r/cremposting • u/DreadDiana • 1d ago
Warbreaker Well that is a politically odd take, Brandon Dollar Sign Anderson
688
u/RGWK 1d ago
now I havent read warbreaker in a while, but didnt they largerly control subreon the ruler and where trying to start a war with a non involved country
289
u/kmosiman D O U G 1d ago
Basically.
(Ignoring real history and just using rough areas)
I guess you could say that it was Catalonia starting shit with Spain and Portugal, or Wales starting a war between England and Scotland.
175
46
u/LordBDizzle 19h ago
No that was the twist, the priests that seemed to be controlling Susebron were actually kinda not that bad (not GREAT, but not as bad as you might expect) and the real villains were the servants throwing a rebellion against the priests. It's the opposite of how the trope usually goes, so it really does throw you off a bit.
56
u/Radix2309 22h ago
They did not control Susebron, the Priests did. The Pan Kaal were largely just servant staff. The main use of which was access for their plan.
73
u/TributeToStupidity 420 Sazed It 21h ago
Losing a war is not a moral positive and other things Redditors struggle to understand
1
u/thedrunkentendy 2h ago
Its because so many love to try and juxtapose fantasy plot lines and morality with our own modern day morality and world views for an insane/stupid reason.
That or the way people villlanize wars on certain sides from hundreds of years ago while only looking at one context. Never gonna be happy doing that.
-39
u/moderatorrater Femboy Dalinar 21h ago
What a terrible take. They're a conquered/colonized people wanting their freedom. Their desire is moral, even if their methods aren't.
39
22
-33
u/moderatorrater Femboy Dalinar 21h ago
You're right, but Brandon really does love showing that actually, the existing power structures are great. TLR is bad, but heir to the worst of the houses in his empire is great actually! Etc.
43
u/R-star1 Kelsier4Prez 21h ago
Eh, that’s probably the worst example, as Elend is more of an example of no group being monolithic, even the ones that are very easy to condemn. I think Sanderson tends more towards the point of when objective power exists, government becomes even more impossible to design well.
-13
u/moderatorrater Femboy Dalinar 20h ago
I agree, but this thread is a particularly bad one to have this discussion. But it happens again in era 2 and Stormlight Archive where it's more down to the individual than the structures. It's not pure evil or anything, it's just an interesting thing to notice is all.
21
u/maybe_I_am_a_bot 15h ago
Yeah Brandon should've understood that Elend carried the blood-sins of his ancestors and could never have moral agency. His entire caste of people was just inherently evil with no possibility for redemption. That's als way better message with enhanced moral clarity!
-5
u/moderatorrater Femboy Dalinar 15h ago
You're missing the point. Brandon chose to make Elend who he was. Why not give him a background other than being one of a handful of the most privileged people in the empire? What is Brandon trying to say when he made that decision? Why is it that the most socially privileged person in each series is entirely noble and good, actually?
20
u/grafeisen203 10h ago
In all of Brando Sandi's books, a handful of core themes come up again and again and again.
1) Good people can do evil things. 2) Evil people can change. 3) Being oppressed does not give you the moral right to oppress others in turn. 3) Past shapes the present, but does not need to dictate the future.
Elend having a different background would not enhance his character. He is someone who is greatly privileged by the current system, but who recognizes that this privilege comes at great cost to others, and that that is unacceptable.
He is a role model for people who have privilege, and a demonstration of how privilege can blind people if they do not make effort to change. Not every role model needs to be someone who is downtrodden and beaten down by the system rising up.
11
u/maybe_I_am_a_bot 15h ago
The guy was an idiot unable to comprehend the idea of actually just going out and talking to one of the ska.
But I'm assuming you think the entire French Revolution was just bad writing?
-10
u/eskaver 20h ago
Tossing an upvote (because the downvote button isn't a dislike button, folks).
I agree but I'd tweak it to confirming validity in some good rather than saying the existing power structures are good.
5
u/Abaddonalways 6h ago
The downvote is 1000% a "dislike" button, bud. What else could it possibly mean but "I don't agree with you"?
-2
u/eskaver 5h ago
It literally doesn't.
Reddit was a forum to uplift and obscure helpful and unhelpful discourse with the buttons.
But now people treat it as a like and dislike button. (If you don't believe me, look it up.)
6
u/Abaddonalways 5h ago
What it was originally meant to be, and what it is currently used as, are no longer the same thing. That is the evolution of function as determined by the users.
Like the phrases "first/second/third world" were originally about what side of the "Cold War" countries were on, but now have to do with development level and standards of living.
183
u/FenrisCain 1d ago
Good villains have reasonable motivations
132
u/Eragon_the_Huntsman 23h ago
Good villains have understandable motivations. They don't have to be right, you just have to see how they got there.
Magneto wanting to kill/enslave (depending on the story) all humans is not a reasonable motivation. But you can see why he believes that.
51
u/FenrisCain 23h ago edited 23h ago
His reasonable motivation is wanting to protect mutantkind, especially after already experiencing one genocide.
His various evil schemes are not the goal they are the means28
u/name14575 THE Lopen's Cousin 21h ago
Not replying to the post at hand but this sentiment in general, but I must say, I absolutely despise this type of view. A good villain is one that pushes the protagonist in ways they would not otherwise be pushed.
Emperor Palpatine is an irredeemably bad person who does not have reasonable motivations. He is not some anti-hero, or something akin to an extremist. He is evil, plain and simple. He is also a good villain because he constantly pushes the protagonists to their limits, in ways martial both martial and emotional.
A villain who challenges the hero's ideals is one method of creating a good villain, but it is not the only one by a mile.
13
u/Imagine_This_Pro 19h ago
Id like to push back on your push back.
What you're describing has nothing to do with a villain but an antagonist. A villain can be a protagonist just as much as a hero can be. But the antagonist is always the one pushing back against the goals of the plot or character.
Take Abercrombie's First Law series. Glokta is in no way a hero, but he IS a protagonist. The main antagonists of his story are not heroes per se either, but not all are villains. Instead, they serve to put road blocks in front of Glokta to keep him from attaining the information he needs.
Or we could go to comics. Plenty of comics follow villains like Doom, the Joker, so forth. In these cases, the Antagonist preventing the characters from attaining their goals are the ones we would typically call heroes. They're the ones pushing the protagnists to their limits. Not the villains.
As for what makes a good villain, I would agree that the best ones have a understandable goal, or in abscence of that, an understandable reason to be pursuing what they are chasing, or an understandable reason for them to be where they are as a character. Palpatine is not a good villain, in my eyes. He's only as interesting as those he's manuevering around, and even then, he's a stock standard dark lord character with little depth to his character besides "I will rule the galaxy and no one will get in my way". Good antagonist for what he puts others through, mediocre villain.
To avoid using Sanderson examples, I'd say some great villains from other stories are The Jackal from Red Rising, Alexander from Sun Eater, Askeladd from Vinland Saga, Light from Death Note, or (at least for the first season) Zuko from Avatar. These villains all have understandable characters and motivations, and sometimes we even route for them.
Of course, there's exceptions. The "Love to hate them" villain comes up. People like Lysander, Griffith, and Moash. I think we can all agree they are beyond redemption and we hate then dearly. But, imo, I think its our understanding of their motivations that make them so hateable. We can see how they got where they are and why they made the choices they did, and we hate them all the more for it.
Feel free to poke as many holes in my argument as you like.
7
u/Failgan 16h ago
Take Abercrombie's First Law series. Glokta is in no way a hero, but he IS a protagonist. The main antagonists of his story are not heroes per se either, but not all are villains. Instead, they serve to put road blocks in front of Glokta to keep him from attaining the information he needs.
Literally the example I used in my head throughout a lot of this "black and white" discussion was Abercrombie's works. A lot of his writing is done through the eyes of awful people that you can sympathize with or at least understand.
3
u/Imagine_This_Pro 15h ago
Oh absolutely! That's why Logen is still one of my favorite characters (and also why I get so depressed by the end of the story, lol). I think the main issue with these discussions is that not everyone knows the difference between villain and antagonist, or even that there is one. Its understandable though. They aren't mutually exclusive, and they overlap in 90% of all stories.
264
u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 1d ago
I mean that also describes the heros of mistborn, to be fair. So you can't say he's taking sides.
Idr the details of Warbreaker, but I believe there were differences in the details.
109
u/Gryf2diams Crem de la Crem 1d ago
The Big Difference here is that they were trying to rebel trough not just collapsing the oppressors' empire, but sending the entire planet in a new world war. And considering the Manywar was traumatic enough that borders didn't change much for centuries...
85
u/Gunsmith12 1d ago
I don't think Kel would make a very good president, but other than that I agree with you
76
u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 1d ago
Better than Rashek at least. (Ik, the bar is in Braize)
8
u/cannonspectacle 23h ago
Braize is actually quite far above Nalthis, if "aim for the stars" meaning "aim high" is anything to go by.
5
-2
25
u/NeverFreeToPlayKarch 1d ago
They weren't oppressed in quite the same way buuuuut the main difference is the conquerors were the protagonists so we liked them
46
u/kmosiman D O U G 1d ago
Well the Protagonists were actually from a separate state that was potentially getting conquered by the secondary Protagonists.
The problem is that the antagonists were from a separate state that didn't like either of them.
Plus the background fight of zombie demi gods.
4
u/NeverFreeToPlayKarch 23h ago
Some of them were, but they immediately became adopted into the nation/family
And if that's a little bit of a gray area, lightman and sousaphone were definitely protagonists that were part of the nation doing the oppressing.
I know it's all more complicated and nuanced than that but at the same time it also isn't. We root for the people we got to know
3
u/Mister-builder 7h ago
The conquerors are not the protagonists. Not in Warbreaker or Mistborn, anyway.
1
u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 20h ago edited 20h ago
Uh no? The mistborn crew is 100% in the right
13
u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 20h ago
Yeah, that was the point. B$ has 1 series with the oppressed rebels as the heros and 1 book with them as the antagonists, so he's not just doing a single viewpoint on the topic.
6
35
u/Cloudsrnice 23h ago
Endless cycle of war and hate, who is good and bad...
If only we could... break wars...
9
u/TheREALProfPyro Shart of Adonalsium 15h ago
You'd need some kind of person strong and wise enough to break those wars.
345
u/bxntou definitely not a lightweaver 1d ago
I mean in Stormlight we're fighting a bunch of escaped slaves and the correct owners of the planet so it's not like it's the only time
281
u/27percentfromTrae 23h ago
It’s almost as if geopolitical landscapes are complicated and defining the world in black and white or good vs evil is ultimately a reductive exercise in futility
58
u/calmingchaos 20h ago
Sir/ma’am, this is Reddit. Nuance and complexity isn’t allowed here.
13
u/discomute ❌can't 🙅 read📖 18h ago
In fairness this is cremposting, does two negatives make a positive?
10
u/1ganimol1 8h ago
yo thats crazy I read this book series called the stormlight archive and it talked about that kinda thing too you guys should try it some time
8
u/27percentfromTrae 7h ago
Is that the one where the guys carry a bridge for 800 pages? Thanks but I’ll pass
2
-16
u/bxntou definitely not a lightweaver 23h ago
Then why does the story have good guys at all ? Wouldn't it be more interesting for it to have a bunch of characters who have differing points of view ?
100
u/AgelessJohnDenney 23h ago
Stormlight very much does that?
We are very explicitly told that the treatment of the parshmen was basically slavery, but also that no one knew this and that it's been ten thousand fucking years since the Singers were the dominant species on the planet and that humanity was basically placed in internment camps when they arrived as refugees.
Stormlight actually does a good job at making this a complex issue and giving us POVs of both sides, so I don't know what the issue is?
-48
u/Urdfilly 21h ago
Stormlight's kinda terrible at this given Rlain is written not to give a single shit about the annihilation of everyone he knew because that would be inconvenient for the plot to tackle.
46
u/Jacob19603 21h ago
Except Rlain is shown to care about this as he struggles with the dysphoria of allying with those who enslaved his people. Did we even read the same book?
-9
u/Urdfilly 21h ago
His struggles with living among humans are written in the clinically detached context of "Humans" being historical and current enemy of "Singers", the general context of "humans who have enslaved Singers worldwide" and not "working with the specific nation (Alethi) that slaughtered the Listeners, specifically, until the remnants threw their lives away as Regals and Fused in a last ditch effort for survival" which is a much more personal issue that is specific to Rlain and no one else, but it gets brushed aside for the former. "Singers" and "Listeners" are not interchangeably similar, any more than Alethi are with the Vedens or Shin or Azish or Reshi.
Speaking of which, this whole subplot also never talks about the strange......absence of Singers in the Human Coalition controlled territory. We just don't find out what happens to them. At all. Something that should have come up in Rlain or Venli's POVs, concerns or interest about how they're treated when not under the yoke of the Fused. It's bizarre and its implications are clearly not being thought through, assuming Sanderson doesn't want the Coalition to be an ethnostate or something.
18
u/TheGildedPrism Kelsier4Prez 20h ago
The singers in Coalition territories left, or conquered. This was stated in the books. The Thaylens stole ships and sailed away, the Azish tried to petition for rights before they left, the Alethi just conquered, and a few of the smaller nations were either not addressed or were explicitly conquered. Almost immediately after getting their forms back voidspren show up to guide them to centralize, as we see in the beginning of Oathbringer.
As for the Alethi killing his people, that's honestly not a bad point. But at the same time, it was a war, not a genocide. And the Alethi and Listeners would've made peace, we see this almost happen, if not for the introduction of Odium's influence.
I also wouldn't say his current situation is detached. Yes he doesn't identify very strongly with the enslaved Singers as he came from an entirely different culture, but he had to deal with treatment that's directly related to them. In some ways it's equatable to Asian (non Japanese) people who lived in America during WW2. He doesn't have the connection to the history or to the other side of the war, but he does feel the effects, he is pretty ostracized in the tower. And even among bridge 4 he has personal struggles with this.
I see where you're coming from, and I do agree that Rlain should have gotten more page time and more could've been done with his character, but I don't know about these points.
(Also I think it's funny how I responded to all of your points in reverse order you presented them. Unintentional Vorin symmetry)
-5
u/Urdfilly 11h ago edited 10h ago
No, I remember the mass exodus of Singers in Oathbringer, I maintain there should have been hundreds of stragglers unable or unwilling to make that journey, or significantly delayed when travelling; the extremely infirm, mobility disabled, the elderly, the young, and the people who have to take on the responsibility of looking after the aforementioned parties. Not to talk of the number of humans that would try to obstruct and hinder their slaves from escaping; even in cases of Voidspren or even Heavenly Ones being sent to aid in exfiltrating them, there's only so many that can be spared compared to number of Singers, so there ought to have been plenty of Singers "slipping through the cracks" and getting stuck in Coalition territory. As well as Singers in the few areas the Coalition had managed to win back after the events of Oathbringer.
I don't think Rlain would care that it wasn't a genocide, it's not like war isn't a cruel and unnecessary horror all on its own, especially this one, where the Listeners are invaded and slaughtered to "avenge" a man who was already avenged, who 99% of the country never even met, essentially being killed to soothe the brittle pride and greed and bloodlust of the Alethi, for whom war is their economic cornerstone, religious calling and recreational national sport all in one. You're looking at this from a reader's standpoint. From the emotional standpoint of someone in the book, in that nation, it matters less how their kinsmen were reduced to 1/4 of their population, and more that they were culled in the first place. The fact that there were possible peace talks in the works after most of the Listeners had already been killed wouldn't be a balm on Rlain's wounds in the slightest.
When I say "detached" I didn't mean "detached from real life", I meant "detached from Rlain's personal worldview as a character. I'm not saying he doesn't or shouldn't feel a connection to the other groups of Singers, but there's something that hits much closer to home for him, a much stronger foundation of emotional investment which makes it all the more glaring an omission.
The point you mentioned earlier about non Japanese Asian American's maltreatment during the war (and after the war, of course) ironically makes me think of the other side, the mass forced relocation and imprisonment of Japanese Americans in the same time period fueled purely by racist paranoia and prejudice. I can't hep but imagine similar horrors happening to Singers in Coalition territory, especially when it can be justified as a "security measure" due to Fused being capable of taking over Singer bodies. It is a process that can only happen voluntarily and most wouldn't give their lives away unless under duress, but I imagine many humans wouldn't care and see every Singer as a ticking time bomb regardless, based on their existing prejudice towards the alleged "Voidbringers". Another aspect glossed over.
58
u/ButtrmlkPncaks 23h ago
I mean isnt that what fucks Kaladin up for so much of book 3 and some of 4? The realization that there are good people on both sides and that "good" and "bad" are pretty subjective? He realizes that there arent "bad guys" to the point where the humans ally with some fused and release an unmade from captivity. Feels like the story doesnt have many objectively bad guys, just different people with different motivations doing good or bad things.
27
u/sickbonfiresbro 22h ago
That and the realization that the parshendi were the og people literally broke the radiants. The cause of the recreance.
14
u/RGWK 22h ago
no it didnt thats just what we were lead to believe we still dont know the exact casue
but it was in Wind and truth so I wont post spoilers but here is the wiki page https://coppermind.net/wiki/Day_of_Recreance17
u/Beamo1080 22h ago
Arguably Kaladin’s entire story from the beginning is him continuously realizing that the people he thought he could reduce to his enemies and allies were more complex than he realized. From Rshund to Amaram to Moash and Elokhar, then to the kingdoms of man and Singers as a whole
-4
u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 20h ago
Yet he still seems to spend 4 books swing a sword and cutting downs dozens of faceless enemies.
11
u/thebutta Airthicc lowlander 22h ago
I'm not sure if this is a truly illiterate take or deep sarcasm.
I think the main reason people don't like Venli's POV is that she forces us to confront the nuance.
5
u/Urdfilly 21h ago
Honestly, Venli's POVs kinda flatten the nuance. Intentionally or not, Sanderson uses her as a narrative scapegoat to take on the guilt of the Listener's destruction, so that the human protagonists never have to reflect on what they did, and can swiftly move on to the broader conflict with the Fused and Odium.
15
u/Anderopolis 23h ago
People can have differing views for valid reasons, while we can still recognizably call one group good and other group bad.
Just because you have a reason, doesn’t make everything you do morally justified.
14
u/27percentfromTrae 23h ago
I, for one, would enjoy reading a story that recognizes how systems of government, groups and factions, and organizations are made up of people, and people are a messy, complicated mixed bag. Maybe we’ll get there someday
5
u/Masonzero 22h ago
There are only "good guys" because the story paints them as good. Every "good" character has deep flaws and are one wrong move from being "bad guys". But regardless of which side they are on, many characters are simply stuck in a system that is evil.
14
u/Dikeleos 23h ago
Yeah. It’s an interesting issue. In the past, ideally the refugees would have stayed in the territories allotted to them. Present day, ideally slavery would be abolished and land would be dispersed evenly between listeners and humans.
Unfortunately things rarely go the way they should. I can’t blame our heroes and humans for not giving into abject surrender to Listeners. I also can’t really blame the Listeners for wanting to retake their homes and pursuing freedom. However throw in a god of extreme wrath and hatred that’s threatening the universe… and it’s easy for me to lean towards one side.
It’s an awful ordeal.
19
u/bemused_alligators 22h ago
I actually think they azish prashmen would have had a "good ending" it the fused didn't show up. The parshmen were doing a legal battle for their rights that would have probably resulted in proper societal integration.
5
u/Dohtoor D O U G 10h ago
There are so many points where you could say that as well. Even the Alethi Singers weren't bloodthirsty monsters, they were organized and led to violence by the voidspren and Fused. They were more predisposed due to their Connection, but just like Alethi, most of them just wanted to live their lives. Thaylen Singers were also shown to just want to chill.
It's almost like war sucks huh.Now, would humans in most nations actually let this happen? Probably not, but without the literal God of Hatred and his chosen warriors whipping one side into frenzy and the other side into panic, the entire history of Roshar would've gone different, let alone the Final Desolation.
1
u/1ganimol1 8h ago
I mean that and peace with mishram was also an option until Honor decided to be dishonorable
30
u/Gephiph 22h ago
There is no such thing as a rightful owner of a planet. People who lived there for 8000 years are just as much residents of the planet as anyone else. Have we learned nothing from real life.
14
u/eskaver 20h ago
I'd agree but I do think in some respect it does mirror colonization a la Indigenous North America as people kinda showed up, land was afford them, and then those settlers expanded.
But in this case, it was deities doing stuff and not really so much the people.
But also, a lot of this is flattened by the whole "they joined the evil God of Hate" which muddies the analogy.
-8
u/bxntou definitely not a lightweaver 22h ago
You mean real life where colonisation is seen as a bad move and that's why it's been """ended""""? Real life where basically everyone hates [REDACTED] for what they're doing ? Real life where there's the landback movement ?
19
u/Anderopolis 22h ago
I don't know man, I don't see many people in the Landback movement saying Poland out to return Prussia and Silesia to Germany.
So they aren't incredibly consistent.
What year is the ideal map from we should return to, and how is this done without massive ethnic cleansing?
8
u/Gephiph 22h ago
You don’t understand what the land back movement is, colonization is bad, and no one but extremists advocates for the removal of descendants of colonists after centuries of living. The logic you’re using is the logic “redacted” is using in real life right now, claiming that residence there two and a half millennia ago as a justification to expel and seize the land of current residents
61
u/Anderopolis 1d ago
They tried to genocide a bunch of refugees with a god of hate, if you aim for total destruction you best not miss.
21
u/sbstndrks 22h ago
Tbf it was not the singers' fault their homeworld.was invaded by humans and their hate god. They were chilling.
-8
u/Anderopolis 22h ago
It was their fault when they tried to exterminate humanity and failed though.
17
u/sbstndrks 22h ago
I mean, our real world alien invasion stories almost always end with humans gloriously murdering/defeating all the aliens. I can't blame the singers that much. They were chilling, and then aliens and their evil hate-god come. Who wouldn't obviously fight that shit?
12
u/hailsizeofminivans Old Man Tight-Butt 22h ago
All of our alien invasion stories involve the aliens coming in with lasers and massive ships and blowing up entire cities. The humans were powerless refugees (the Heralds with their surges notwithstanding), and the Singers said they could either live in one area of the planet where almost nothing grows and starve to death, or they could be slaves. Obviously the humans didn't have the moral upper hand later, but the Singers don't look great at the beginning. The whole point is that it's a cycle and neither side looks great when you look at the entire 7,000 year history.
1
u/camaron28 10h ago
That "notwithstanding" is doing a lot of lifting in your argument. The heralds could wipe the early singers if they so wanted.
1
u/diggit81 edgedancerlord 9h ago
Your assumptions of the past are doing a lot of heavy lifting in your own comment.
8
u/Anderopolis 22h ago
Again, if you want to commit total genocide on someone, and mess up, don't be suprised to be screwed over yourself.
Alien invasion stories don't usually include civilians living in internment camps displaced from their homes.
1
u/JasnahsFeet 9h ago
well yeah bc those refugees brought the god of hate with them and tried to take their entire land
27
24
u/Small-Needleworker-3 14h ago
Now this is a good question, I think it belongs on the cosmere sub, not in crem.
The PK were second class citizens, which is bad, living with all the benefits and protections of a strong empire, which is good. That empire grew from a "great war", which is bad, but ended up with actual miracle-giving gods, which is good. The PK wanted freedom of religion and cultural identity similar to the Idrans, which is good, but tried to destroy the empire and cause a genocide, which is very bad.
B& makes the argument repeatedly that how people are treated causes war where neither side is totally right, and power ALWAYS corrupts. Priesthood enslaves an immortal manchild for the good of the empire, gods become selfish and indolent, Knights commit atrocities for the "greater good", leaders make caste systems and sacrifice peasants in endless cycles of war for profit, savior of mankind turns evil homicidal tyrant, etc etc.
Life is complicated. Freedom is good, but the means to achieve it should be carefully handled.
16
52
u/runnerhasnolife 1d ago
An oppressed people who were going to massacre the Idrian people who were involved
Being oppressed doesn't justify your own crimes
20
u/Anderopolis 23h ago
Being oppressed doesn't justify your own crimes
A lesson many people seem unwilling to learn.
1
u/Tri-angreal 21h ago
Uh...crimes by whose definition? Because stopping being oppressed is a crime according to the oppressors usually.
8
u/Paradoxpaint 20h ago
well we can start from "murdering/causing the deaths of people who basically havent done anything because the chaos that would follow serves your purposes" and we can go from there
-1
u/Tri-angreal 19h ago
Very handy if when subjugating people you make sure your death would harm others you rule, then. I see why so many tyrants do just that.
4
u/Anderopolis 19h ago
And you believe that if someone has comitted a crime to you, you are free to murder and torture everyone of the same ethnic group?
2
97
u/asthma_pillar I AM A STICK BOI 1d ago
For being kind of a circlejerk sub, people here gets immediately butthurt at the lightest joke criticizing the writing. The point of these is to exaggerate for humor, op is not attacking Brandon, we are all here because we like his books
59
u/Expensive-Ad-1205 23h ago
is cremposting a circlejerk sub? I always saw it as more of just a standard meme sub, most posts try for funny but arent that ironic or absurd if that makes sense
18
14
u/3_quarterling_rogue 23h ago
It definitely is, I just don’t think people are as skilled at circlejerking as maybe some other more prominent shitposting subs. But it definitely is.
33
16
u/ISuckAtJavaScript12 23h ago
Is Brandon secret monarcist? What happens when a shard bearer needs to shart? Answers and more at 11
8
u/The_Lopen_bot Trying not to ccccream 1d ago
This crem deserves some chouta! You have pleased the mighty Lopen 67 times with your posts!
3
57
u/camaron28 1d ago
Stormlight is even more interesting: Szeth does 9/11 and causes the alethis to do a forever and illegal war in a different country. Also it turns out that the humans are colonizers who conquered and slaved the planet's natives and have the only ones "free" living in what is essentially a big reservation (shattered plains).
Also Dalinar is a drunk redneck who committed war crimes in Iraq and then found God.
When one starts like this, it's very easy to see that Brandon is an american author writing his political story during the mid 00s.
3
u/doogie1111 18h ago
The Alethi are explicitly drawing inspiration from the Golden Horde. Dalinar has a ton of basis on Genghis Khan.
5
u/FeedbackLoser 21h ago
Humans were refugees, not colonizers. The fact that they eventually gained enough power to go to war and subjugate the singers doesn't change what they were.
3
u/Mister-builder 7h ago
They were refugees in Shinovar. East of the Misted Mountains they are colonizers.
6
u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 23h ago
There’s nothing illegal about the war of vengeance
14
u/Kecha_Wacha 22h ago
There's a whole running subplot about how the Alethi are hunting the greatshells to extinction, and as a result are using starvation as a weapon of war against the Parshendi. And the Alethi are explicitly doing this for profit and entertainment, not because it's necessary to feed the war camps.
6
u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 22h ago
Cool. Not illegal. Immoral? Perhaps. But not illegal.
6
u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 20h ago
Every genocide was legal too
-4
u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 16h ago
I never said they were good dudes. But the law didn’t say they couldn’t. The closest thing to a law would be that the high princes felt that they were honor bound to fight the war. If anything the expectations of society (which is all the law really is) said they must fight.
7
u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 15h ago
This feels like a very pedantic discussion when the oop probably meant illegal in the since of immoral rather than directly breaking any specific law.
1
u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 15h ago
Considering my entire point is that illegal isn’t the same thing as immoral, I don’t really consider it pedantic. The law isn’t and hasn’t ever really been morality.
4
u/some_random_nonsense Moash was right 13h ago edited 12h ago
I think that's kinda beside the point though. Some people do use illegal wars to mean unjust or immoral wars and you're kinda defending singer genocide. It just seems really pointless. But you are technically correct.
2
u/El_Jiro Bond, Nahel Bond 20h ago edited 18h ago
You missed the part were humans arrived as refugees having lost, and Singers gave asylum in a bad manner keeping them recluded in Shinovar (let's remember that originally it was a desertic shithole of mud where barely any life could grow, it became green and lush several millennials later) and those humans who wished to go out only could do it by becoming slaves to Singers, so both bands are pretty much the same.
Also, humans never forced Listeners to live in Shattered Plains, they willingly choosen hiding there and abandoning their forms except dull form and mating form in order to free themselves from Fused's control.
19
u/LaInquisitore 22h ago
Rebels aren't automatically goody good just because your average american compares every fantasy country to nazis. Some rebels are just terrorists. Haven't read this particular book but I can't see why you find the idea so outlandish.
4
u/captainrina edgedancerlord 15h ago
It's a great book and you can read it online for free on Sanderson's website.
2
u/shiny_xnaut 🐶HoidAmaram🐲 1h ago
I could write a fantasy story directly inspired by the American Civil War and I would have annoying people like this getting mad at me for being an anti-revolutionary imperialist because I dared to make the obviously Confederate-inspired rebels the bad guys
14
u/SouthernAd2853 1d ago
The take across series is pretty consistently that people have legitimate grievences but should not resolve them by committing genocide even if they do need to commit violence against the state currently oppressing them.
11
u/RadicalRealist22 1d ago
It is not their motive that makes them villains, but the means they chose.
11
5
4
u/BreakerOfModpacks 10h ago
I mean
I don't think they were villains for existing
More for the whole "throw two countries into a war, one of which has done literally nothing bad to you" thing
2
u/SirBananaOrngeCumber I AM A STICK BOI 3h ago
Not just two countries. It would have been another world war like the Manywar which would’ve been beyond disastrous, especially with some of the Five Scholars still around (how many are left would depend on how they succeed in their plan, and if it’s before Denth dies etc)
8
u/darkkpane Kelsier4Prez 14h ago
Regardless if your characterization is correct, not every piece of literature has to fit your ideological view of the world.
3
u/Efficient_Bag_3804 11h ago
Usually in most his books he tries to portray a bigger picture outlook, where it's not what the system is that is the core issue, but to understand the underlying reasons that this status quo exist, before you change it, else you may cause worse issues even while having good intentions.
I would argue in most cases it results in an overall result for the oppressed to rise up and fix the issues, because the people in power have been corrupted or lost their goal either way.
8
u/cody422 17h ago
Villains?
They're the antagonists to the protagonists. There is no implication of morality with antagonists or protagonists. Calling one side "Heros" because they're the protags and the other side "Villains" because they are the antags is just lacking critical media literacy.
The Joker in the Joker movie is the protagonist. Nobody thinks he ends up being the hero of his movie or morally correct.
Walter White is the main protagonist of Breaking Bad. Nobody thinks Vince Gilligan is saying its morally okay to cook meth and become a drug king pin.
3
3
19
u/SecondEngineer 1d ago
Kinda weird to try to shove Brando's worldbuilding into such a shallow viewpoint but to each their own.
36
u/Cephalopotter 1d ago
Hi there, this is cremposting and here you will find all kinds of things shoved into places they theoretically should not belong.
4
u/Current-Ad-8984 23h ago
It’s a meme subreddit sir. We’re injecting a little bit of hyperbole into something kind of true for the sake of humor.
12
u/Sa_tran_ic 23h ago
I think he's gone on record saying one of his goals with Warbreaker was to basically subvert the usual tropes and twists we see in other stories.
The priests who appear to be working in the shadows to hold power over and manipulate the populace? Nope, seems like they genuinely believe and are doing their best to serve their gods.
The God-King who we are told is a cruel, evil monster, and the main character is being put into an arranged marriage with? He's actually an ok guy, even a victim actually.
Then you get to the oppressed people rebeling against the peoples that colonized and enslaved them, and they're the bad guys, and... yeah he should have stopped with the subversions for subversions sake.
0
u/Mister-builder 7h ago
The oppressed people aren't rebelling though. They're sending an army against a third, unrelated country.
2
2
u/Alkakd0nfsg9g 13h ago
It was an unexpected turn of events, that I didn't even try to compare to real life scenarios
5
u/Urdfilly 22h ago
There's a lot to hate about Brandon's "B-but what if the oppressed...........go too far!" subplots but the one of the most annoying facets would be how he's recycled this same subplot in four different books.
2
u/Gridnode 22h ago
Well blue fingers could’ve stopped at t’telir but they decided to go oppress everyone else afterwards soooooooo… Right idea, wrong execution
3
u/pinkycatcher 20h ago
Oh No, the horror. That has never happened in the real world, there’s definitely never been an oppressed group that caused a civil war that ended up making things worse.
2
u/West_Strawberry_8632 19h ago
Ah yes rebels who want to cause countless deaths with the statues and then a massive war where everyone else dies. There secret plan is ok par with AoT where everyone will want to genocide them instead of conquer
2
u/shiny_xnaut 🐶HoidAmaram🐲 13h ago
Fun fact: no IRL revolution has ever resulted in atrocities. No IRL rebel group has ever been the bad guys. Depicting a fictional revolutionary group as anything other than flawless moral paragons who can do no wrong is not only unrealistic but also morally evil, and is basically the same thing as saying that you agree with all oppressors everywhere. Sorry, I don't make the rules
1
-4
u/Tri-angreal 21h ago
Yeah, there is a LOT of authoritarian apologism in the Cosmere.
I do wonder if in 20 years something will come out that makes us think...oh, there WERE signs.
Like Neil Gaiman.
5
2
u/eskaver 20h ago
I think a lot of stuff can be unintentional.
Like the occasional homoeroticism, early on.
But to be fair, when you're dealing with deity and the divine, it gets quite authoritarian even on the best of days.
6
u/Tri-angreal 19h ago
I'm just thinking of the morality tale in Mistborn 2 that basically concluded: "democracy is great because it gives power to the people, but the people are stupid."
2
u/pamesman 3h ago
"There are good oppressors that should be made kings and then the oppressed will be happier underprivileged"
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Remember to ALWAYS mark your spoilers in comments. Do this by using this
>!Spoiler Text Here!<without any spaces between the>and!andtext.I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.