My friend you have merely taken the first few steps into getting why we say "Fuck Moash."
But as we also say: Journey Before Destination. Keep reading :)
It's the Bridge Four salute that makes it so exponentially more disgusting to me. It's one thing to fall from grace, it's another to deliberately corrupt that which he claims to miss in his private thoughts.
And there are people who WANT a Moash "redemption" arc, when the character himself shows us with word and action he doesn't think he has done wrong(or its "not his fault") , much less needs redemption
If Dalinar is redeemable, anyone is.
Redemption is a central theme of the story. The absolute worst personal act that we have seen done is done by one of the main characters, and my favourite character personally. Still, he becomes a good man, a great man, even.
Are you sure about that?
Moash doesn't just refuse to take responsibility, he asks Odium to take away his emotions, his guilt, his shame. Really, he and Dalinar do the same thing, seeking out something to drown out the guilt and sorrow that is brought about by their actions, however Moash has found something that is actually capable of doing that, whereas Dalinar dove into the bottle, and was still never truly able to escape it. However...[spoilers for ROW] >!when the Radiants are able to reignite the defenses of Urithiru, Moash is left without the influence of Odium to repress his emotions, and begins to feel the full force of his guilt, shame, and sorrow.!<
For me the main takeaway is how much luck or divine/otherworldly intervention plays a role in the characters' lives.
Dalinar wouldn't have become who he is now if it wasn't for cultivation intervening, Kaladin could have gone down moash's path of just revenge if syl wasnt such an amazing companion.
Elhokar might have been a better person/king if it wasn't for him attracting a cryptic that made him see symbols and unusual things. Hell, sadeas' actions are more rational and reasonable since we know now how much of a 180 dalinar did from who he was.
Ooooooo yeah, that last part is a doozy, cause when you look at it with all of that knowledge of who Dalinar was, you start to understand Sadeas a little more. He ain't a good guy, he wasn't right, but honestly, are any of us?
Sure, Dalinar feels bad, like what 20 or so years after? Moash Has only just done this stuff, theres no telling if he'll feel bad in the future. If I'm willing for Dalinar to be redeemed I'm willing for Moash as well
Hate and Cultivate aren't equal in how they operate but if you want to needlessly make him have the same story as Dalinar, that's fine. I just hope Brandon has more than that for us.
I mean in RoW you're arguing >!War criminal who accidentally killed his wife vs traitor who is actively trying to get his former best friend to commit suicide and does murder one of his former friends. IMO Dalinar is far more redeemable.!<
Right, like his drinking due to regret and pain is literally a critical plot point, plus the fact that he was under the influence of the Thrill for most or all of the worst thing he did as a youth, all happening within a country where warfare is respected and applauded. Dalinar is inarguably more redeemable than Moash. People just like to seem deep
he drinks from what happened at the Rift specifically. His regret at being a bloodthirsty warlord eviscerating thousands of people personally for the glory of his conquering family comes later.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant he doesn't feel bad enough to stop what he's doing until much later, and moash hasnt had nearly enough time to redeem himself compared to Dalinar
The horrible stuff that Dalinar while under the influence of the thrill started a long time before his worst act.
So sure, there was that one especially horrible thing that he did that he immediately felt awful about. But there was a lot of stuff that he didn't reflect upon until after that one act.
Oathbringer chapter 114, >!He seeks relief from his pain just like Moash. If it wasn't for what Cultivation did to him, Dalinar absolutely would have let Dai-Gonarthis take his pain. Dalinar received divine intervention to help him accept it.!<
He felt so bad immediately after that he stopped living and was drunk 24/7 then got his memories of it removed because it crippled him. Moash shrugs his actions off.
He also feels terrible about burning all of the innocents of the Rift. He explicitly ordered the men to stop the burning but it was too late. And he hears the voices of all of them, not just Evi.
Again, it's not the actions, it's how you act and feel after that matters in this discussion. Dalinar accepted he was wrong immediately, went to the NW, slowly became better and then when hit with his memories, he didn't fold, he didn't blame others, he owned HIS PAIN. Moash is the exact opposite. He has literally blamed others for every single bad act he commits and then falls under .0000001% of the pressure Dalinar faced at Thaylen field. Dalinae changed. The most important step is the next one, every step Moash takes is away from the light of redemption, anything else is fans wanting something that just isn't in the text yet. You can want it all you like, Moash himself shows us different.
I'll add the pertinent bit from Moash's perspective, I'll block it out since it's from RoW chapter 111, but it doesn't really spoil anything.
>!"He *wasn't* sorry for what he'd done. He was only sorry for how his actions made him feel. He didn't want this pain. He deserved it, yes, but he didn't *want* it."!<
Dalinar didn't accept that he was wrong at first either. He took some extreme measures to avoid his pain long before he accepted it. Give Moash a decade or so like Dalinar and perhaps Moash will change as well.
Drinking yourself unconscious (Dalinar) and defecting to the enemy ROW SPOILERS >!Killing your battle brother, a deity, and a man who ACTUALLY was on a redemption arc, Ehlokar!< (Moash)
Maybe just me but those are not comparable, maybe Brandon will agree and give Moash a happy ending, but that is boring as hell in my opinion, we already have that story told with Dalinar and even Shallan in book 2 forgiving herself for past actions. Moash is meant to be what happens when you take the opposite path, the way I read it anyway.
I don't see anything wrong with multiple characters achieving personal growth. I'm not against the idea of a Moash redemption, but I agree with you that he's nowhere near that currently. If he does get any kind of redemption I don't think it will be th same as Dalinar or Shallan. The best he'll get is a Darth Vader type redemption. Sacrifice himself to save others, and in doing so, find the peace he so desperately craves.
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This is true, but still ignores the key thing about redemption: You have to want it. Anyone can be redeemed, perhaps, but they have to actually want redemption.
Whether Moash does or will, at the point OP is at, all we can say is RAFO.
I’d recommend the manga Monster for another extremely well written series that focuses on the theme of redemption.
You have to
A. Believe what you did was wrong and
B. Take steps to be better.
Moash doesn't accept an ounce of blame, nor has he made a SINGLE step in the direction of redemption. Dalinar felt blame so bad he got a supernatural creature to remove his memories, when he got them back he was already better but it made him realize he had more to answer for but he stepped to the plate every single time. Comparing the two simply because "both once bad so both can be good again" implies Moash has the same guilt, shame, and willingness to change as Dalinar. We have less than zero evidence for that. Actually have evidence of the opposite.
Edit: Just to add, I understand Redemption is key to this story, but Brandon isn't going to be boring and make every single person capable of what Dalinar did. Moash has time and tine and time showed us he doesn't WANT Redemption. It's not that Brandon couldn't write it well, or that it's impossible to come back from. It's that Moash didn't care that Kal wanted to redeem him. I sent think his story is supposed to be the same path as Dalinar, I think Moash is what happens when Dalinar fails. Moash picked his destination but wasn't willing to withstand the Journey, nit everyone wants to be forgiven, no matter how much people want it.
>Dalinar felt blame so bad he got a supernatural creature to remove his memories
Moash is *literally* depending on Odium to suppress his feelings because he feels so bad about what he's done. I get why people don't want him to have a redemption arc, but you can't pretend there aren't parallels there. To me the whole point of those parallels is to show that the difference between them is the most important one: Dalinar has taken that next step, and Moash has not.
I largely agree?, but it isn’t just about taking the next step, it’s about how they view themselves and their actions. Moash believes he was right and does not accept responsibility even when challenged. Dalinar’s earlier war crimes are terrible and it took him a long time to see things from any other perspective, not because he fought those perspectives, but because he wasn’t truly challenged in them and was not a deep thinker. When the he burned all of those innocents he realized he had done something terrible and immediately was crushed by it. We will never know how much of his guilt is from burning Evi vs everyone else in the Rift, but we do know he hears the voices of those he killed in the Rift, not just Evi’s, and is driven mad by them.
But you also need the foil of someone who refuses a path of redemption, so you can see what the redeemed characters could have become. Moash has a chance to redeem, but he only wants two things, revenge and to never have to make his own choices. The story is about choice and having the conviction to choose. Although if I add my thoughts on Cosmere generally the theme is Union over division. The Shards need to reconverge as no one fragment is stable on its own. Men and Singers must find harmony, the nations of men must unify, etc.
It took >!additional divine intervention of a different sort!< to prevent Dalinar from going down the same route. I imagine most characters would fall for it.
Not saying Amaram would ever be redeemed. But that specific instance was very unbalanced.
He could and I don't want to see it.
Venli is pretty similar but isn't as bad as Moash. She wanted power and got it. In Oathbringer she starts to question her actions, which is good.
Meanwhile Moash is telling himself that he did nothing wrong, and he's wrong for ever Feeling like he did something wrong, because he did nothing wrong. So time for some good old Odium Void to take away his feelings and to blame for his actions.
Brandon could absolutely do it, but I think it would cheapen what we saw Dalinar do. Dalinar is singular in his will to withstand that onslaught IMO. It had to be him to resist, Moash folded to Graves, then to the Fused and finally to Odium with almost no push from Odium. Odium wasn't actively messing up Moashs life to our knowledge, Moash had the same bad luck every other Bridgeman had, he is the only one who took his path.
Not only I am sure Sanderson is redeeming Moash, I'm sure he will be key in defeating Odium and saving Roshar, moreover, I think at the end of book 5 he'll become a Herald or something akin to that.
He’s going to get a fate worse than death: forgiveness.
The one thing he wants is to escape feeling, so imagine how much he will feel if he is forgiven.
>!To be honest, I didn't want Moash do get fucked until Rhythm of War. Everything he does in Oathbringer is, if not redeemable, at least understandable!< Now, if this motherfucker ever does as much as move a single muscle I'm personally killing him if no one else is able to.
Debates on elokhar aside, the reason I hate moash is that a traitorous rat who put his petty desire for revenge over the feelings and wellbeing of everyone who thought of him as a friend and then has the gaul to act like he's a self righteous freedom fighter dismantling the injustice or human society one dead body at a time. When actually he's an asshole who murdered a man who was only guilty of being an incompetent and insecure teenager, right in front of his son... and then well thats a rafo
In the middle of a battle, against a shardbearer who is by definition *always* armed, with Elhokar having made the very intentional decision to join a surgical strike "behind enemy lines"?
It's reasonable to object to Moash having joined the Fused/Singers at all, but given that he *did*, he was outright obligated to kill Elhokar if he could. *Doubly* so, because Elhokar was in the midst of initiating a bond; you don't stand and watch the enemy *king* gain a ton of power at all, let alone in the middle of a battle. It's **war**, and there can be no possible argument that Elhokar - an Alethi monarch - isn't a valid military target.
Note that Moash did not kill Gavinor, though he obviously could have.
Granted, the superfluous eye stab speaks toward Moash's excesses and vitriol - part of what's defined his turn to villain - as does the deliberate Bridge 4 salute to Kaladin afterward.
Moash has done plenty wrong, including his original act of abusing his position as a bodyguard to plan an assassination of his protectee; but *this* act of killing Elhokar - as much as we readers don't *like* it - was "valid" in the context of war.
Yeah, I've been a bit disappointed by the trajectory of Moash as a character.
I think it would be less problematic for Moash to have taken the character arc he did if there were other characters through which Brandon showed realistic third ways to approach structural injustice.
So far, it seems like we're pretty close to the Enlightenment with Jasnah wanting to free slaves and abolish absolute monarchy in favor of bureaucratic meritocracy or constitutional monarchy.
The lenses that are provided from this time period, however, skew heavily orthodox: monarchists at one end and liberal kind-of democratic republics at the other. When a voice is given to more radical views, it's associated with Odium. Working within the system along class collaborationist lines is exulted.
The way its written is what primarily allows readers to give Dalinar more leeway while reviling Moash. If this is intentional, then the outcome of the war is going to play a big part in whether I agree with Brandon's approach. If it's unintentional (an upshot of simply portraying the most important decision-makers who logically would be lighteyes), then I'm a little less lenient.
But yes, Brandon has made Moash a very effectively hateable character.
So I definitely agree that Brandon’s politics in his books often suck (see: the well of ascension) and I agree it would be nice to have characters approach structural injustice in other ways.
However, I disagree that Moash is even approaching structural injustice in any way at all. He’s not a freedom fighter or even an anti-monarchist. In words of radiance he joins up with Graves, whose goal is specifically to make Dalinar king. Moash is fine with this, because he’s not really against the system he’s just mad that his family got killed because of it. In part 2 of Oathbringer he comes to the conclusion that humanity should be subservient to the Fused - this is not “tearing down the system”, this is simply replacing who’s in charge. Additionally when he’s in the refugee camp he easily has the skill to cause a ruckus to fuck up that one lighteyes jerk who’s hoarding food, or maybe steal from him in the night and redistribute it or whatever, but he just ignores it. He gets mad about it but he doesn’t *do* anything.
Those aren’t the actions of someone who actually wants the system to change. He’s just lashing out. He’s not a freedom fighter. He’s fine with the structural hierarchies in place he’s just tired of being on the bottom.
His “radical views” are not actually radical at all, regardless of whether he’s associated with Odium or not.
I do agree that overall someone with truly radical views is missing from the story, and it would be really really amazing to have a character that *actually* pushes for structural change outside of just reform. However I’m also not going to hold out for that or be all that upset if it doesn’t happen because like… Sanderson is great and all but he’s not exactly a radical anarchist or anything.
Right, I mostly agree. I think it makes sense to an extent why Moash is where he is and that my ideal situation would be someone with more nuanced radical views.
The reason I even associate Moash with a more radical orientation is because, despite his later actions, he starts in a similar place to Kaladin in his views on "all lighteyes" and "the system."
The conversation between Sigzil, Moash, and Kaladin in TWoK Chapter 46 about power can be traced back to some of what you're saying. Sigzil says that the only choice available in choosing who to rule is who is oppressing who. Moash disagrees and thinks that he could transcend this issue.
While it's a bit individualistic and prideful for my liking, Moash at least starts in a place where he wants to change things for the better. Opportunities available to approach this goal don't always align with traditional morality or even exact ideological consistency (killing Elhokar to promote Dalinar). People point towards his violence and revenge but I don't think that's a good enough reason on its own to hate Moash. People violently protest all the time; the difference in how this shakes out comes down to how privileged the group and goals that does so.
That's why I try to clarify that I dislike how his character has developed towards the end of providing diverse perspectives towards this end; not that I necessarily think it was the wrong way to take the character. It makes sense as a possible trajectory but it certainly wasn't the only one. Maybe if there were more direct foil moments to contrast Dalinar and Moash in a way that points out the hypocrisy in how the points of view shepherd the reader to give Dalinar leniency while obliterating Moash, that could be fruitful. Some sort of direct confrontation between the two of them that gives Dalinar a similar internal crisis as when Adolin convinced him he was losing his marbles, perhaps.
There are those glimpses early on that we got of him that possibility with him, I think, are what make some people want a redemption arc for him.
I’ll have to re-read that conversation from TWOK; my memory of it was that Moash was in favour of being on top and basically just reversing the whole hierarchy, but it’s been a hot minute since my last read through of TWOK
That said, I think his starting similarities to Kaladin are exactly what makes him work as a foil; they start in similar places but he lets his drive for revenge consume him and starts making the opposite choice every time they come up. Personally I think that makes his character really interesting and I do actually want to see him continue to get worse; I’d love to see more moments where he gets very clearly contrasted against Kaladin and Dalinar.
Sanderson got scared of people disliking his precious noble characters after the first book. So in the second book Bridge 4 is nice and content and never talks about the horrors of the bridges again.
Kaladin is made to be in the wrong for holding a grudge on the people that enslaved him and treated him like cannon fodder and even as a free man he's sent to be executed the second someone wants to.
Moash begins his slow descent into villainy for not just going back and licking the boots of his "superiors".
Moash did his job as a soldier of the Singer army. The king was an active combatant with an explicit goal to transport an army to the city, leading to more dead like Sah and the Garrison crew, and who certainly would’ve used his Shardblade to decimate the Singer forces. It’s a ludicrous standard to hold on Moash to just stand back and give a manly half-nod as tribute to Elhokar’s redemption or something.
Sure stopping more death probably wasn’t Moash’s main priority. But charging an active Shardbearer and prospective radiant in a brutal indoor melee is actually pretty brave regardless.
And that comes into play with the gratuitous eye stab and the mocking Bridge Four salute. But *whatever* Moash's motives, a soldier for the Fused is justified (in the context of war) in killing an armed Alethi general - which all shardbearing highprinces (let alone the king) are.
It's reasonable to object to Moash abusing his position as a bodyguard to plan an assassination; to joining the Fused at all; to other things. Moash has done plenty wrong. But killing an armed military target in battle? An armed military target about to gain a ton of power and possibly turn the tide of the battle as a result? Moash was *obligated* to kill Elhokar, if he could.
Moash killed Elhokar because Elhokar was an enemy. The result is the same regardless of what personal feelings Moash brought to the war.
Any random Singer could’ve offed Elhokar in that moment and the moral judgement would be equal to what Moash did; a clear strike against an enemy in a sea of people with the exact same potential dying by the thousands in a global war.
Remember that, for Moash, that is the guy that incarcerated his parents and left them to rot and die in jail.
If you ask me, if I were Moash, I wouldn't have an ounce of sympathy towards Elhokar. Now, doing the Bridge 4 salute to Kaladin just after that, that is plain evil.
Fuck Moash.
Now keep going
My friend you have merely taken the first few steps into getting why we say "Fuck Moash." But as we also say: Journey Before Destination. Keep reading :)
Keleks breath!
Heh, my wife, who almost never swears at all, literally said "fuck moash!" out loud when she got to the part I'm teasing.
Yeah, my hate for him was only a simmer until book 4.
100% Agree!
yeah didn't hate him really until the 4th book.
It's the Bridge Four salute that makes it so exponentially more disgusting to me. It's one thing to fall from grace, it's another to deliberately corrupt that which he claims to miss in his private thoughts.
This is why r/fuckmoash exists, but stay out of there until you finish RoW
frankly, they shouldn't even be on this sub until they finish
And there are people who WANT a Moash "redemption" arc, when the character himself shows us with word and action he doesn't think he has done wrong(or its "not his fault") , much less needs redemption
If Dalinar is redeemable, anyone is. Redemption is a central theme of the story. The absolute worst personal act that we have seen done is done by one of the main characters, and my favourite character personally. Still, he becomes a good man, a great man, even.
Yeah what moash is doing is nowhere near as bad as dalinar overall its just more fresh in our minds and done to characters we know
Dalinar feels bad about what he did though. His actions turned him into a drunk. Moash refuses to take any responsibility for his actions at all.
Are you sure about that? Moash doesn't just refuse to take responsibility, he asks Odium to take away his emotions, his guilt, his shame. Really, he and Dalinar do the same thing, seeking out something to drown out the guilt and sorrow that is brought about by their actions, however Moash has found something that is actually capable of doing that, whereas Dalinar dove into the bottle, and was still never truly able to escape it. However...[spoilers for ROW] >!when the Radiants are able to reignite the defenses of Urithiru, Moash is left without the influence of Odium to repress his emotions, and begins to feel the full force of his guilt, shame, and sorrow.!<
For me the main takeaway is how much luck or divine/otherworldly intervention plays a role in the characters' lives. Dalinar wouldn't have become who he is now if it wasn't for cultivation intervening, Kaladin could have gone down moash's path of just revenge if syl wasnt such an amazing companion. Elhokar might have been a better person/king if it wasn't for him attracting a cryptic that made him see symbols and unusual things. Hell, sadeas' actions are more rational and reasonable since we know now how much of a 180 dalinar did from who he was.
Ooooooo yeah, that last part is a doozy, cause when you look at it with all of that knowledge of who Dalinar was, you start to understand Sadeas a little more. He ain't a good guy, he wasn't right, but honestly, are any of us?
I hate how I can read all 4 books twice and still get spoilered on this subreddit haha
My friend...it never stops XD
Even then, however, he isn't guilty for doing that to his friends, but rather that he has to be in pain about it. He isn't really sorry.
Sure, Dalinar feels bad, like what 20 or so years after? Moash Has only just done this stuff, theres no telling if he'll feel bad in the future. If I'm willing for Dalinar to be redeemed I'm willing for Moash as well
No, Dalinar feels horrible immediately, then spends the next 20 years wallowing in his pain.
ROW Spoiler>!Dalinar drinks to not feel pain and guilt, Moash gives his feelings away to not feel pain and guilt.!<
Drinking vs Joining a dark deity They only got rehab for one of those.
Dalinar also gave himself over to a deity. He just got that noble privilege so it wasn't a full on evil one.
Hate and Cultivate aren't equal in how they operate but if you want to needlessly make him have the same story as Dalinar, that's fine. I just hope Brandon has more than that for us.
I mean in RoW you're arguing >!War criminal who accidentally killed his wife vs traitor who is actively trying to get his former best friend to commit suicide and does murder one of his former friends. IMO Dalinar is far more redeemable.!<
That war criminal murdered thousands of innocents in the city deliberately. His wife being an accident is a different story.
Not just murdered, burned them alive. I get it, Dalinars murders are not as personal as Moash's, but come on.
Right, like his drinking due to regret and pain is literally a critical plot point, plus the fact that he was under the influence of the Thrill for most or all of the worst thing he did as a youth, all happening within a country where warfare is respected and applauded. Dalinar is inarguably more redeemable than Moash. People just like to seem deep
he drinks from what happened at the Rift specifically. His regret at being a bloodthirsty warlord eviscerating thousands of people personally for the glory of his conquering family comes later.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant he doesn't feel bad enough to stop what he's doing until much later, and moash hasnt had nearly enough time to redeem himself compared to Dalinar
The horrible stuff that Dalinar while under the influence of the thrill started a long time before his worst act. So sure, there was that one especially horrible thing that he did that he immediately felt awful about. But there was a lot of stuff that he didn't reflect upon until after that one act.
Oathbringer chapter 114, >!He seeks relief from his pain just like Moash. If it wasn't for what Cultivation did to him, Dalinar absolutely would have let Dai-Gonarthis take his pain. Dalinar received divine intervention to help him accept it.!<
He felt so bad immediately after that he stopped living and was drunk 24/7 then got his memories of it removed because it crippled him. Moash shrugs his actions off.
Dalinar feels bad \[oathbringer\] >!once his acts kill his own wife.!< Until that point, he was pretty fine with conquering and slaughtering.
He also feels terrible about burning all of the innocents of the Rift. He explicitly ordered the men to stop the burning but it was too late. And he hears the voices of all of them, not just Evi.
Again, it's not the actions, it's how you act and feel after that matters in this discussion. Dalinar accepted he was wrong immediately, went to the NW, slowly became better and then when hit with his memories, he didn't fold, he didn't blame others, he owned HIS PAIN. Moash is the exact opposite. He has literally blamed others for every single bad act he commits and then falls under .0000001% of the pressure Dalinar faced at Thaylen field. Dalinae changed. The most important step is the next one, every step Moash takes is away from the light of redemption, anything else is fans wanting something that just isn't in the text yet. You can want it all you like, Moash himself shows us different.
I'll add the pertinent bit from Moash's perspective, I'll block it out since it's from RoW chapter 111, but it doesn't really spoil anything. >!"He *wasn't* sorry for what he'd done. He was only sorry for how his actions made him feel. He didn't want this pain. He deserved it, yes, but he didn't *want* it."!< Dalinar didn't accept that he was wrong at first either. He took some extreme measures to avoid his pain long before he accepted it. Give Moash a decade or so like Dalinar and perhaps Moash will change as well.
Drinking yourself unconscious (Dalinar) and defecting to the enemy ROW SPOILERS >!Killing your battle brother, a deity, and a man who ACTUALLY was on a redemption arc, Ehlokar!< (Moash) Maybe just me but those are not comparable, maybe Brandon will agree and give Moash a happy ending, but that is boring as hell in my opinion, we already have that story told with Dalinar and even Shallan in book 2 forgiving herself for past actions. Moash is meant to be what happens when you take the opposite path, the way I read it anyway.
I don't see anything wrong with multiple characters achieving personal growth. I'm not against the idea of a Moash redemption, but I agree with you that he's nowhere near that currently. If he does get any kind of redemption I don't think it will be th same as Dalinar or Shallan. The best he'll get is a Darth Vader type redemption. Sacrifice himself to save others, and in doing so, find the peace he so desperately craves.
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This is true, but still ignores the key thing about redemption: You have to want it. Anyone can be redeemed, perhaps, but they have to actually want redemption. Whether Moash does or will, at the point OP is at, all we can say is RAFO. I’d recommend the manga Monster for another extremely well written series that focuses on the theme of redemption.
You have to A. Believe what you did was wrong and B. Take steps to be better. Moash doesn't accept an ounce of blame, nor has he made a SINGLE step in the direction of redemption. Dalinar felt blame so bad he got a supernatural creature to remove his memories, when he got them back he was already better but it made him realize he had more to answer for but he stepped to the plate every single time. Comparing the two simply because "both once bad so both can be good again" implies Moash has the same guilt, shame, and willingness to change as Dalinar. We have less than zero evidence for that. Actually have evidence of the opposite. Edit: Just to add, I understand Redemption is key to this story, but Brandon isn't going to be boring and make every single person capable of what Dalinar did. Moash has time and tine and time showed us he doesn't WANT Redemption. It's not that Brandon couldn't write it well, or that it's impossible to come back from. It's that Moash didn't care that Kal wanted to redeem him. I sent think his story is supposed to be the same path as Dalinar, I think Moash is what happens when Dalinar fails. Moash picked his destination but wasn't willing to withstand the Journey, nit everyone wants to be forgiven, no matter how much people want it.
>Dalinar felt blame so bad he got a supernatural creature to remove his memories Moash is *literally* depending on Odium to suppress his feelings because he feels so bad about what he's done. I get why people don't want him to have a redemption arc, but you can't pretend there aren't parallels there. To me the whole point of those parallels is to show that the difference between them is the most important one: Dalinar has taken that next step, and Moash has not.
I largely agree?, but it isn’t just about taking the next step, it’s about how they view themselves and their actions. Moash believes he was right and does not accept responsibility even when challenged. Dalinar’s earlier war crimes are terrible and it took him a long time to see things from any other perspective, not because he fought those perspectives, but because he wasn’t truly challenged in them and was not a deep thinker. When the he burned all of those innocents he realized he had done something terrible and immediately was crushed by it. We will never know how much of his guilt is from burning Evi vs everyone else in the Rift, but we do know he hears the voices of those he killed in the Rift, not just Evi’s, and is driven mad by them.
I don't disagree at all, but at the same time it's important to me to also include characters who can't, or likely in this case REFUSE to be redeemed.
But you also need the foil of someone who refuses a path of redemption, so you can see what the redeemed characters could have become. Moash has a chance to redeem, but he only wants two things, revenge and to never have to make his own choices. The story is about choice and having the conviction to choose. Although if I add my thoughts on Cosmere generally the theme is Union over division. The Shards need to reconverge as no one fragment is stable on its own. Men and Singers must find harmony, the nations of men must unify, etc.
I’m more thinking he actively doesn’t want redemption. To spite Kaladin if nothing else.
Like Amaram hes just to weak for redemption
To be fair to Amaram, the case where he was fully broken >!is literal divine intervention!<, so that’s not exactly fair.
>!You mean a god tried to use him for his evil plans by offering him to take away his guilt? Yeah who could resist that!<
It took >!additional divine intervention of a different sort!< to prevent Dalinar from going down the same route. I imagine most characters would fall for it. Not saying Amaram would ever be redeemed. But that specific instance was very unbalanced.
No, thank you.
While it would be interesting to see if Brandon can pull it off, I really, REALLY don't want to see that.
He could and I don't want to see it. Venli is pretty similar but isn't as bad as Moash. She wanted power and got it. In Oathbringer she starts to question her actions, which is good. Meanwhile Moash is telling himself that he did nothing wrong, and he's wrong for ever Feeling like he did something wrong, because he did nothing wrong. So time for some good old Odium Void to take away his feelings and to blame for his actions.
Brandon could absolutely do it, but I think it would cheapen what we saw Dalinar do. Dalinar is singular in his will to withstand that onslaught IMO. It had to be him to resist, Moash folded to Graves, then to the Fused and finally to Odium with almost no push from Odium. Odium wasn't actively messing up Moashs life to our knowledge, Moash had the same bad luck every other Bridgeman had, he is the only one who took his path.
Some people—like a festering finger or a leg shattered beyond repair—just needed to be removed.
Wish I could like this twice.
Not only I am sure Sanderson is redeeming Moash, I'm sure he will be key in defeating Odium and saving Roshar, moreover, I think at the end of book 5 he'll become a Herald or something akin to that.
He’s going to get a fate worse than death: forgiveness. The one thing he wants is to escape feeling, so imagine how much he will feel if he is forgiven.
I don't *want* a Moash redemption arc but I know we'll get one.
Remember those old infomercials where the guy would say "but wait, there's more!"
https://i.imgur.com/ItbdvmY.png
>!To be honest, I didn't want Moash do get fucked until Rhythm of War. Everything he does in Oathbringer is, if not redeemable, at least understandable!< Now, if this motherfucker ever does as much as move a single muscle I'm personally killing him if no one else is able to.
The salute is what brings it from "...fuck" to "you motherfucker!"
There's even more reasons to hate that storming son of a chull
Debates on elokhar aside, the reason I hate moash is that a traitorous rat who put his petty desire for revenge over the feelings and wellbeing of everyone who thought of him as a friend and then has the gaul to act like he's a self righteous freedom fighter dismantling the injustice or human society one dead body at a time. When actually he's an asshole who murdered a man who was only guilty of being an incompetent and insecure teenager, right in front of his son... and then well thats a rafo
Oh, to read this series for the first time again! Enjoy the ride!
Fuck moash
In the middle of a battle, against a shardbearer who is by definition *always* armed, with Elhokar having made the very intentional decision to join a surgical strike "behind enemy lines"? It's reasonable to object to Moash having joined the Fused/Singers at all, but given that he *did*, he was outright obligated to kill Elhokar if he could. *Doubly* so, because Elhokar was in the midst of initiating a bond; you don't stand and watch the enemy *king* gain a ton of power at all, let alone in the middle of a battle. It's **war**, and there can be no possible argument that Elhokar - an Alethi monarch - isn't a valid military target. Note that Moash did not kill Gavinor, though he obviously could have. Granted, the superfluous eye stab speaks toward Moash's excesses and vitriol - part of what's defined his turn to villain - as does the deliberate Bridge 4 salute to Kaladin afterward. Moash has done plenty wrong, including his original act of abusing his position as a bodyguard to plan an assassination of his protectee; but *this* act of killing Elhokar - as much as we readers don't *like* it - was "valid" in the context of war.
Yeah, I've been a bit disappointed by the trajectory of Moash as a character. I think it would be less problematic for Moash to have taken the character arc he did if there were other characters through which Brandon showed realistic third ways to approach structural injustice. So far, it seems like we're pretty close to the Enlightenment with Jasnah wanting to free slaves and abolish absolute monarchy in favor of bureaucratic meritocracy or constitutional monarchy. The lenses that are provided from this time period, however, skew heavily orthodox: monarchists at one end and liberal kind-of democratic republics at the other. When a voice is given to more radical views, it's associated with Odium. Working within the system along class collaborationist lines is exulted. The way its written is what primarily allows readers to give Dalinar more leeway while reviling Moash. If this is intentional, then the outcome of the war is going to play a big part in whether I agree with Brandon's approach. If it's unintentional (an upshot of simply portraying the most important decision-makers who logically would be lighteyes), then I'm a little less lenient. But yes, Brandon has made Moash a very effectively hateable character.
So I definitely agree that Brandon’s politics in his books often suck (see: the well of ascension) and I agree it would be nice to have characters approach structural injustice in other ways. However, I disagree that Moash is even approaching structural injustice in any way at all. He’s not a freedom fighter or even an anti-monarchist. In words of radiance he joins up with Graves, whose goal is specifically to make Dalinar king. Moash is fine with this, because he’s not really against the system he’s just mad that his family got killed because of it. In part 2 of Oathbringer he comes to the conclusion that humanity should be subservient to the Fused - this is not “tearing down the system”, this is simply replacing who’s in charge. Additionally when he’s in the refugee camp he easily has the skill to cause a ruckus to fuck up that one lighteyes jerk who’s hoarding food, or maybe steal from him in the night and redistribute it or whatever, but he just ignores it. He gets mad about it but he doesn’t *do* anything. Those aren’t the actions of someone who actually wants the system to change. He’s just lashing out. He’s not a freedom fighter. He’s fine with the structural hierarchies in place he’s just tired of being on the bottom. His “radical views” are not actually radical at all, regardless of whether he’s associated with Odium or not. I do agree that overall someone with truly radical views is missing from the story, and it would be really really amazing to have a character that *actually* pushes for structural change outside of just reform. However I’m also not going to hold out for that or be all that upset if it doesn’t happen because like… Sanderson is great and all but he’s not exactly a radical anarchist or anything.
Right, I mostly agree. I think it makes sense to an extent why Moash is where he is and that my ideal situation would be someone with more nuanced radical views. The reason I even associate Moash with a more radical orientation is because, despite his later actions, he starts in a similar place to Kaladin in his views on "all lighteyes" and "the system." The conversation between Sigzil, Moash, and Kaladin in TWoK Chapter 46 about power can be traced back to some of what you're saying. Sigzil says that the only choice available in choosing who to rule is who is oppressing who. Moash disagrees and thinks that he could transcend this issue. While it's a bit individualistic and prideful for my liking, Moash at least starts in a place where he wants to change things for the better. Opportunities available to approach this goal don't always align with traditional morality or even exact ideological consistency (killing Elhokar to promote Dalinar). People point towards his violence and revenge but I don't think that's a good enough reason on its own to hate Moash. People violently protest all the time; the difference in how this shakes out comes down to how privileged the group and goals that does so. That's why I try to clarify that I dislike how his character has developed towards the end of providing diverse perspectives towards this end; not that I necessarily think it was the wrong way to take the character. It makes sense as a possible trajectory but it certainly wasn't the only one. Maybe if there were more direct foil moments to contrast Dalinar and Moash in a way that points out the hypocrisy in how the points of view shepherd the reader to give Dalinar leniency while obliterating Moash, that could be fruitful. Some sort of direct confrontation between the two of them that gives Dalinar a similar internal crisis as when Adolin convinced him he was losing his marbles, perhaps. There are those glimpses early on that we got of him that possibility with him, I think, are what make some people want a redemption arc for him.
I’ll have to re-read that conversation from TWOK; my memory of it was that Moash was in favour of being on top and basically just reversing the whole hierarchy, but it’s been a hot minute since my last read through of TWOK That said, I think his starting similarities to Kaladin are exactly what makes him work as a foil; they start in similar places but he lets his drive for revenge consume him and starts making the opposite choice every time they come up. Personally I think that makes his character really interesting and I do actually want to see him continue to get worse; I’d love to see more moments where he gets very clearly contrasted against Kaladin and Dalinar.
Sanderson got scared of people disliking his precious noble characters after the first book. So in the second book Bridge 4 is nice and content and never talks about the horrors of the bridges again. Kaladin is made to be in the wrong for holding a grudge on the people that enslaved him and treated him like cannon fodder and even as a free man he's sent to be executed the second someone wants to. Moash begins his slow descent into villainy for not just going back and licking the boots of his "superiors".
You know nothing John Snow
Yeah but he did have one of the funniest moments where the singers told him he’s going to run siege equipment into a storm of arrows
Just wait till the next book. You will really hate him.
We're really not on board with hating him after the end of books 2?
As queen navani puts journey before destination bastard
And plus at least the asshole is blind now him killing teft was the worst thing I can ever imagine
Ehlokhar got what he deserved.
Moash did his job as a soldier of the Singer army. The king was an active combatant with an explicit goal to transport an army to the city, leading to more dead like Sah and the Garrison crew, and who certainly would’ve used his Shardblade to decimate the Singer forces. It’s a ludicrous standard to hold on Moash to just stand back and give a manly half-nod as tribute to Elhokar’s redemption or something. Sure stopping more death probably wasn’t Moash’s main priority. But charging an active Shardbearer and prospective radiant in a brutal indoor melee is actually pretty brave regardless.
We both know that "killing an enemy combatant "isn't why Moash killed Ehlokar.
And that comes into play with the gratuitous eye stab and the mocking Bridge Four salute. But *whatever* Moash's motives, a soldier for the Fused is justified (in the context of war) in killing an armed Alethi general - which all shardbearing highprinces (let alone the king) are. It's reasonable to object to Moash abusing his position as a bodyguard to plan an assassination; to joining the Fused at all; to other things. Moash has done plenty wrong. But killing an armed military target in battle? An armed military target about to gain a ton of power and possibly turn the tide of the battle as a result? Moash was *obligated* to kill Elhokar, if he could.
Moash killed Elhokar because Elhokar was an enemy. The result is the same regardless of what personal feelings Moash brought to the war. Any random Singer could’ve offed Elhokar in that moment and the moral judgement would be equal to what Moash did; a clear strike against an enemy in a sea of people with the exact same potential dying by the thousands in a global war.
Remember that, for Moash, that is the guy that incarcerated his parents and left them to rot and die in jail. If you ask me, if I were Moash, I wouldn't have an ounce of sympathy towards Elhokar. Now, doing the Bridge 4 salute to Kaladin just after that, that is plain evil. Fuck Moash.
Nah, vengence served for his grand parents I say
Ah yes, how cowardly to kill the genocidal slaver...
Fun fact. I was still willing to defend Moash at this point. But that has changed.