Timewaster's Guide Archive

Hmm... Having reread the pertinent scene I see what you mean, although what actually happens is quite vague.  Vivenna notices the girl's aura "flicker" then wonders if Denth was lying to her about the all-or-nothing rule.  Is there an annotation elucidating this issue?

At any rate, assuming you are correct, that darkens my view of Awakeners in general and Vivenna in particular a great deal.  There is, then, no excuse not to return her ill-gotten gains to those in need.

First, a couple of points of order:

Vivenna caught some kind of disease within days of becoming a Drab even though she had been in Hallandren for months.  This suggests to me that the toll on the body's immune system is fairly significant once your Breath is lost.  Exactly how significant the loss to life-expectancy is, however, is unclear.

Also, Sanderson did make it clear that giving up Breath was an all-or-nothing affair. You can't dole out individual Breaths from your stockpile to others.

Given that, it does make Vivenna's unique situation a bit more sympathetic: the Breath was thrust on her without her consent and the only way she could rid herself of it is to become a Drab herself.  However, using Awakening in the heat of battle to save one's life (or her sister's life) is one thing; embracing the Awakener lifestyle once the danger is past is something else altogether.  I thought she might perhaps dedicate her significantly longer life-span to helping the needy or perhaps sell the wealth of Breath and use the funds to set up a trust that people could turn to as an alternative to selling their Breath.

As far as giving up your Breath on your deathbed to help the next generation, I don't see anything morally wrong with that.  Creating a kind of family heirloom of the Breath passed from grandparent to grandchild for generations so that each new generation leads a healthier life than the last sounds like a good idea. 

The real issue is when perfectly healthy people or children are coerced, brainwashed (through religion?), or bribed into giving up their Breath.  Breath has to come from somewhere, and people who are financially stable are unlikely to give up an unknown number of years off of their lifespan (not to mention put up with more sick days and melancholy to boot) for a quick score.  That means the most likely candidates are those who are destitute.  Ergo, anyone who willingly buys Breath is profiting from the misery of others, which covers the majority of Awakeners.

Finally, as far as a family or community pooling their collective Breath into one person; that might make sense if the community were threatened by a discrete, immediate, existential threat that an Awakener might be able to deal with.  Otherwise, what's the point?  What could an Awakener accomplish for the community that would be worth dozens of people dying sooner, being weaker of constitution, and taking less joy from life?

I give up.

You misunderstand: I meant she pushes the cans up under the stone while standing underneath it, then using a duralumin fueled shove to tip the stone over using the cans as anchors.  The stone couldn't have weighed more than a dozen mounted soldiers (keep in mind it was put in place by ordinary men.  There were no allomancers in Yomen's kingdom other than Yomen himself), which she already displayed the facility to toss about like yesterday's garbage. 

Secondly, you don't have to be able to see people in order to affect them with emotional allomancy.  Perhaps she pleads with the guards through the stone and makes then feel extraordinarily guilty about their actions.  Or perhaps she threatens that, once released, she will track them and their families down to kill them while augmenting their fear.  Or perhaps she tortures Telden for the password.  Or perhaps she just pretends to drink the wine.  This is a woman who was intuitive enough to find a way to kill an atium-burning mistborn when she had no atium of her own, intuitive enough to find and exploit the Lord Rulers weakness and defeat him, yet she is confounded by a bottle of poisoned wine and a stone?

But once again whether any particular tactic would be successful or not is irrelevant.  Our Monday-Morning Quarterbacking of her options is irrelevant.  The "amount of information she had in the moment" is irrelevant.   Hell, even wether she had a legitimate chance of escaping the guards once out of the storage hold is irrelevant.

My whole argument is that her choice was so out of character that it constitutes Deus Ex Machina.  Am I really the only one who sees how far from Vin's character this action was?  Vin has spent a lifetime conquering horrible situations: wether it's surviving the streets or defeating the Lord ruler, or dealing with Imperial politics.  Her experiences left her sharp-witted, cynical, self-reliant, and above all else, tenacious and indomitable when it comes to survival.  That is what I respected most about her, and that is the crux of the issue.  Would the Vin we came to know ever entertain knocking herself out?  Or would she be so terrified of being helpless that she would try anything else to solve her situation?

You all claim to be objective and I will take you at your word, but not one of you has ceded that Vin's actions were the least bit suspicious.  While you are quick to dismiss my argument's particulars, not one of you addressed its core intent.  Can someone please explain to me how willingly ingesting poison jibes with everything we know of Vin??

Hmm... The annotation appears to assume the only choice was between staying in the cavern indefinitely or trusting in Yomen's good grace.   However, my point is that's a bit of a false dichotomy.  There were still options available to Vin: options that were not outside of her character (as the one she chose, I believe, clearly was).  I think that willingly allowing herself to be put into stasis where she couldn't assess, contemplate, and react to her circumstances, where she would be completely vulnerable to the whims of her captors, would be so abhorrent to her that she would only do so if her life or a close associates were immediately threatened.