweavers don't follow the same oaths as the other orders, she could have advanced to the level that grants access to a sharblade by speaking truths. But there's certainly something interesting going on with her. It seems clear that "being broken" is not the only way to bond with spren, it just might be the most common way.

Also, the Stormfather is a unique spren who usually resides with the highstorms he sends out. Which might very well explain why he won't come to Dalinar to be a blade for him.

The depth of Sanderson's world-building is really cool.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Mel Mudkiper posted:

if anything that whole thing has proven to me world building is a really bad idea

I think you're being too harsh.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
You should enjoy Sanderson as much as you want :)

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
And move them forward on the Hero's Journey.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Torrannor posted:

I mean, the magic collars that compel a channeler's obedience are real. The question is, is that a fetish? .

Yes it is

(the above is by definition a positive statement)

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

pikachode posted:

[timg]https://i.imgur.com/RdzYIKo.jpg[/timg]

thought-provoking, blisteringly erotic, life-affirming

MOD EDIT: don't quote NWS stuff, thanks

Somebody fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Feb 10, 2019

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Maybe also ban the anachronistic inns?

A constructive suggestion.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
A continuous multivolume series that starts badly is never going to get good three books in. An author who labours on the same series for that long has neither the time nor the opportunity for self-improvement.

I admire their stamina, though!

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
My faith in our Lord is not bad.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Data Graham posted:

Doesn’t Terry Brooks improve after Sword of Shannara?

I mean that’s just the rumor I heard, I wasn’t about to see for myself

Look into your heart and you will know the answer.

It's "yes, most gallantly!"

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Oathbringer, Doorstopper, Worldbuilder

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Farthuffer.

Peace upon you.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

A human heart posted:

the worm ouroboros has women in it and it's from 1922. hell, it looks to me like fantasy fans don't even know anything about the history of their genre of choice

In 1924 there was a cinematic fantasy epic with feminist themes, a female protagonist, and sympathetic orcs, before anyone complained about the lack of those in LOTR

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Data Graham posted:

FWIW, I like to remind myself from time to time of how trope-subverting Tolkien was at the time. When he was writing, it was against a backdrop of classical mythology and Arthurian legend, which was full of champions and princes and demigods as the protagonists, and as often as not they were on quests to seek out a talisman of legendary power. LotR was kind of a crazy departure in that it made fat little gluttonous Edwardian smurfs into the heroes, and they were trying to get rid of their magic doohickey, not win it from a dragon or whatever.

Hobbits weren't a particularly radical choice for heroes back when The Hobbit was successful novel in recent memory.

Not to mention that the Hobbits serve as a bourgeois viewpoint in an alien world, which makes them extremely conventional characters.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Feb 8, 2019

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
Our heroes are cheery Englishmen. Trope busted!

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
~*subverting tropes*~ is bullshit


But I like the world-building.

BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy
"Yes, Lady Vin," Sazed said. "You see, Tindwyl spent most of her life as a Terris mother."

Vin hesitated, hand in pocket, looking surprised. "You mean... she was a Breeder?"

Sazed nodded. The Lord Ruler's breeding program included selecting a few, special individuals to use for birthing new children—with the goal being to breed Feruchemy out of the population.

"Tindwyl had, at last count, birthed over twenty children," he said. "Each with a different father. Tindwyl had her first child when she was fourteen, and spent her entire life being taken repeatedly by strange men until she became pregnant. And, because of the fertility drugs the Breeding masters forced upon her, she often bore twins or triplets."

"I... see," Vin said softly.

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BravestOfTheLamps
Oct 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Lipstick Apathy

Sab669 posted:

Cool, the Audible app crashes when I try to play this one part of Gathering Storm.

Rebooted, still does it. Tried fast forwarding 30-60 sec and it still crashes :thunk:

The prose is too radical and powerful for any audio software to handle

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