every morning i go out onto the farm and ring a gong at the perfect resonant frequency of one of my pigs, causing it to disassemble into perfectly cooked breakfast meats
Questioner: Did Adonalsium ever create any avatars?
Brandon Sanderson: I'm not gonna RAFO this; I'm gonna give you answer. But there's the thing on this answer: some of these things are canon in stuff I've done so far that I may not canonize going forward.
The answer is yes: in original outlines going back to Dragonsteel, the answer is yes, that you would have seen that. Will I do that when I write the actual series? I cannot guarantee.
Medieval authors were so fucking funny. In "The Faerie Queene" this guy comes up to the main hero and is like "Don't go over to that cave, there's a guy inside that makes people kill themselves." And the hero is like "Bet." and goes into the cave. Then the old man (literally called Despair) is like "If you die, you can't commit sin." and can you guess what happened.
I don't know where this "if you don't feel love/empathy you're evil" idea comes from like if you can only be decent towards people if you love them/feel empathy towards them then I'm pretty sure I'm not the one mistreating more people of the two of us
The moment you decide that horrific violence is okay if it's aimed at Bad Guys™, you immediately have an incentive to categorize all of your "enemies" as Bad Guys™ in order to justify violence to them. They are not people anymore, they aren't complex and diverse human beings with their own motivations and lives and desires, they are the Bad Guys™ and everything done to them (no matter how horrific or indefensible in any other situation) is okay because it's for a Good Cause™.
The only way to not fall into that sort of mindset is to just not let yourself create exceptions for your basic morals. And that isn't EASY, you have to correct yourself constantly and break away from people and blogs and new sources and the like that push dehumanizing and violent narratives, but it's the only way to approach sensitive and important topics with kindness and compassion rather than hate and anger.