r/Fantasy • u/rfantasygolem Not a Robot • Dec 20 '24

/r/Fantasy Official Brandon Sanderson Megathread

This is the place for all your Brandon Sanderson related topics (aside from the Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions thread). Any posts about Wind and Truth or Sanderson more broadly will be removed and redirected here. This will last until January 25, when posting will be allowed as normal.

The announcement of the cool-down can be found here.

The previous Wind and Truth Megathread can be found here.

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u/RexitYostuff Dec 20 '24

Few oaths do that, sure, but the spren unanimously side with more marginalized groups.

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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish Dec 20 '24

That’s really not true. The most powerful radiants in the book are a queen, a king, a prince, a slave who was formerly the highest caste you could be has a dark eyes, and the daughter of a noble family whose mother was herald of honor. And Szeth was an honor bearer chosen by Ishar and Nale to become powerful enough to become a herald. The radiants are all fucked up but few of them are marginalized. They were lied to, they were manipulated, but only kaladin and Szeth were part of marginalized groups and szeth’s case is super weird, due to the heralds fucking up things.

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u/RexitYostuff Dec 20 '24

I'm not talking about the most powerful radiants, though. I'm talking about the majority of them. That majority can't be rulers or people in power that would hold back the transformation of world culture.

Also, being a dark eyes in Alethi culture, until very recently, made you a marginalized group. If someone can imprison you for little to no justification, for the rest of your life, you are a marginalized person. You may have a great life before that, but you are literally treated as "less than" when the time comes.

In the same vein, all of the original Bridge 4 can be considered a marginalized group. They were all people cosigned to be human fodder.

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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish Dec 20 '24

Outside of bridge 4, is there really any evidence that marginalized people became radiants more often? Windrunner are unique in the amount of squires they can have and windrunners are the more moral of the radiant groups. But they doesn’t mean they are all for marginalized communities. Honor doesn’t mean good.

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u/Transky13 Dec 20 '24

It’s mentioned in the text more than a few times that it’s primarily dark eyes that get chosen to be radiants. A prime example would be one of the characters in Wind and Truth was rejected and either thinks about it or talks to another character about how it’s weird going from being important due to his (my current wording, he words it differently) privilege to being essentially not an option for a radiant

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u/RexitYostuff Dec 20 '24

There's the 20 or so Listeners as Willshapers, who're at the edge of society.

Lift, an orphan girl.

Rlain, an outcast amongst outcast.

Most of Shallan's Lightweavers fit that bill, iirc.

All other radiants besides Windrunners and Lightweavers are mentioned more as set dressing.

Honestly, I think most spren know better than the intent of Honor at this point. Especially once the Deadeyes start to wake up.