#slanderson

[iliiuan]

It was said she once vanished from the Tower for ten years because the Hall intended to raise her Amyrlin.

SANDERSON GET OVER HERE AND ANSWER FOR YOUR CRIMES.

Cadsuane as Amyrlin.

Fucking hell.

[gunkreads]

Okay I'm sorry this bubbled to the top of my head but I want to post it. I really hope that the fallout of Sanderson's weird and rude attitudes toward the Wheel of Time show's writing team results in people taking a more metered and critique-prone approach to his work. I really feel bad for people who love his writing because some of them have just had a major "don't meet your heroes" moment, which is always miserable, but I feel like the best possible result is for a bunch of his fans to shift their attitudes away from uncritical enjoyment of his books and toward the type of enjoyment that leaves room to acknowledge its flaws.

It's a hard shift to make! I haven't successfully made that shift yet for a lot of stories I love. I just hope this can be an impetus for people to recontextualize the way they love his books.

[gunkreads]

It's actually profoundly fucking embarrassing to think back on how much I loved Veins of Gold when I first read it. In my own defense, I'm just always a sucker for apotheosis--a scene like that was bound to look great to me no matter how it was written--but holy SHIT did that arc give me whiplash. Weirdly enough, it made Rand a complete non-character for the remainder of the series. His whole central conflict just... ended. Two books early. Whatever, it's been fourteen fuckin years. No point bitching about bad work I have no say in fixing.

[gunkreads]

Aaaaand no more sanderson for quite a while. That was all I had right now and I'd like to keep it that way.

[gunkreads]

I do think that fantasy authors sometimes get eminently annoying when they pick apart the specific interactions of their magical story elements with real-world physics and build everything around that. It's an interesting concept the first one-to-three times you read it, but after that it tends to just drag. Give me, the reader, three or four magical cause-and-effect sequences and let me puzzle the rest out. I do not need a literature review on physical chemistry's applications to telekinesis in my fantasy novel every twenty pages. Once, at worst, is enough. I used to read those papers for money; yours had better be Fucking Good if it's gonna be in your spec fic novel, and seeing as you never stepped foot in a PChem classroom in your life, it sure as fuck is not.

I prefer authors that know when to let magic be magic, given their own limitations. Sure, research it up and make it realistic--I don't care--but please, for the love of god, hold back from the breakdown of every single little interaction.

[gunkreads]

One of these days I'm just gonna have to start reading the sparknotes of Sanderson books. I just can't stomach the thought of reading another one but I wanna know what happens! Just not bad enough to read them. For an author known for saying "RAFO", he sure makes it fucking hard to read

[gunkreads]

Really love Androl discourse because he truly is the most milquetoast bitch EVER in the series. Like so completely Disney-bland, zero features, I wouldn't even call him a self-insert so much as a beige countertop. Absolute lampshade of a man. Actually, knowing his Mormon origins, maybe he IS supposed to be a self-insert and Brando is just that boring. I love that he's like the epitome of "wait but my guy is cooler" and the guy he's supposed to be cooler than is fucking LOGAIN. Could you imagine? Could you imagine being entrusted with such a rich story and crushing such a fascinating character to mush so callously in order to get your fuckin lil whiteboy in there? Your lil fuckin whiteboy slim Androl? Why don't you fuck yourself And-rol off a cliff buddy

[gunkreads]

Since I’m thinking about it and I want to put this train of thought in the railyard for long-term maintenance, my actual beef with Sando boils down to “he thinks he’s fucking hilarious. i do not like his jokes.” There’s other stuff but really that’s what makes his books hard to read.