Lyn: Greetings and welcome back to the Oathbringer Reread! This week Shallan—I mean, Veil—goes on the hunt for some information and learns a thing or two about hard liquor.
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the ENTIRE NOVEL in each reread. If you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Shallan (Veil)
WHERE: Urithiru (Shallan’s quarters, marketplace)
WHEN: 1174.1.3.4 (same day as Dalinar’s sparring match in Ch. 16, the day after her training session with Adolin in Ch. 15)
Shallan dons her Veil persona and heads out into the marketplace, looking for information about the string of murders. She goes to a bar and learns a valuable lesson about hard liquor, then learns a more interesting one about her Stormlight healing—it also heals drunkenness! After getting some information out of a bouncer, she heads deeper into the marketplace, towards a tavern where someone was recently stabbed. After drinking an unhealthy amount of Horneater White, she finds a group of thugs with information about the killing. She proves herself to them in a rather dramatic fashion, then flashes the symbol of the Ghostbloods. The thugs inform her that this murder was a strangulation, not a stabbing—but another person was found the next night, killed in exactly the same fashion.
Threshold of the Storm
Title: Double Vision
Alice: The title isn’t a direct quote from the text this week, but was suggested by the second double murder and the blurred vision of Shallan’s drunky-spree.
L: Drunky-spree is a highly technical term. Very professional, we assure you.
Heralds
A: Shalash graces all four positions this week: patron of Lightweavers, called the Herald of Beauty; divine attributes Creative & Honest, and associated with the role of Artist. I’d call this a mixed bag of straight and ironic representation. Shallan is a Lightweaver (obviously) and is both creative and artistic in this chapter. She’s also deliberately not so beautiful, and totally not honest—either in her appearance, or in her internal issues.
Icon
Pattern, indicating a primarily/solely Shallan chapter
Epigraph
You cannot have a spice described to you, but must taste it for yourself.
–From Oathbringer, preface
L: This is very true. Like trying to describe color to someone who is blind, it’s nearly impossible to describe a taste without some sort of frame of reference. But this quote is clearly not just talking about taste. When in combination with the previous epigraphs (“You must know what I have done, and what those actions cost me. For in this comes the lesson. It is not a lesson I claim to be able to teach.”) the meaning becomes more clear. Dalinar is speaking about the experiences he’s endured, the pain he’s remembered. Grief and guilt are not emotions which can be easily described, like spices. Without having experienced them yourself, any description is the barest trace of the reality. A shadow, without any of the nuances or strength that enduring such an experience imbues. But how does this epigraph correlate to this particular chapter?
A: I think maybe experience is the connection here. Shallan starts out the chapter by taking on the persona of Veil, but she acknowledges that she doesn’t really have the experiences she pretends Veil has. She worries, rightly, that her portrayal will be off somehow, because she’s never “tasted the spice” before and is only guessing at some of the look, attitude, and behavior suitable to this character. Speaking of “tasting the spice”… that Horneater White is definitely a new taste!
Stories & Songs
How had anything ever grown up here? Her breath puffed out in front of her, and coldspren grew around her feet.
A: I don’t know how much of this I realized the first time through, but there are a LOT of hints that Urithiru not only had functional plumbing once upon a time, it had stuff like warm air, irrigation, and increased pressure. On the reread, I’m picking up a lot more of these, and it’s making me intensely curious! Then there’s this bit, where she’s looking out over the Breakaway market area:
Others were actual buildings. Small stone sheds that had been built inside this cavern, here since the days of the Radiants.
A: So of course I want to know what the Radiants used “small stone sheds” for back in the day, here inside this enormous tower full of rooms and hallways and open spaces. Maybe someday these things will be revealed.
Bruised & Broken
There was a simple relief for Shallan’s pain. There was an easy way to hide. Veil hadn’t suffered as Shallan had—and she was tough enough to handle that sort of thing anyway. Becoming her was like setting down a terrible burden.
A: We already knew that she was using her personalities to filter her reactions, but this hurts. Somehow, she’s really making herself into a completely different person, not just a role or an illusion. There’s still some of her left, as in
The part at the back of her mind that was still Shallan worried about this.
but it’s creeping me out. She’s squashing all her knowledge and experience into a tiny little corner of her mind. I’m sure it makes her better at playing other parts, but it’s just so… unhealthy.
L: Completely agree. I doubt anyone is a complete stranger to the joys of escapism—vanishing into the pages of a good book, for instance. Many people enjoy shutting out the real world for a few hours, forgetting whatever troubles they might be enduring in order to simply be somewhere (or someone) else. But actually living as another person is so troubling. I’m no master of psychology, but this sounds to me like the beginning of a case of dissociative identity disorder. Shallan hasn’t yet gotten to the stage where her identities are in open conflict, but she’s certainly heading in that direction.
“Well?” Veil asked, turning to the wall, where Pattern hung.
“Mmm…” he said. “Good lie.”
“Thank you.”
“Not like the other.”
“Radiant?”
“You slip in and out of her,” Pattern said, “like the sun behind clouds.”
L: PATTERN. NO. BAD SPREN. Do not enable this!
A: Well, there’s that, for sure! I do find it interesting, though, that he approves of the Veil illusion more than Radiant. Is he just more impressed with the complete change into Veil? Or does he see something dangerous in how easily Shallan can adjust the Shallan/Radiant ratio and be both at once?
“You must speak truths to progress, but you will hate me for making it happen. So I can die, and once done you can—”
“No. No, please don’t leave me.”
“But you hate me.”
“I hate myself too,” she whispered. “Just… please. Don’t go. Don’t die.”
L: Oh, Pattern. He’s too good for this (or any) world. Sweetest little spren. I’ve really gotta feel for Shallan here, too. Pattern’s the only thing she really has left. She hasn’t grown close enough to Adolin yet to fully trust and love him, so Pattern is her only friend and confidante. She can’t lose him too.
A: I seem to remember being really worried for her, if Pattern kept suggesting this. She’s lost so much already!
“Veil is just a face.”
No. Veil was a woman who didn’t giggle when she got drunk, or whine, fanning her mouth when the drink was too hard for her. She never acted like a silly teenager. Veil had never been sheltered, practically locked away, until she went crazy and murdered her own family.
L: Pattern’s got the right of it. I’m really hoping that Shallan eventually comes to realize this either in the time skip between books 3 and 4, or over the course of book 4.
A: This is a really big open-ended question! Part of the point of being a Lightweaver is to create illusions, and Shallan is becoming quite good at disguises. But sanity requires her to recognize them as disguises—as “just a face”—if she’s not going to go completely crackers. My guess is that she’ll make most of that progress between books, with a little work remaining to be done in book 4. (I’m assuming that Sanderson plans the year lapse to take care of a lot of logistics and progress that has to happen, but that would be boring to watch. After the agony of seeing Shallan falling to pieces in Oathbringer, I have to admit I wouldn’t mind if her recovery took place mostly off-screen!)
“My brothers. Pattern, I didn’t kill them, right? … I talked to Balat over spanreed. But… I had Lightweaving then… even if I didn’t fully know it. I could have fabricated that. Every message from him. My own memories….”
“Shallan,” Pattern said, sounding concerned. “No. They live.” … His voice grew smaller. “Can’t you tell?”
L: The fact that she can’t even trust her own memories isn’t entirely surprising, given how much she’s repressed up until now. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s pretty wise of her.
A: It may be wise of her, and I’m glad she can check with Pattern when she doesn’t trust herself. But this freaked me out. She honestly doesn’t seem to know if she killed her brothers, or if she just talked to them: they look like equally probable scenarios, and she doesn’t even know which is true.
Diagrams & Dastardly Designs
L: When Shallan/Veil uses the Ghostblood symbol to intimidate the thugs, it works far, far better than she expected. Why is this? What are they planning? We know that they’ll go to just about any length to accomplish their goals (as evidenced by the fact that they tried to assassinate Jasnah), so the fact that everyone is scared s***less of them makes perfect sense. But now that the “Desolation” they were searching for knowledge about has begun, what are they up to?
A: Shallan and Pattern both mention Mraize a couple of times in this chapter, and Shallan is frighteningly conflicted about the Ghostbloods. I mean, I don’t trust Mraize for a skinny minute, but Shallan still wants very much to stay connected to the organization despite what she knows they’ve done. They Know Things—or at least, they imply they know all the things, and she desperately wants to know too. Every time she thinks about them, I worry that her eagerness to gain information makes her way too easy to manipulate.
Squires & Sidekicks
They chatted a little longer, mostly with Shallan making the odd comment while the bouncer—his name was Jor—went off on various stories with many tangents.
L: Well, hello there, Jory! Jor is a tuckerization of beta reader and JordanCon Blademaster Jory Phillips.
A: Hey, Jory! ::waves:: This was a fun little scene, wasn’t it?
L: I loved Jor hitting on Veil. He seems like he’s a nice guy.
Flora & Fauna
The first moon had risen, violet and proud Salas. She was the least bright of the moons, which meant it was mostly dark out.
L: Let’s take a moment to chat about the moons. Multiple moons isn’t something unique to Roshar (I’m reminded of Dragonlance as well as any number of other fantasy series), but knowing Sanderson, I’m sure there’s more going on here than simply “different planet, multiple moons” and that’s it. So let’s start off with, how many moons are there on Roshar, Alice?
A: There are three moons: violet Salas, big blue Nomon, and little green Mishim. There’s a story about them later, which Sigzil fails to tell properly in chapter 35, and Hoid (of course) succeeds in telling well in chapter 67. We have no way of knowing whether it’s just a story, or whether there’s some grain of truth in it, but we do know that the moons’ orbits are artificial—for whatever that’s worth. The colors seem to be significant, and I wonder if they’re connected somehow to the three Bondsmith spren. Or… to the Shards?
Places & Peoples
No lighteyed woman would be able to prance around so obviously armed. Some mores grew more lax the farther you descended the social ladder.
L: I feel as if I’m constantly harping on the gender issues in Roshar. Apologies if it reads that way from an outsider’s opinion as well—perhaps it’s just a reflection of the times and I’m pushing back against the sexism that I see in so many fandoms in the real world these days. But I find it interesting that Shallan points out that she can’t carry a sword because she’s not a lighteyes, but even so a lighteyed woman wouldn’t be able to carry a weapon at all. The gender restrictions are lessened because she’s darkeyed. She can carry a long knife, but still not a sword. This does tie back into her conversation with Lyn, who’s actively fighting against these restrictions while Shallan simply seems to accept them.
A: Let’s not forget that the whole restriction against women with swords—and probably darkeyes too—ties back to the time just after the Recreance. The men jumped on the artificial gender distinction between one-handed and two-handed skills (incidentally proposed by a woman) so they could eliminate half the competition for the Shardblades; we know that it wasn’t an issue for the Radiants, so it most likely wasn’t an issue in society until that point. Then, once men were holding Blades long enough to make their eyes turn light, they created the artificial distinction (enforced with the same Blades, no doubt) between light- and dark-eyed people, and thus was born the caste system we see now. The lucky families who already had light eyes got carried along into the upper class (quite possibly at the lower dahns, though) and those with the power were at the top.
Incidentally, I wonder if the spren bond changes your DNA so that the light eyes become part of your genetic make-up, and are passed on to your children, or if the ones who held Blades started marrying only light-eyed women so as to support their scheme.
L: I was wondering the same thing regarding genetics and the passing on of the light-eyed “gene,” Alice.
She’d never seen an actual well before—everyone normally used cisterns that refilled with the storms.
L: I’d never thought of this before, but it’s true—what use would a society living where constant storms sweep over the land have for wells? (For this matter, I wonder if Shallan even knew the word/concept before coming to Urithiru!)
A: I’d think the bigger issue is that most of the ground is rock, which makes well-drilling a difficult task, and the water table would probably be way deep. I’m pretty sure the Shin would have wells, but whether Shallan would be aware of those is questionable. Maybe there are a few areas where wells are practical, near rivers or something, in Jah Keved?
The many wells in Urithiru, however, never ran out. The water level didn’t even drop, despite people constantly drawing water from them.
Scribes talked about the possibility of a hidden aquifer in the mountains, but where would the water come from?
L: All right, Sanderson. I know there’s more to this, you sneaky son of a kandra. What secrets are you hiding?
A: There’s definitely something sketchy going on here. I wonder if the various systems supported by Stormlight (the Sibling, I assume) have been slowly shutting down over the last 15 centuries or so, and this is the only one remaining. Or, which I think more likely, perhaps this is one of the few mechanical functions that doesn’t need Stormlight to function. Or maybe there’s a hidden power supply just for the wells, with gemstones positioned to be renewed by every highstorm without human attention. (Okay, I doubt it!) There’s definitely something odd, anyway.
Tight Butts and Coconuts
“I like him,” Pattern said.
“Who?” Veil said.
“The swordsman,” Pattern said. “Mmm. The one you can’t mate with yet.”
L: This joke will never get old.
“Why don’t you marry him, then?”
Pattern buzzed. “Is that—”
“No that’s not an option.”
A: I laughed SO hard over this one!
L: I wonder if any of the old Knights Radiant ever fell in love with their spren. My friend who is an adamant Kal/Syl shipper would get a huge kick out of that.
“I didn’t do a good job in there.”
“Of getting drunk? Mmm. You gave it a good effort.”
A: Speaking of the drink… I was amused by the barkeep’s explanation of the drink colors:
“That’s the same stuff, just without the fancy infusions the lighteyes put in theirs.”
A: I believe we have WoB that the Rosharan “wines” aren’t really what we’d think of as wine; they’re various forms of mild to hard liquor, brewed from whatever will ferment. Here we learn that the fancy colors are mostly added artificially; I guess for aesthetics and ease of identification? Seems to me like an enterprising young officer could easily find someone who would take something potent and color it to look like something mild, either as a prank or as a way to look innocuous. Just sayin’…
L: Sort of reminds me of gin, with all the infusions. But I doubt that Roshar’s got Juniper trees.
Weighty Words
The cloud around her mind puffed away, and her vision stopped spinning. In a striking moment, her drunkenness simply vanished.
L: Today on the ‘list of powers I wish I had…’ It’s really interesting the different things that Stormlight can heal. Sort of reminds me of the Flash’s accelerated healing, and how he can’t get drunk because of it.
A: I was amused by Pattern’s evaluation—that the Stormlight healed her of “the poison,” but he assumed she’d be angry because she drank the poison on purpose. Pattern’s efforts to understand human behavior never fail to entertain me.
Murderous Motivations
“That barmaid was strangled the exact same way as Rem, body dropped in the same position. Even had the marks of his ring scraping her chin like Rem did.” Her light brown eyes had a hollow cast to them, like she was staring at the body again, as it had been found. “Exact same marks. Uncanny.”
Another double murder, Veil thought. Storms. What does it mean?
A: This was the whole point of Shallan’s investigation excursion, and she almost missed it.This is when she gets the first hint that she’s not looking for a series of murders all done like the first, but a series of murder-and-copycat-murder episodes.
The tension… builds. (Just read that in your best foreboding-darkness voice, okay?)
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
“Humans… humans don’t care about the dead. You build chairs and doors out of corpses! You eat corpses! You make clothing from the skin of corpses. Corpses are things to you.”
L: I meeeaaaan… he’s not wrong.
A: Technically, no, but his word choice is rather disturbing!
“It is grotesque,” he continued, “but you all must kill and destroy to live. It is the way of the Physical Realm.”
L: Really interesting to see this from an outsider’s perspective. It’s true—and I can see how it would be super creepy to a society that doesn’t work this way. This raises the question, though… do spren need to eat? If so, what do they eat?
A: Ummm… I don’t think they eat? They’re personifications of ideas, so I have this vague notion that all they need is for someone to think them. (This sounds very Peter Pan, doesn’t it? “Do you believe?”) I mean, it’s not entirely true for every single spren, and a little less so for the higher spren, but in general I think they gain their existence from the concepts formed by people, and are maintained the same way. I could, of course, be completely wrong, because I don’t have a shred of supporting evidence. Readers, what say ye?
Quality Quotations
“She’s just enjoying a little free time,” Jor said. “Sure, sure. With eyes like those? I’m sure that’s it.”
* * *
“I’ve seen your type, with that haunted look.”
A: Both barkeepers commented on her look; I assume they were seeing the same thing? What?
The lighteyed woman across from her hushed a jabbering man by touching his lips. She wore the havah, but without a safehand sleeve—instead, she wore a glove with the fingers brazenly cut off at the knuckles.
A: Gasp! The hussy!!
L: So scandalous.
“Look, I see your mark here, in blood. Ur’s seat. I was wrong.” She frowned. “But mine’s here too. Suppose you can sit in my lap, if you want.
Next week, we’ll plan to take on Chapter 19, flashing back to the day Young!Dalinar first sees Evi, and also Chapter 20, wherein Kaladin teaches the parshmen survival skills and becomes conflicted. (There’s a surprise.)
Alice is right on the edge of being overwhelmed by all the end-of-school-year and preparation-for-vacation-travel craziness that’s creeping up on her. Still, the sun is shining on Seattle, and that’s not nothing.
Lyndsey is having a blast tormenting the Sheriff of Nottingham at this year’s Robin Hood’s Faire as “Ellen”-a-dale, which is about as close to living in the Robin Hood legend as she’s going to get. No worries, though—she recognizes that the character is just a “face,” unlike Shallan. If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or her website.
Around and about on various places on the internet, there is a lot of focus on, and discussion of, Shallan’s psychological problems over the course of Oathbringer. It’s interesting to note that despite them, she’s nevertheless pretty effective. She’s not JUST struggling with her personal demons; she’s also actively forwarding many of the goals of our heroes. Here, for example, she’s going out in disguise and making enquiries in rough parts of Urithiru in pursuit of the murderer. And despite her inexperience and mistakes, she gets a real clue to what’s happening, which is more than anyone else has succeeded in doing so far.
What worries me most about Shallan in this chapter is a line of behaviour that seems to be bordering on a death wish. Despite rationalising it to herself as needing to win respect, it’s frankly crazy to go picking fights with obvious thugs when she has little experience in fighting and appears from the text to be slightly built. Stormlight healing can only take you so far.
Discussing Shallan’s personality issues suddenly made me think of Shai and the magic of soul stamps in The Emperor’s Soul. Shai, through a soul stamp, can actually become a different person, complete with different memories and experiences. That sounds similar to what Shallan is slipping toward. Could she make a complete transformation like Shai?
@2: Rereading Emperor’s Soul after reading Oathbringer and there are so many possible connections. It’s amazing how they hit me in the face. They also sound much like what Megan does in Reckoners. However, that is not Cosmere, so we just have to accept that Sanderson likes playing with the possibilities along these lines.
It’s also hard to reread this chapter. I can now see the clues of Shallan thinking Veil is stronger, when that’s just not the case. I may cos-play as Veil sometimes, but I don’t like her more as a character. Here she was fun. Later I feel Veil becomes abusive.
You could also use the fake wine infusions to win a drinking contest like in the Blackadder series 2 episode, Beer. Just drink a bunch of blue/violet water while your opponents drink the real stuff.
Every time someone complains about Shallan working through her issues I think about this chapter, about how even on subsequent rereads I can feel the tension, still wince at the path she is walking, can still feel the pain of watching Pattern offer to commit suicide for his bondmate. If the point of reading is to make you feel something, what more could you want?
Maybe there is a fabrial that is constantly transforming air into water?
@2 and 3 regarding emperor’s soul style transformations:
Maybe it is in the realm of possibilities later after more truths. At this moment changing other people through her drawings is all she can master.
Later in Oathbringer Shallan realises that she is faking it and does not actually get the skills when she changes personal, but only after it causes the deaths of several homeless in the city.
Shai uses her knowledge of people to create a Connection that enables Transformation. But I don’t think we know anu surge inders who have Dalinar’s Connection ability and the Transformation surge.
@7 – But don’t forget, there have been heavy hints that Shallan is somehow using Transformation and Illumination together. Transformation could almost been seen as a type of Connection, IMO.
The biggest thing I have always loved about Brandon’s books is how he uses his magic systems. He always seems to come up with situations where he asks himself “but what would you do here if you could fly? How would you act here if you could heal any injury? What would you say if you could look like anyone?” and it is always interesting and illuminating. Shallan’s illusions feed into her PTSD, while stormlight enables potential alcoholism. Powers don’t always make life better or easier. I learned that from Peter Parker aka Spider-man. His powers actually made his life worse but he still did the right thing in memory of his uncle. Always loved that about that marvel hero, and I love to see that in Brandon’s books.
My favorite moment in this Chapter is when the Stomlight clears the effects of the alcohol she drank in the first bar (gets rid of the poison as Pattern calls the alcohol) and she gets up and smiles at Jor. She made Jor think that Shallan played Jor all along.
Lyndsey and Alice. Later on there is a great picture of the various wine colors and their respective strengths. The commentary that somebody wrote (Nazh, I presume) is hilarious.
Oh the trouble that I could have gotten into in college (or, more to the point, avoided) had I been able to breathe in a force/source of energy that would have instantly gotten rid of the effects of alcohol. I could have won some many drinking games.
I like the internal pun that Shallan thought to her self when she learned of how the guy was thrown over the side of the chasm.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
It’s not the first time we have seen cosmere powers remove alcohol, Wayne did it shadows of self I believe.
In my opinion it’s not so much as healing as bringing the body back to the original state using a blueprint from the cognitive and spiritual realm.
The stone sheds are probably simply a permanent market. Radiants need food and other things, too, and the Oathgates made Urithiru a center of trade routes.
The “wine” issue confused me so much when I first read this chapter, since they seemed to be saying sapphire wine came from tallew which I thought was grain, but it was so much more clear once I realized that they call all alcohol “wine”.
Pattern offering to die is SO sad and makes me excited to learn more about spren in general. I feel like we know a lot about honorspren from Syl’s conversations with Kaladin, and I can’t imagine Syl offering this. Are cryptics more focused on the larger goal of defeating Odium or just less focused on each spren as an individual?
I also love the irony of Shallan thinking that Veil is a grown woman, not a teenager, when she makes jokes like “Why don’t you marry him, then?” I loved that line because it highlights Shallan’s youth and sometimes innocence; how many of us used to say that to our friends and cousins? Also, how sad was her thought that the pain of the alcohol is “no worse than the pains already inside”? Poor Shallan.
As a tax accountant, I was personally curious about the line that says Sebarial subsidizes alcohol with low taxes. It struck me because it is opposite of how we tend to do things in the States (“sin taxes” tax alcohol and tobacco more than other items) and because it made me curious about the tax system in general. I would imagine it is a purely consumption based tax system since an income tax would be difficult to administer in a society that is at least half illiterate.
Jor is a sweetheart in this chapter. I love when he tells her he knows porters who can be trusted. If only all people were so kind, the world would be a better place. I love how there are so many genuinely good people in Brandon;s books. It makes them so much more enjoyable than all the dark fantasy that is popular in my opinion.
This chapter is harder to read every time. We see Shallan choose to be Veil and not herself, and she’s not that good at it. Without the Stormlight (that she didn’t know would help beforehand) she would have been out in an alley or something after the first drinks. And the casual way she uses the Ghostblood symbol (and the reactions to it) make me nervous for her future with them. These aren’t nice good guys like Adolin.
Also, it appears I need to reread Emperors Soul again. (What a hardship!) It does seem like Shallan goes farther into changing herself than just a surface illusion.
Moderator: Can someone please fix the links? This post isn’t showing up as the newest on the main page, nor is it showing in the Oathbringer Reread index.
“After the agony of seeing Shallan falling to pieces in Oathbringer, I have to admit I wouldn’t mind if her recovery took place mostly off-screen!”
No way. I’d feel totally cheated if I had to endure Shallan’s fragmentation and terrible coping mechanisms for the entirety of OB, but I never got to see the moment she starts putting herself together again. Where would the payoff be?
@15 – Fixed, thank you!
Those having followed my thoughts weeks after week, even when I failed to properly answer due to a lack of time (sorry about that, I will revisit the older threats as I get more time) know my personal re-read has now brought me to, huh, wonderful chapter 49. Baby Adolin, so cute, but not the topic this week.
So huh, I have come across rather harshly on Shallan: I made my thoughts on her character known. Her arc in OB was intense, it had a strong focus and I wasn’t entirely engrossed in it. So how does it fare during the re-read? Well, I’ll admit part 1 is actually quite good, once you ignore the fact Adolin murdering Sadeas is a non-event (frankly, had he not been the murderer, I feel the narrative would have been stronger, for me, at least). One aspect of the narrative I was dreading was this chapter and the ones which follows, the ones with Veil in it.
My first impressions on Veil is I hate her. She is not real. She is not a character. She is a lie, a fabrication of Shallan’s mind and, as such, I was never able to treat her… like a character. Whenever I read Veil, I do not read Veil, I read Shallan playing at being Veil. So upon re-read, I focused some on the processes which make Shallan become Veil and how much of the lie she is actually buying. In this early chapter, not much. Veil is very much a costume and a role, one she keeps adding layers to, to make it more realistic, more efficient. She realizes she doesn’t possess the knowledge Veil is pretending to have, but she hopes to fake it convincingly enough which she doesn’t really succeed at. Well, she does succeed, but only because she has stormlight, a cheat, without it, she wouldn’t have gotten far.
Still, it is grating to see Shallan create this lie she calls Veil and to start throwing into this lie everything she wished she were. She wished she were a rough girl, a tough girl, someone to be taken seriously, not some pampered rich little girl. She believes someone with Veil’s personality and her background wouldn’t break down when murdering her parents: she believes this lie she creates is so perfect, she can do not wrong. Eventually, she starts thinking, as long as she wears Veil’s disguise, she earns her background made-up story, but this is for much later.
At the point where I am at, in the story, I noticed a few things. Veil’s purpose is not solely to provide an escape from the truth Shallan has said: it is an escape for basically everything. In fact, more often than not, she doesn’t become Veil to avoid her truth, she does it to run away from her present. She resents being asked to participate in meetings, being asked to contribute, being included, being tasked with work: she wants none of this. She wants to be carefree and to do whatever she wants to do when she decides she wants to do it. My thoughts have thus moved towards finding her terribly immature, not even teenager immature, but child-like immature. She doesn’t want to get additional knowledge, she doesn’t want to have to do any work she hasn’t chosen first hand, she is acting like a child. And when things do not go down her way, she pouts, she pouts on Veil’s costume and she goes getting drunk… Now, this is a very basic portrayal of Shallan, but I feel this has been seldom discussed. Her issues are not just her past, they also are her present and her immaturity. Her entire arc was basically her running away from responsibilities, not wanting to face them up until she realizes she can’t behave this way. The moon story, this is what it was about: facing your responsibilities, stop being a child, stop having your past be an excuse to justify your present.
Little wonder Shallan’s arc was hard to bear for some reader… Hence, I am definitely with Alice up there: the one year gap is an opportunity to have Shallan grow without us needing to read every single details. OB ended up with Shallan deciding she cannot run away anymore, deciding to take back her wardship with Jasnah and to apply herself to it, deciding she no longer needs Veil/Radiant though she realizes it will be difficult and admitting she needs to tell some truth to Adolin. If book 4 starts up with her having made zero progress in any of those domains, it won’t be realistic. I definitely expect progress and not another plunge downward arc. Usually, when Brandon overdoes an arc, he tones it down within the next book, so my guess is he will tone this one down, but I could be wrong.
On the side note, I loved that Pattern likes Adolin. I worried after WoR the sprens would all hate him for the dead-Blade he carries. I was please to see some of them were able to rationalize he is not to blame for their predicament nor is he to be demonized because he chooses to use a dead-Blade.
Oh other side note, Shallan doesn’t have DiD or any personality disorder: this was confirmed by Brandon. Here is the WoB provided by Scath in another thread:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/315-general-reddit-2018/#e9182
Was Shallan named after Shalash? What about the moon Salas? The names are all close enough that I would think so, but I don’t actually know if this has been suggested or confirmed elsewhere.
@19: yes, Shallan is named in part for Shalash. Like kids now are named after religious figures.
Plus we learned about Vorin light eyes naming traditions.
So the “Shal” is for Shalash. Then then “lan” is an ending of some meaning, which we’ve not learned yet. Like we know the “lin” in Adolin means “of light.”
The moon’s names are important , but we don’t know how yet.
It’s not really surprising that Shallan is immature. She spend her childhood locked up at home and then left without anyone to help her deal with the world outside. How should she have the experience to deal with things responsibly? It is strange that she does as well as she does and isn’t constantly getting in trouble because of her inexperience.
Second birgit @21. Shallan is 17 or 18 years old. About the same age as a high school senior/college freshman. Who hasn’t done stupid stuff at that age? How much worse would you have been if you had magic to solve some of your problems? I get that Shallan was a hard read in OB. I’m assuming that most of the fandom in this forum are considerably older than Shallan is in the narrative, me included. I think that part of the reason she is such a hard read is that we can see the pitfalls from far off and like parents ache to steer her onto the proper path. She must grow and growing is hard. Just ask Cultivation.
@13 Evelina
Regarding crytics, Brandon has said they are like the “scientists” of the spren world. Pattern bonding with Shallan was an experiment that they wanted to learn from. That is why they are so readily willing to sacrifice themselves and send more if it fails.
@16 Gaz and @18 Gepeto
Brandon has said the ending with the wedding was a step in the right direction, but Shallan has a ways to go. I think she will have made some progress during the year between books, but get complacent with the new set up that Veil and Radiant are “friends” with herself and Adolin. Then in book 4 something will happen to cause conflict with that for her to struggle to fully over come her issues. WoB below
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256-oathbringer-london-signing/#e8699
@18 Gepeto
I disagree with the part where you said Veil is the version of shallan who would not break down when murdering her parents. In the book Shallan specifically comments how Veil does not have her same history, that Veil wouldn’t have been locked away. So it is not that Veil would have handled murdering her parents, it is that Veil did not murder her parents at all. This is supported by Wit’s pep talk where he told her to add her history to each presented version of her, and Shallan was shocked that that version did not crumble and fall. Just a minor nitpick. Book quote below
Oathbringer kindle page 161
“Veil. Veil would be fine holding a sword. She didn’t have Shallan’s broken soul, and hadn’t killed her parents. She’d be able to do this.”
The dicodomy between some people loving Shallan’s arc and some people hating it seems to mirror some people loving Kaladin’s depression arc and some people hating it. According to Brandon this is intentional. I feel it is to get people talking, and to see how people with mental and emotional problems are people too. He seems to believe he succeeded in his goal, and I agree lol. WoB below
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324-emerald-city-comic-con-2018/#e9372
@21 Birgit and @22 EvilMonkey
I would also build on what EvilMonkey said with the fact that not only was Shallan locked away from the world, but she was locked in with an abusive and psychotic father. She was locked in with the knowledge her mother tried to kill her, and she had to kill her mother. She was locked in with the knowledge that this action of self defense destroyed her family. Her life has been one of constantly thinking of what others need. What others want from her. Constantly taking care of others and when things don’t work out, placing that burden on herself. I feel her actions in Oathbringer is her going into overload. I feel the part of Shallan that comes out when she “is Veil” is the rebellious part that she never got to live. Never got to stand up for herself and make her own space. Never had that space be acknowledged as ok and healthy for her to have. Every teenager needs that time to rebel. To find their own identity separate from their parents. So now like a dog that has been beat and kicked since it was a puppy, and has been pushed into a corner as an adult, she has begun biting and snapping at anyone coming near in an effort to escape that ever present pain. The ever present burden others put on her, making her feel like she has to be what they want, rather than herself. She has spent so long being what everyone else needs, that now that she has a choice, she doesn’t know what she needs. Even when the animal league comes to save a dog or a cat, and take care of it, that animal bolts. It runs with all its heart, because pain is all it knows. I see Shallan as that wounded animal, fearful of more pain while trying to heal.
I respect what Brandon was going for and I think he still ended up with what presents as DID by the end of the book.
So he can say he’s not going for the “classic” presentation of certain conditions, and still end up there for all intents and purposes. And I can only wish that diagnosis were so easy as “classic” presentations, but in my experience as well as the experience readily admitted to in the beginning of the DSM V, it’s not.
It’s Causality towards the manifestation of disassocistive symptom clusters that I think he’s more keen on emphasizing in his books and in his posts. At least I think he is.
So with Shallan he puts an emphasis on defense mechanisms and Jungian masks, adds trauma, adds illumination/investiture (the key ingredient that allows for the authorial twist) and blammo. A fantasy presentation of ever worsening Disassociation (See Hard Copy pages 142,199, 452, 632, 723, 733, 761, 764, 793 where Hoid “confirms” it [for me anyway], 909, 1009, 1160 where investiture adds unique qualities, and 1178).
Causality is key to the world building experience and I do enjoy the twists and turns that Brandon builds in. Still doesn’t change the fact that I can technically label the result with the “worldbuilding” working framework of the DSM.
I think Dalinar is a character that will not experience the Brandon Backslide like Kaladin and Shallan did. My opinion only and maybe just a little off topic. Sorry.
This is the chapter that I laughed and I also cried. Like Lyn and Alice, I laughed at Pattern wanting to marry Adolin. LOL That scene is so precious. But, I cried for Shallan. Though she was wearing Veil’s face, her conversation with Pattern begging him not to leave her is the real Shallan – the 17 going on 18 girl who has lost her parents, blames herself for it (for good reason) and missing her brothers. She was so far away from home, far away from the people whom she was sure truly love her and know her.
If we fast forward towards the ending when Adolin was able to find the “real” Shallan as she oscillated between Veil, Radiant and herself. That scene is one of the moments when I stopped seeing Adolin as a Disney Prince, but rather a hero worthy of Guy de Maupassant. (Hmm.. does it make Adolin more Gaelic than Danish?)
The other scene that made me see more layers for Adolin was when he was willing to give up Shallan if she would be happier with Kaladin. (Ah, Monsieur De Maupassant, were you in Brandon Sanderson’s head when he was writing this scene?)
And for a little dark humor, I had this naughty thought that Shallan/Radiant/Veil and Adolin together is Brandon’s version of ménage à quatre. LOL But dark humor aside, that situation is mind boggling. That Adolin was able to adjust to it demonstrates how much he loves Shallan.
@@@@@ 24 CireNaes
Very interesting!
@@@@@25 EvilMonkey
In my opinion I think we already did see Dalinar’s “backslide”. In Way of Kings, he struggled trying to get people to do the right thing, and Sadeas wiped out most of his people. In Words of Radiance, Dalinar tried to convince the other highprinces to follow him but was only able to convince two of the nine. In Oathbringer, Dalinar was back to square one trying to get people to do the right thing and listen to him, failing for most of the book till he grew midway to the end. So overall he is growing as the issues become larger and larger (first Sadeas, then the other highprinces, then the other nations), but with each increase in problem, he moved back a bit as he advanced. Also if you think about it, I would hazard at the end of Way of Kings he said the first oath (not explicit but that oath seems to be thought to oneself), at the end of Words of Radiance he said the second oath, and now at the end of Oathbringer he said the third oath. Now if my theory is correct that each oath his harder to swear than the one before is right, then Dalinar is in for two more doozies lol
@20: Isn’t it “adoda” which means “light” and “lin” which means “born unto”? I am confused because “kala-din” means “born unto eternity”. Does anyone know why “lin” and “din” mean the same?
@21: The problem I have with Shallan’s immaturity is I find it much under what I would expect out of a young woman her age. Granted, I haven’t been 18 in a long time, but I do have interns at work which are close to Shallan’s age. They all love being given responsibilities, they want to be included in meetings, they beam when their opinion is asked on technical matters, whenever they are given a task, they rush forward to accomplish it. None of them has anywhere near Shallan’s level of immaturity when even the simplest tasks (transcripting notes), send her drinking under Veil’s costume because she can’t take the pressure. Or she just doesn’t want to do it, whichever.
Hence, Shallan’s behavior does not correlate with the behavior I have observed within modern day humans of similar age. It correlates more with the behavior of a much younger child, not even a teenager, but a child. A little kid who wants to play all day and pouts when ask to clean up his room instead. This being said, I do find Scath post @23 very enlightening. It was a great analysis as to how Shallan grew up to act so immature in OB. I find his analysis to be spot on, so kudos here.
I just wish Shallan’s arc didn’t always steer in me a cocktail of emotions which aren’t always positive.
@22: It isn’t the stupid stuff she does, it is why she does it. Why does she become Veil? It is not just to evade her past, it also is to not face responsibilities, to not have to take notes at meeting, to not be asked to performed any tasks. The whole reason she convinced Elhokar to allow her to come to Kholinar was because she wanted to be away from Jasnah to not have to “suffer” her trying to teach her something. In fact, Renarin is the one who gives her the idea…
This is the behavior I find immature, the one where she runs away. The one where she struggles to accept her past is easier to understand. It is the running away which grates me.
@23: I did read the WoB about the wedding, but thank you for posting it. I did read it as one step in the right direction. As such, I do expect some progress to be made during the one year gap: it seems illogical she wouldn’t make any. This being said, I do not expect her to have solved everything, but I do expect her not to switch into Veil/Radiant each time she has to accomplish a task. I expect her to start using them as “tools” and not “escapes”.
I also expect her to have told Adolin about the Ghostbloods, but not about her family.
As for Adolin being “friends” with Veil/Radiant, we haven’t really seen how it played out in the narrative. All we have is this quote where Shallan says Adolin treats Veil like a drinking buddy which implies Shallan is still being Veil, at times. I am not sure how I expect this to evolve, honestly. I find anyone’s guess is as good as mine. It could be temporary or it could evolve into something more. All I can say is I feel sorry for Adolin for needing to pull up with this and while most worries over what his behavior would do to Shallan’s problems, I worry about what it means for Adolin’s self-confidence/self-worth issue. How confident is he supposed to feel, in this marriage, when his wife alternates personalities, two of them having said they preferred another man? Shallan was fawning over Kaladin 5 minutes before agreeing to marry Adolin, she brushed his self-worth issues under the carpet stating it was the “best thing which could have happened to him”. So yeah, I feel sorry for Adolin.
@26: My biggest gripes with Adolin being able to tell the truth from the lies in Shallan is it comes without a context. In the absence of viewpoints, I was left to guess how he could perform this feat. I love Adolin was willing to step down in favor of Kaladin, but I feel those moments would have been more powerful if he had viewpoints to make it come to life.
I wish Brandon had treated Adolin as a character who thoughts are important within the romance.
I disliked this chapter on a first read, because I hate watching real or fictional people get drunk and feared she was going to vomit (which I also hate watching) or do something even more harmful than she did. This time, I could relax and pay more attention to the dialogue.
Much as I prefer and enjoy the “real” Shallan’s personality, I think portrayal of a healing process is important to relatability. I strongly relate to Kaladin with his depression, and while I would/do like to see him find ways of easing and coping with it, having him show up fully healed at the beginning of the next book wouldn’t be helpful to me. It could be necessary for putting him where the Plot needs him to be, which I expect is the top priority, but would undercut the realism. Though progress in depression isn’t to be realistically “expected.” I’ve had it for nine years and can’t say I’ve made long-term progress in healing it, just better times and worse times and persevering through them all. Luckily, I’m not a fictional character obligated to to have an arc.
I really enjoy any spren perspective we’re given, when they see things differently but no less accurately (our lives are full of “corpses) and make questions or comments on things we take for granted (i.e. seeing intoxication as deliberate poisoning that a person wouldn’t want to undo). Though the latter example is relatable for me. Having been schooled to avoid drugs and alcohol, I freaked out the first time a roommate came in and happily announced “I’m drunk!” That was the state I had been told to fear, when people harmed themselves and others and could get harmed. Yet she had attained it deliberately. i was baffled.*
How popular a ship is Adolin/Pattern? :-p
*Second anecdote. I first learned about jello shots in anti-drug class as horrific things Bad People used to get unsuspecting victims drunk by feeding them alcohol whose taste was masked by the sweetness of jello. So in college when I saw an announcement about a party that would feature them, I was surprised that someone would proclaim their presence.
I don’t expect Dalinar to have it easy; this magic system seems to be harder to get to master level than any of Brandon’s other systems. However, 2 points. One, I don’t really consider any of his actions before OB as a backsliding moment. The only true Backslide occurred when he fully remembered the Rift and he settled that within a one month period. Second, he has a much more solid foundation than previous, with Navani by his side and Jasnah holding off highprinces, the Assassin in White for personal security, Kaladin running his most effective combat Radients, Adolin running his armies, Renarin rooting out Radient secrets and Shallan rooring out current ones. His team is strong and he just faced down Odium. He’s going to be fine. He’s already outlived most of the things that would break him.
You can count me in with those who want/wish/think Dalinar will not slide backwards. I do agree he has lived through the worst of his life and nothing is unlikely to cause him to backtrack. He’s got enough problems to face with the upcoming Desolation, he needs not to add to them with personal ones. He also go a team which does pretty much everything for him, so he can concentrate on “uniting the world and managing his coalition”. As @30 pointed out, he has Radiants to do a few information gathering tasks and he’s got Jasnah to be Queen and Adolin to do, well, everything which needs to be done.
I also believe a narrative process can only work so many times. In shorts, if there is some interest in watching Kaladin/Shallan slide backwards, if all Radiants were to follow a similar road, the story would get repetitive. I trust Brandon has not planned to write 10 books presenting a variation over the same themes over and over again.
@@@@@ 23 Scath – Thank you! I love these discussions because other people often already know the answers to my questions. I am not good at finding WoBs like so many people here are.
I know I have said it before, but Shallan is my favorite character. I understand why people don’t like reading her arc, but for me it is the difference between reading a happy story and a sad story – the sad story is not something I want to reread constantly since it is not uplifting (and the real world is sad enough), but I can still appreciate its detail and place in the story. I am hopeful that Shallan will one day have a resolution of some sorts, and I would very much love to see the final steps to healing. I would love to have a lot of it take place “off-screen”, but would really like to see the final steps just because I love Shallan so much.
@@@@@ Gepeto – I don’t read her the same way you do. I understand what you are saying, but I am more with birgit & EvilMonkey in understanding how she came to be that way. Veil is still a part of her, so it isn’t as if she totally runs from responsibility, and I also see her using Veil to cope, where as she previously (in her home life in Jah Keved) completely shut down. My husband is currently listening to the WoR audiobook, and we just listened to one of her flashback chapters in the car where she shuts down and loses hours of time twice in the same day, in addition to staring at the strongbox for a good while. Compared to that Shallan, even the fractured Shallan we see in OB is remarkably functional. That said, I am really hopeful that the true Shallan can go back to being the “leader” of the 3, if you will. I agree with Braid_Tug that Veil becomes outright abusive towards Shallan, and it is so heartbreaking to see the self-flagellation that all teenagers put themselves through heightened to such an intense degree with the aid of magic and Shallan’s horrific past.
The safehand fixation seems ridiculous, but I think it beautifully demonstrates how a thing becomes erotic when society says it is. When a cultural narrative decrees for some reason that a certain body part is private and should only be shown to a lover/spouse, publically baring it or even revealing ts covered shape becomes taken as a signal of immodesty or promiscuity, a sexual come-on that can arouse or embarass with its implication. Here and now, we’re trying to move away from that mindset and the sexual violation it can excuse with the claim that someone “was asking for it,” but it’s very present in Vorin culture.
I have mixed feelings about this chapter. I remember there being some contraversy re: whether it was believable that Shallan’s gambit with Sebarial when she first introduced herself to the Highprinces and Co, worked out as well as it did. And I thought, on the whole, that it was plausible enough at the time, given the circumstances and personalities involved, – even though his lack of competent accountants wasn’t.
But Shallan’s antics succeeding as well as they did in this chapter continues to seem very contrived to me. Would career criminals really blurt their secrets out _in a tent_ immediately after a problematic questioner left? Would they really be so impressed by her stabby craziness, instead of provoked to violence? Eh… And using the Ghostblood symbol so blatantly should have been grounds for even more suspicion, as I doubt that’s how operate.
I’d also point out that in her ruminations about what she would or wouldn’t be permitted as a light-eyed woman, Shallan kinda excluded Tyn, who wore a sword without encountering the censure that something like that would have provoked during most of iRL history. Not that she could have done that if she was highborn, but still. Also, Shallan herself was a little shocked earlier to what extent the Alethi noblewomen were _not_ sheltered from unpleasantness when they discovered the second body. Her being sheltered and smothered seems to be more the result of the more restrictive Veden culture and/or her particular circumstances. Not to mention that it is quite disingenious to blame the killings of her parents on that, when there were far more immediate causes. So, Shallan cheats more than a bit in her comparisons to make Veil seem even more attractive to herself.
And like Gepeto, I don’t particularly like Veil. To me Shallan’s artistic and scholarly traits make her far more interesting than spunk alone and she very purposefully discards them when being Veil.
OTOH, I very much disagree with @18 and @28: Shallan isn’t immature and irresponsible for the sake of it, but because her present is inextricably linked to her past. That’s why she rejects the core parts of her personality, which are either connected to or helped her cope with the killings of her parents and flees into Veil. She doesn’t fail to participate in the meetings, etc. because she is childish or lazy, but because it reminds her of her most recent and traumatic Truth – she needs to be the person who killed her mother to be who is required to contribute to these discussions. Scholarship and curiosity that used to provide a distraction and an outlet now only remind her of the painful past, while escape into Veil promises sweet relief. Not to mention that in this first part of OB the subconsciously felt presence of Re-Shepir also throws Shallan off.
I reserve my judgement about whether what Sanderson tries to do with Shallan later in OB would ultimately work for me – only future volumes will tell, but her distraction mere days or weeks after she remembered being the cause of her family’s ruin, is more than understandable, IMHO.
Dalinar and backsliding – I do think that being a mature character he shouldn’t do it as much as the younger protagonists – he is more completely himself, while they are still discovering who they are. And it isn’t like we didn’t see a lot of previous attempts to improve followed by backsliding through his PoVs in OB.
Kaladin’s backslide that so irritated me on my first read of WoR, really improves on re-read, BTW, and makes imminent psychological sense. I can only hope that the same would be the case with Shallan, eventually.
Pattern is both adorable and insightful – I too like that he seems to be developing a relationship with Adolin – but then, I really wanted to see Radiant spren interact more with people other than their bond-mates and with each other prior to OB. This didn’t happen, but I’ll take what I can get.
AeronaGreyjoy @33:
Speaking of changing standards of modesty and eroticism – one has only to think back to the early-mid 19th century ballgowns, which left women’s shoulders bare and showed a good portion of their breasts. So what became the object of erotic fixation? Ankles ;). Since adult highborn women wore floor-length skirts, men would go to great lengths to catch a glimpse at their ankles and found them more arousing than the generous cleavages…
Oh, and there is something that I wanted to, but forgot to comment on from the previous chapter’s discussion:
I don’t think that Iriali are connected to the Ire. Aon Ire means “age” on Sel and we never saw or heard of any Selish with the coloring reminiscent of the Iriali. IMHO, like Aon Ati and former Shard Vessel Ati, similarity of Ire/Iriali is just a coincidence. In fact, we didn’t see or hear about any group resembling Iriali on any of the Shardworlds that were depicted in some detail, so far.
And Evi and Toh weren’t Iriali but Rirans, who are a mix between Iriali and other Rosharans. Not that I don’t believe that there is a mystery connected to their background, that will become significant eventually.
@34: Exactly. People become collectively obsessed with anything deemed improper to show or see.
Now all this conversation is making me think of the scene in Amish Paradise with the boys looking at the magazine of the Amish girl baring her ankles ;)
(Sorry, I have nothing really to add to the general conversation that hasn’t already been said by multiple others…)
@28 Gepeto
Thing is I doubt much of the interns at your job had to kill their parents, or be mentally tortured for much of their young life. So personally I do not feel taking an average teenager as a ruler to measure Shallan against is fair to the character. I also feel that the reason there is push back on saying Shallan is immature is it kind of sounds like it is trivializing the trauma she went through. I am not saying you are trivializing it. I am saying that maybe some, me being included, think that saying she is immature is not entirely fair to the character. But that is just my own opinion.
@30 EvilMonkey
I guess that comes down to our personal interpretations of “backsliding”. I take backsliding as when a person has made progress, but then meets a greater issue that makes them retreat slightly or wholly into old habits that provided familiarity or security for that person. So for Kaladin, it was first protecting those he loved and coming to terms with those emotions. His backslide was becoming emotionless and disconnected to others. He overcame that and lead the bridgemen. Then he back slid regarding protecting strangers because of a label he put them on. Again disconnecting him emotionally from others to protect himself. Then he overcame it by taking a risk and saving Dalinar and crew. Then he back slid regarding protecting someone he personally did not like. So he disconnected himself from that connection to the duty so he could fall back to the emotional connection with the people he connected with before (moash and co) and be safe in that. He then overcame that by realizing despite his personal dislike for elhokar, he is still a person. A person with family of his own that love and care about him too. Again connecting with his charge. Then he back slid because now he connected to two opposing groups, and he back slid by falling back emotionally to inaction, and then later fervor in trying to somehow protect everyone. And that is where we are currently with Kaladin in his progression. So to carry this over to Dalinar, he started out with the conflict of trying to get people to listen to him via talking, while he deep down wanted to make them through force. Then the second oath he made progress, but he still kicked Elhokar down to force him to do what he wants (there is more but this post has already gotten long and I may not even be halfway through lol). The third oath is a backslide because again he was trying for diplomacy but kept slamming against resistance and struggled with using the fist to make people listen. Forcing the other rulers into dreams did manifest this. Now in Elhokar’s and the other rulers cases, yes that was necessary, but it was still a backtrack to the old Dalinar of might makes right. Still retreating to what is familiar and safe for him. So I feel viewed in that light, there are two big back tracks coming up. Trying to meet diplomatically with the parshmen, and then trying to heal the rift regarding the fused. Both very tall orders. But both I believe have to be accomplished to ever end this war for good.
@31 Gepeto
As I showed above, I feel each backslide is personal enough to each character that it wouldn’t be repetitive. But all of this is my own theory and my own opinion, so others are of course entitled and encouraged to feel differently.
@32 Evelina
No problem! Thankfully since the arcanum has gone up, finding WoB has gotten a lot easier for me. I used to be unable to find any, but I could locate any quote in the books thanks to my kindle. Now it has proven to be an invaluable asset. If you have any further questions for this chapter, or future, feel free to post and I will do my best to locate to help :)
I agree on all points regarding Shallan :)
@34 Isilel
Regarding Tyn and the sword. Not all places on Roshar have the prohibition for wielding the sword. Just like not all locations have the prohibition for covering a safe hand. Tyn explained to Shallan that she would be put into situations outside what she is used to, and have to acclimate herself to doing so if she would be successful. For instance learning to walk around without covering your safe hand because in Iri they walk around barely covered. If I recall correctly women even walk around topless, not only uncovered safehand. So the same would stand with the sword. Know how to use one, because you may be in situations where you will need to use it, or be able to defend from it.
Regarding Shallan and her not being immature, I agree on all accounts, and feel that was put very succinctly.
Regarding backsliding, my response is the same as I just wrote to EvilMonkey, but I respect that you view things differently.
@@@@@ Scath 37
Yep, to each his own I guess. I think the difference is what you define as backsliding is what I would define as hazards and difficulties involved with a job or task to which has not been previously prepared for. I define backsliding as dangerous behaviors and in Shallan’s case coping mechanisms adopted in times of stress that run counter to previously established gains. By your definition any difficulty a character faces in the discharging of their duties can be classified as backsliding, at least that’s how I understand your argument. I of course see things a bit differently.
Let’s look at Dalinar and his struggle to become a Statesman. His previous experiences with diplomacy has always been of the gunboat variety. He has always appoached diplomacy from the end of a Shardblade; learning to maneuver his opponents in a political arena has never been his strong suit. His entire arc amounts to on-the-job training where his aggressive nature often works against him (though not always; I personally think that facing down Elkohar in WOK was a good political move). His go to moves however have always been the Thrill and substance abuse (alcohol and firemoss). When he regained his memories he went with alcohol; to me that was his Backslide moment. In his defense, he used his second greatest vice to head off using the Thrill and ripping that emissary apart limb from limb, but it doesn’t change the fact that when his greatest stresses hit him seemingly from every side he went back to being either useless or actively harmful to his allies. Your other examples to me depict an aggressive military leader trying to find his feet in a different arena than what he’s used to, trying to find instances where his strengths allign with the situation at hand ant attempting to identify instances where his strengths work against him.
Shallan is similar to Dalinar in that they were able to become whole people due to magically induced forgetfulness; they both have major difficulties dealing with the aftermath of returning memory. Because Shallan is younger and less sure of who she is, she has a much harder time recovering from her slide into the abyss than Dalinar. Being able to magically make her delusions real hinders her cause nearly exponentially harder than she would have with different powers. It allows her to double- or triple-down on her dangerous coping mechanisms instead of dealing with and eventually overcoming her mental health issues. And while Dalinar in the climax was able to reject his most dangerous and prominent vice Shallan by contrast still must have her Veil, her Brightness Radient.
There’s going to be difficulties ahead for all our characters. They will make mistakes. But short of Navani dying directly from his action or inaction I cannot see Dalinar diving back into addiction, Thrill or otherwise, and falling back into uselessness. Kaladin is nearly finished with his issues as well. Shallan still has a ways to go and Szeth hasn’t even started yet, probably won’t start until he takes his stroll in Shinovar.
@38 EvilMonkey
Eh, I guess agree to disagree. I thought I pretty clearly defined backsliding as retreating to old habits partially or completely for the security of familiarity. These habits in Kaladin’s, Shallans, and Dalinar’s cases are harmful and in my opinion are maintained themes with each of them. Dalinar’s becomes termed a backslide to you, because he is really starting to climb in the oaths which as I said in my theory get progressively harder so the issues and their repercussions become more apparent and steeper to climb. But at the end of the day, like I said agree to disagree. I do not have anything conclusive to back up my theory till we see a knight radiant swear each ideal all the way of to the final. And then to substantiate it, see a second one of a different order mirror the trend of increased difficulty.
Scath@@@@@ 39
Do you believe that Dalinar’s agressive nature is a habit that needs to be corrected? I think its a leadership style that is significantly less useful outside a battlefield. His mindset need some adjustments no doubt, and I can see your point that his moments of trying to apply military solutions to political problems could in some ways be classified as backsliding. For example, not sending Renarin on a healing mission to Thaylen City immediately after learning of their casualties. Also, tying their Backslide moments to their Oaths is a nice touch. However, I believe the oath difficulties lie in the fact that there is no guidance anymore, at least none that can explain Oaths from a human POV. All our main protagonists are forerunners for their prospective orders, each of which follows different rules and paths to power. I feel like the Radients of old didn’t have quite as many conflicts in regards to their Oaths.
(BTW, you posted before I finished. Had to edit the post a couple times).
@40 EvilMonkey
I think maybe if I break it down like this it might help. If I am beating a dead horse, I apologize lol
Oath 1
Kaladin Depressed and alone. Kaladin struggles to reach out to the other bridgemen.
Shallan Scared and uncertain. Shallan forces herself to venture out and hatches the plan to steal Jasnah’s soulcaster
Dalinar Frustrated, angry, and controlling. Dalinar tries to lead Sadeas an the other highprinces by example rather through force
Oath 2
Kaladin Finding a family in the bridgemen. Backslides to depression due feelings of powerlessness. Fear of having them taken away from him, and anxiety that he will lose it all. Overcomes by accepting though he may lose, trying and helping is worth the cost.
Shallan Ventured and over came fear to confront Jasnah to become her ward. Backslides to fear and anxiety as Jasnah becomes a person to her, that she admires. Begins questioning her own morals, and anything that gave her certainty in her life. Attempts to flee on a few separate occasions. Overcomes my confronting her uncertainties. Facing these unknown beings, and standing tall in her convictions.
Dalinar Now with the visions confirmed, He seeks to bring the highprinces together in a united purpose to prevent the end of the world. He backslides by attempting to coerce the highprinces via “diplomacy” to do what he wants them to do, rather than getting to know the highprinces themselves. Rather than tailoring each discussion to each highprince and value them for who they are. He overcomes this by seeing in Ruthar a nobility, and in Sebariel a genuineness both hid. By bringing those attributes out in them, he gained two steadfast allies to confront the stormform parshendi
Oath 3
Kaladin No longer has to worry every day about his men dying. Backslides into depression and isolation by feeling he is different than the other bridgemen, and he is responsible for keeping them together. Lighteyes become the manifestation of the latest force intent on stealing the people he loves from him. Overcomes this by realizing the ligheyes are people too. Elhokar is Dalinar’s Tien. He protects Elhokar not because he is “one of us”, but because it is the right thing to do. He begins to connect to the lighteyes as people.
Shallan Having joined Jasnah in researching the voidbringers Shallan’s world opens with the help of her mentor. Backslides when Jasnah is seemingly killed, and she is now back in uncertainty and fear. Pressure for survival causes her to cling to Tyn for help. Tyn also validates Shallan by providing training in skills to pretend to be other people. Overcomes this by embracing her powers and strength to accomplish goals on her own by taking over the caravans (the slave caravan and then the supply caravan), and confronting Dalinar.
Dalinar Having finally united the highprinces (for the most part) under him, he then aims to warn the world. Dalinar backslides as the rulers refuse to listen, and assume he will become the blackthorn once more. That this is all a lie and he wants power and control. Struggling with his old anger and the effectiveness of the sword over the pen, Dalinar continues to try and force a dialogue where the rulers do what he tells them to. This ultimately all falls apart as tidbits of information topple the house of cards Dalinar’s struggle has built. Dalinar overcomes this by learning to accept the old anger and control was not another person to avoid becoming again. It is him. It is all him and always has been. He learns to accept that part of himself, and incorporates it in himself through better outlets. He becomes more genuine with the other rulers, and learns to work with them rather to work over them.
Oath 4
Kaladin Accepting that the people he cares about will not be torn from him by an outside force (light eyes), he moves forward trying to understand those he protects. Backslides when he now must feel the people he cares for being taken away by each other. Again falls back to depression and isolation as it is these connections to opposing sides that is tearing him in two. Possible resolution is realizing that sometimes those you care about will disagree with your morals/convictions, but still be able to stand up and fight for them even when it results in you being the one that takes your own loved ones away.
Shallan No longer out in the wilderness, Shallan once again becomes a small fish in a big pond. Scared and uncertain feeling overwhelmed by being pulled by her responsibility to Jasnah, and Dalinar, vs the Ghostbloods, vs the beginning of feelings for Adolin. Veil slowly becomes more than just a “disguise”. Shallan begins to look at her illusions as ways to overcome her short comings. Overcomes this by carving out her own space in Sebariel’s camp, using the Ghostbloods to further her own goals, and realizes she is the one who had the courage, and intelligence to discover the center of the shattered plains and figure out how to travel to Urithiru.
Dalinar Some of the other governments are aligned with Dalinar. The war with the voidbringers has fully kicked off. Possible backslides in still thinking too militaristically. In other words, still trying to direct forces instead of looking to learn more about the parshendi. Comes into conflict with Jasnah, Kaladin, and military leaders resulting in some botched operations with great losses of life. Ultimately overcomes this by reaching out to Rlain, talking with him and with the discovery of the lost unchanged parshendi finds a way to reach Venli and perhaps start to form a parshendi nation in Urithiru
Oath 5
Kaladin will depend on how oath 4 works out
Shallan Once confident and secure in her discovery in Urithiru and her own abilities, everyone begins pulling from all directions once more leaving her scared and uncertain again. Ghostbloods she did alone and makes her feel competent, but Jasnah’s arrival makes her feel lost all over again. Conflicting feelings over Kaladin and Adolin, each appealing to a different side of Shallan. This all results in being pulled in many different directions by many people, while not knowing what she wants, so she attempts to be what those people want. She is Veil to the Ghostbloods. She is Way of Kings Shallan with Jasnah. She is Words of Radiance Shallan with Adolin, and Chasm Shallan with Kaladin. She overcomes this by realizing these are all aspects of herself, and she can be all of them and none of them. Because that is who she truly is. Her personal Truth with a capital T. Realizing she can’t make everyone happy, and needs to have her own space and growth, she reaches her final oath.
Dalinar I think involves the fused and healing that rift.
Now having said all that, I do most definitely agree a lot of the difficultly is from them doing these oaths on their own. I think the radiants attached to their squires acted a lot like therapists. Guiding and helping them overcome these very difficult personal issues. Like AA for alcohol addiction, a veteran’s group for PTSD, or a rape survivors group for victims of rape, the knight radiant would act as a support group for the fledgling squire. But this is all my own thoughts. A good chunk is conjecture. I hope I did not without meaning to needlessly repeat things and beat a dead horse.
@Scáth
Not at all. You have supported your argument clearly. Got a bit lost on the timeline but your argument comes through. I don’t quite buy it because I am not sure other Radients, later Radients using our main peeps as a template, will encounter similar struggles within their Oath structure. I keep coming back to the Lopen and Shallan’s squire whose name escapes me for the moment. Keeping an open mind however as later novels come out and we encounter other Radient journeys. I’m not saying you are wrong, only that I’m not quite convinced that you are right, at least not yet.
To all of those having responded, I feel some of my issues with Shallan’s immaturity, if I may refer to it in those terms, is it expressed itself in her constantly not wanting to deal with her issues. Even if there are very valid reasons which explains why Shallan adopts this behavior (many have written very good posts on the matter), as a reader, it was just… hard. Where I am at, within my re-read, Shallan is not trying. All she thinks of if running away or finding ways to not be at meetings: she is avoiding and she has no intentions of facing her problems. I don’t necessarily mind such an arc providing it actually yields into a satisfying outcome which didn’t happened with Shallan’s narrative. There were no payoff to her narrative, no resolution or very little of it.
So yeah, I find it difficult to appreciate it.
On backsliding: I do not expect all characters to backslide before saying every one of their oaths. Any narrative suffers if the same ploy is over-used which is why I do think future arcs won’t happen like the past ones did.
@42 EvilMonkey
Yeah part of the problem was they all hit their oaths at different times, so it would seem disjointed but I presented it that way to show the increasing backslides that reflected through all three with each subsequent oath. Well ironically enough an idea popped in my head last night. The Fused mentioned how they will have to wipe out humanity because otherwise they will have to watch the humans constantly for fear of radiants popping up. I think that answers the question on how radiants got such large ranks despite the really strong issues they would have to go through to advance through the oaths. Desolation comes, your family is either killed, you are tortured, your home destroyed, or you are enslaved. Any of that sound familiar? :::cough Dalinar, Shallan, Kaladin, cough cough:::. So basically the horrors of a desolation/war on a global scale are enough to break people on a global scale resulting in radiants starting to bond enmasse. The existing radiants then discover these fledgling radiants or normal people who have distinguished themselves during battles and recruit them. The knight radiant (fully oathed) that took them under their wings then guides the squire in confronting and overcoming each subsequent oath. This is exactly how one of Dalinar’s vision played out. He distinguished himself in protecting his family while “his” town was nearly destroyed. The radiant noticed this and offered for him to join up. “Dalinar” would then get to chose whether to join or not. If he joined he would become a squire as we have seen with bridge 4 and would accompany his radiant on missions. These missions would serve to further break and push the squire to swear oaths (as we saw with the two bridgemen protecting Gavinor at the end of Oathbringer). Just instead of moments happening like with Kaladin freezing up, there would be a fully oathed Radiant, with other squires present to help during and aid in coping after (like the windrunner mentioned in the gemstone archive). This is why the windrunner in Dalinar’s vision said they train in the horrible practice of battle and warfare. Because I think the windrunner is saying, if you sign up, you are going to go through hell, and see hell, but if you are willing to do so and come out the other side, you will be a force of good to shield those you care for. To be the watcher at the wall. So basically the mentor radiant helps the fledgling radiant handle the backslide so it isn’t as devastating as our current cast is experiencing. I understand you disagree, and totally respect that. Didn’t write everything I just now posted to try and convince you. Just a thought I had that blossomed into a whole paragraph before I realized it lol.
@43 Gepeto
I guess it just comes down to personal experience/preference. There were plenty of people who could not stand Kaladin in Words of Radiance. They were upset that he had not gotten over his depression after the first book. For others, they loved the realistic portrayal of depression, that never truly goes away, but is a daily fight your whole life. So too for Shallan. There are some who take her actions as immature and selfish, and there are those that take her actions as an extremely emotionally and mentally scarred young woman just trying to cope/survive. Brandon has said that was his goal. He wanted the readers to be divisive on this. At the end of the day, to each their own I guess.
Again on backsliding, I respect your opinion, but personally I feel it would not be an over-used ploy, nor do I feel the narrative suffers from it. I came up with an idea above on how I think the function will play out on large scale. But to each their own.
@44: I did not personally use the word selfish nor do I think Shallan is selfish, though I would understand if there were readers who would refer to Shallan in such terms. I find Shallan has had a very difficult past, but where her immaturity hits is within her lack of desire to deal with her problems: she tends to shove them ahead, to ignore them or to try to make them disappear. This is where, for me, she loses some of the sympathy her character earned within the previous books. I would also point out this is also where a character such as Renarin struggled to earn my sympathy within past books, but this is a topic for another week.
We could say, as a reader, I tend to prefer reading characters who try to overcome their issues, even if they need to fail first, as opposed to characters who are refusing to acknowledge them and/or choose to run away from them. I also feel I might have felt better with Shallan’s entire arc if it hadn’t been one of the main focus of OB. Hence, dedicating one third of OB to Shallan evading her problems is a narrative choice which can be criticized as it made the narrative revolve on an arc which has no resoluton and offers very little pay-off. It might have been better to make a lesser focus than what it ended up being or to wrap it up in a more satisfying manner. I finished the book feeling I had read all of those Veil chapters I did not particularly enjoy for… nothing. We’ll see how I feel when I finish the book again. So far, in Part 2, immaturity is what popped into my head and why I brought it up.
I understand Brandon wants his readers to be divided on Shallan, but I do think he is playing a dangerous game here. If his readers end up hating reading one of his protagonists so much they stop reading the series, would it have been worth it? How many readers disliking Shallan is too much? Those are questions I am asking myself.
On Kaladin’s depression: But the critics were heard. Whether it was the initial plan or not, Brandon did tone it down in OB. He did not make his depression the main focus of Kaladin’s arc, for the second time in a row. He did not re-use the same narrative ploy. It is still there and it will always be there, but unlike WoR, it wasn’t a major focus nor an over-powering arc.
On the backsliding, your analogy was well made, I did not comment on it, but I had fun reading it. I am not saying you are wrong nor I am right, but I am wondering if using the narrative growth path, in a repetitive manner, won’t be too much. For instance, having both Jasnah and Szeth being dead then revived within the same book was too much for some readers: it was abundantly criticized, mostly on Reddit. Brandon often commented on those threads explaining how his plans weren’t for readers to feel this way, but he understood he had overused the ploy. Another example, which didn’t happen, would have been Kaladin saving the day, once again. Or Adolin being constantly saved from near death by timely stormlight healing, this rising back to his feet without any sequels. Or the fact he never goes into shock when gravely injured: he just calmily wait for either death or the healing. This too was perhaps over-used.
Point is all narrative arcs have potential, but re-using the same one within each book will get old. Therefore, if Dalinar/Shallan/Kaladin slip backwards, again, then I fear it would read as “repetitive” and if it is repetitive, then it will lose most of its impact.
Better to think of other narratives, other growth process, but YMMV. I respect your opinion on the matter, I am merely sharing mine.
On the side notes, Prince Harry and Megan Markles wedding did make me yearn for Brandon to write the Adolin/Shallan wedding. A thought I am sure @sheilagh will share.
@45 Gepeto
Never said you said she was selfish. I said that some would say. I guess that is the crux at this point isn’t it? Those who had problems with Kaladin’s depression felt he wasn’t doing enough to overcome it, or look on the bright side. Those who liked how it was portrayed felt it showed the ever present nature of depression and how everyday is a struggle. You have some good days, and you have some bad days. I do not feel Brandon toned Kaladin down. He had some good days that he enjoyed, and he had some bad days. And then he had the horrible day of Elhokar’s death and was submerged in it again. That’s depression. There are going to be some bad days you can handle, and there are some bad days that totally break you down and you do all you can to keep your head above water. At least that’s how I took his scenes in Oathbringer. What I gather from what you are saying is you feel Shallan isn’t making any steps to deal with her problems and that is why it does not sit well with you. Totally respect that. Just I feel those that do appreciate the arc see her illusions, and conflict as her trying to take steps to deal with her problems. They just either need more time before real progress is made, or are making things worse. But in my opinion that does not mean she is not trying. You could try to push a boulder up a hill by blowing on it. It doesn’t work, and there are better ways, but it does not change you are trying. In the boulder example you could know of no other way, or to you the boulder seems to budge a little and if you just keep doing it, it will all work out. Shallan said herself that whenever someone asks something of her, she tries to make a new persona that can accomplish it. She is trying to be a functional individual that can accomplish goals, but means of doing so is causing more harm than good. That is what Wit’s conversation was for. That is what Pattern’s conversations are for. The illusions aren’t the problem, it is how she is using them that is. At this point she does not see that. She sees a mechanism that helps her maintain. It is no different than Dalinar seeking the bottom of a bottle to deal with his issues, or Kaladin disconnecting to deal with his. She does need to find another way because the current isn’t working, but in my opinion that does not mean she is not trying. Just what she is trying is harming her, and she does not understand that yet. The journey she took, the progress she made is by the end of Oathbringer, she is starting to (in my opinion) realize that the illusions may not be the best way to go. So the first step was to stop making more. That to me is a huge step. By limiting the different personas, she has to slowly start to deal with problems with the ones that are left. So those personas can slowly “grow”. As they grow and learn to handle things outside their original “function”, she could begin to see them as herself and grow with them. Or whatever psychological theory to help individuals with PTSD cope and move on. I know I went on for a bit but here is a TLDR
A child writing scribbles when trying to learn to write does not mean the child is not trying. It means they either need more time to get the hang of it, or try a new way of learning. I feel Shallan by the end of Oathbringer is realizing she has to try a new way and is cautiously taking a slight step in that direction.
I understand the point you are trying to make. I just disagree. I do not feel it is repeating if each issue is unique and personal to each character. And I do not feel the narrative suffers from it. But that’s my own opinion.
edit Thought of an example regarding Shallan. When I was trying to post WoB, the formatting wouldn’t work so I couldn’t post it. So I would type the whole thing out. This was long and problematic for me so I would refer to the WoB, but only type it up if someone asked for the reference. Then wetlandr pointed out about linking it and told me how to. So I would click the share button and paste it directly into the body of the post, and it wouldn’t let me post. I could not understand why it wasn’t working so I went back to writing it all out. Then another poster (sorry forgetting the name), explained about clicking the button in the post and pasting the link there. Now wetlandr probably said the same thing, but I didn’t click for me at that time. For whatever reason it did click for me later. My point is though, just because I was trying something that didn’t work well (writing it all out myself), or didn’t work (posting the link directly to the post), doesn’t mean I was not actively trying to learn. It just meant I didn’t figure out the right way to yet. And keep in mind that is all with two people who do know what I am trying to do, and how to do it. The closest thing Shallan has to another lightweaver to help her is Wit/Hoid, and thanks to him she did make some progress. Now she still has a ways to go.
Gepeto @45
I think most of us are in this for the long haul regardless of Shallan and her continuous issues. Brandon’s writing quality would have to take a significant dive for any other outcome. That would include those who didn’t particularly enjoy Shallan’s arc or those that complain vociferously on the message boards. I’m not even sure a significant break in between novels would do it. After all, there are still people waiting patiently for the next Kingkiller Chronicle and we’ve been waiting 10 years plus for that one. Brandon should not be losing sleep over a loss of fans due to his narrative choices. Granted there will always be some people who will leave the series for any number of reasons and I’m not blithely dismissing your concerns. However I don’t think Brandon can think this way. If he tried to please everyone instead of staying true to his story the writing quality would indeed go down and he would in fact lose more fans. Also, I would point out that a significant number of Brandon’s fan base were acquired through WOT, people who are quite used to novels with multiple viewpoint characters. Not everyone liked every character or even how a certain character played out from volume to volume. You yourself said you soured on Rand somewhere in the middle of the series and only began to like him again at the end. I point this out to say that most people in this fandom aren’t going to toss the series because one or even a couple characters rub them the wrong way. (BTW, my bugbear was Perrin. Didn’t much like him until the Emond’s Field arc, Dumai Wells was cool, the PLOD had some moments but ultimately made me wanna tear my hair out, redeemed himself fully at the end)
@@@@@ Gepeto, 45 – I would also love to have seen the Shallan/Adolin wedding for 2 reasons: to compare it to the very unconventional wedding of Dalinar and Navani, and just because I love Shallan & Adolin. :)
@@@@@ 47, EvilMonkey – I totally agree on WoT. I love the series as a whole, but Rand is horrible after the first few books until the epiphany. I actually love Perrin, but Mat just drives me up a wall pretty much the entire series (I know that is an unpopular opinion, but we can’t all like the same things, right? Then life would be boring!).
I think it boils down to how we each perceive “trials”. For you, Shallan making her illusions to deal with events around her is her trying to help herself cope. I will not dispute this, I tend to agree with this statement.
Where we seem to disagree is I personally perceive her evading into personalities and running away to Kholinar as attempts to not actually deal with the core of her issues. In chapter 50, she specifically states the one reason she asks to go to Kholinar is to not be near Jasnah again, to not have to deal with it. She also uncovers how to keep an illusion going without needing to sustain it in an endeavor to have an excuse to not go to meetings.
For me, those two events are clear examples of Shallan taking direct action to not deal with her issues. She has a problem with her wardship with Jasnah, she isn’t even sure she still wants it, but instead of talking about it with Jasnah, instead of sitting down trying to find a solution, she seeks to get away from it. The fact she finds uses to her participation into the Kholinar expedition doesn’t change the fact she is running away. Shallan’s inner dialogue is also very clear on the matter: she recognizes she is not dealing with the problem, instead choosing to be away from it. She knows it is bad, but she does it anyway.
This is the behavior which I have a hard time with. To make a link with your child learning how to write, I think the distinction in within the “will to learn”. The child tries to get better, but Shallan isn’t trying. She just wants to be away from the problem. I definitely do not read this part of the narrative as her trying, more of the opposite.
Mind, as I said above, I’d probably be fine with the arc if it had actually panned out into a satisfying outcome, but it didn’t. My personal thoughts, and feel free to disagree, is Shallan subsequent fall, after Part 3, was too much. I would have stopped it there and then focus on having Shallan trying to get better, not her sinking even further down. This is where, I feel, the arc went too far. For me this is, YMMV.
@47: Yes and no. Shallan’s problems need not to be the main focus of a book. It need not be the major arc. This is where my issues start. If the arc had been smaller, I would probably not be speaking much about it, but it was very big. IMHO, too big, it would have benefit from being shorter, trimmed down. For instance, we aren’t there yet, but why is her viewpoint the only one which matters in Kholinar? I didn’t want to read Veil when I reached this part, I wanted to read the characters having an actual emotional attachment to the city, Adolin and Elhokar, not Shallan doing food heist. This is an example where I felt the focus wasn’t at the most interesting place. It’s OK she does those things, but did it need to take so many pages? Did it need to take away the focus from other potentially more interesting elements?
For the rest, I think it would be bad practice for an author, any author, to turn a blind ear to the critics. Critics exist for a reason and when a significant enough number of readers are saying the same thing, then perhaps it’s worth hearing them out. Of course, some critics will always be over the top or unfair, my own may fall into this category, sometimes, but ignoring them is perhaps missing out on what is not working for the readers in the narrative. None of it is about pandering to the readers nor changing the narrative, but it is about highlighting what part of the story perhaps needs to be worked on better.
Good examples in SA so far? The romance. Adolin. Shallan. Character inter-actions. Those come up very often. Without changing the narrative nor the plan, if the author realizes his ship is not working for too many readers (as an example), then perhaps he’d add more scenes in the next book to make it flow better.
Even Robert Jordan agreed on this. He *did* apologize for having written a book without Mat in it. He *did* say he might not have made the best narrative choice. And yeah, Rand was a pain for several books. Why? Because he didn’t progress. Like Shallan here. He went through the same arc over and over again without getting any resolution. I only started liking him again when Brandon give it to him. Do I wish for Shallan to enter an arc where she reassess the same issues for two more books? No. I want her to move forward and to deal with new ones, like Kaladin did. He’s still depressed, but this wasn’t the sole focus of his arc. I enjoyed this.
As such, if Shallan’s arc (I am not saying this is case, let’s use it as an example, I am wondering IF it is the case though) is not working out for too many readers, then shouldn’t the author take more care in writing her next arc? Without changing the outlines of it? Sometimes, a few more paragraphs, less or more viewpoints do the trick.
No one is asking Brandon to change his plans to pander to readers, but I’ll admit I am not comfortable with the idea critic is always unwarranted and the author should not listen to it. I think he should. What he does with it though, it belongs to him.
@48: Yeah Brandon promised us a traditional Alethi wedding, but we didn’t really get it. This one comes across as the one scene readers wanted to read but didn’t get to read. My hopes are Brandon will write it and release it as a separate short-story.
This would be a good occasion to write Adolin’s POV with respect to Shallan. I know a lot of readers who think this is really missing in SA.
I loved Perrin too. He was a strong character for me from beginning to the end.
@49 Gepeto
In the same breath that Shallan is “getting away”, Jasnah realizes she is stifling Shallan. That Shallan seems to benefit most when she has the freedom to accomplish goals on her own. Jasnah remarks to Ivory that Shallan was certainly successful on her own traveling to the Shattered Plains, and again was certainly successful when finding Urithiru, all without Jasnah. That maybe trying to treat Shallan as a ward once more had the opposite effect that Jasnah intended. Jasnah had intended to be a guiding force, but instead was suffocating Shallan. That is ultimately why Jasnah agreed with Shallan’s plan to go to Kholinar. She felt Shallan would benefit from it. And she did. Shallan hit a bunch of really hard issues forced into her face and started realizing the way she has been trying to handle her responsibilities isn’t working the way she hoped. So she has begun to try and alter it slightly. Her progress is not fast (nor do I feel it should be fast) but I do feel it is there.
You find other aspects potentially more interesting. Some people find Shallan interesting and enjoyed her arc. Like Evelina said, we can’t all like the same things, otherwise life would be boring.
Personally I do not think Brandon’s series suffers by taking this path in his writing, nor do I feel it will greatly suffer if he continues to do so. Just like Brandon should take into account his critics, he should also take into account the fans that do support his writing. I respect your opinion that you disagree.
edit hopefully the last part was not taken in a negative way. When I wrote support, I mean enjoy those portions. Not saying support him monetarily, or support him as a writer. Did I make sense? Can’t think of another way to write it and I do not want it to be seen as a personal attack.
edit2 I think this also begs the question, at what point should or shouldn’t an author listen to his or her fans? There are fans that want Adolin dead. Should a certain threshold cause Brandon to consider this? There are some that want him to be a bigger part. Should there be a certain threshold for that? There are some fans that want Lift to find a grisly end, while others want her to be center stage. Does it matter if either opinion is in the minority? Majority? If the beta readers feel a certain way and the writer disagrees, should he or she listen? Should he or she disregard? I think it comes down to the individual writer. I think the writer at the end of the day decides what story he or she wants to tell, and whether or not to expand or reduce parts. I think you could have 99 percent of a readership be screaming for something, but at the end of the day if the writer feels it cannot be, then it cannot be. I am not steeped in Harry Potter lore, but I do believe there was a lot of kickback on the death of Snape wasn’t there? Should Rowling have changed it? I cannot say. I cannot know how the story would have turned out with a different plot for Snape. Just like I cannot know how the story would have turned out in Brandon’s hands had he reduced some parts or lengthened others. I think this is honestly a question we just cannot answer. Some fans are going to like some parts and dislike others, and other fans are going to dislike some parts and like others. All I can really find to do is Read and Find Out.
edit 3 actually Sanderson did comment on this. WoB below
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/182-stormlight-three-update-5/#e5068
@@@@@ Gepeto
Just seeing your reaction to Shallan and avoiding responsibilities I find it strange that you liked Perrin all the way throughout despite him spending a large part of the second half of the series (from after Dumai Wells until Faile’s rescue) dodging his responsibility to be a major player in the Last Battle in order to pursue a personal goal. Oh well.
Re: Authors and Critics
I think writers must be careful of how much of a voice they give to people who are critical of their work, especially in a multi volume work. For one thing only they really know how the story ends. Readers are working off incomplete information at least until the story ends. I’m not saying they shouldn’t listen to anyone. That’s the entire reason for beta readers and editors. Plus if the writer interacts with the fans they will hear it when a plot point was unclear or a character’s tone was off a la Mat in TGS. But there’s a danger in letting fans influence writing too much. Do you get upset when a writer ret-conns? I certainly do. Good or bad, I prefer for anything I read to be cannon. Another danger is that in the course of trying to please everyone the author loses the things that made fans fall for the story in the first place. I guess it’s a matter of how much you trust the writer to deliver an enjoyable story even when they make choices you yourself may not have made.
@@@@@Evelina
The wedding? I can dig it. Maybe they will allude to it in the next book. Like maybe Shallan Lightweaver reenacts it on stage or something. Benefits of having a magical memory and all that.
@@@@@51
Exactly. If 51% or more of the fandom wanted Adolin killed and Brandon wrote it to please the majority, how many fans would he lose? Another example from a different author. GRRM killed off a Ned Stark in the very 1st book in the series. Surely there were those that hated the move and those that loved it. Should he have brought Ned back to please those that hated the move? And if he had, how many fans had he had lost?
@50: I agree with you on Jasnah. I however wish both characters spoke of this, together instead of having the narrative rely on the good old “I will not talk to anyone about my issues”. Granted, perhaps Jasnah had further plans to talk to Shallan, but Shallan ran away before she got the chance to.
Your post is not negative nor am I reading it in a negative way. I respectfully agree to disagree with anyone on here. And I am not saying Brandon should re-write SA nor he should change his plans. I am saying there are a few arcs which perhaps have not worked as well as intended. Shallan obviously didn’t work so well for me. I know I am not the only one, so was this the intended result? Only the author can answer to this.
How much of the critics should an author listen to? This is hard to evaluate. This isn’t an exact science and we all agree Brandon shouldn’t base his narrative on popular theories, but I do feel when enough readers have issues with a given narrative (again my revival example), then perhaps this is a case where it is interesting to listen to the critics. What is enough, well this is up to the author, really. Some critics are just petulant, some of my own probably fall within this category (I am no fool) but some critics bring about very good points. And, so far, Brandon has been known to listen and to respond, when he feels it is appropriate.
@51: I read WoT years ago, back at the time when I read it, I enjoyed Perrin. It may be I would enjoy him less now. Tastes change as we get older and I find there are some character traits I deal differently with. It also depends on how it is written. Proportionally, Shallan has a very big arc.
I answered the rest in my response to @Scáth. I think some are badly interpreting my words and are taking my stance critics ought to be listened to as an endeavor to have the author write the book per a popularity contest. I assure you this isn’t the case, but I believe in constructive criticism. If an arc is not working for some readers, then I do feel those readers should be able to explain how they feel about it. What the author does with the critics entirely belongs to him, but I don’t think he should ignore they exist. Nor am I saying Brandon is actually ignoring critics his work may be receiving.
And I don’t rank fan wish fulfillment list such as “I want this character to die or to turn in Odium’s Champion” as critics, including my own wish fulfillment.
Maybe I’m weird but I sympathize with ANY character in pain. It doesn’t mean I am incapable of recognizing when a character is making a mistake, or even when a character is being villainous and needs to be stopped. (I am looking at you Moash. You need to go down HARD.) But I will still sympathize with what the pain they’ve been through. I guess it’s because of this that I have trouble understand why it’s so difficult to realize that Shallan needs to change, but be unable to sympathize with her at the same time.
P.S. I don’t know if it’s relevant to this conversation I was clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome before it was lumped with high-functioning Autism.
@51 EvilMonkey
I agree on all points
@52 Gepeto
Except they did talk….. Basically Shallan came to the conclusion she needs to get away to clear her head. She realizes she doesn’t know what she wants, and being around so many different demanding responsibilities (Dalinar, Jasnah, Ghostbloods, etc), is making her fragment more and more. She thinks back on her experiences with the Shattered Plains and what she accomplished which is why there is friction with Jasnah. So she elects to go on a mission to try and find that part of herself and seek what she deep down wants/needs. Jasnah separately comes to the same conclusion in talking to Ivory, but then Shallan and Jasnah do meet with Shallan telling Jasnah her plan. Jasnah approves saying how she thinks it would be for the best for her. I can try and pull up the quotes to reference later. So there was discussion, and there was a reasoning for it as per Shallan and Jasnah.
Thing is as per the very WoB I posted, Brandon seems to think the PoV structure is necessary for the narrative to work in his opinion. That to him it would be changing his writing. For reference I have written out the Words of Brandon below
Brandon Sanderson
I still think you’re over reacting, and prematurely at that. Jasnah was a major force in the first book, and became many people’s favorite, despite having no viewpoints. Sometimes, keeping someone from having viewpoints actually enhances their story. Regardless, there is a bigger issue, the story cannot be everything to every reader. It must be the story I shape it to be; to try anything else is madness. You have the option, when reading, to edit the story in your experience of it, if you wish, to better match your desires. I have to tell the story the way my writing instincts say is the strongest, and this is the viewpoint breakdown that is best.
That was all about how many viewpoints were given to Adolin. Enasor felt it (I use it as I do not know the gender of the individual) would not enjoy Oathbringer because of the lack of Adolin viewpoints and would cause it to stop reading the series as result. So this is literally the example you gave. Critiques of how much time was given to Shallan vs other characters, just in this case Enasor zeroed in on Adolin, in its opinion, not having enough screen time. Brandon explained that to him as a writer, that would be changing his story. As you said, Brandon listens when he feels it is appropriate. In this case it seems he does not feel it is appropriate. He feels it would change the story he is writing enough to stress it must be the breakdown he set out. So that is why I feel it goes back to what I was saying. What is the threshold? He already made it clear his own stance. So what amount of critiques means he should change his mind? If we take Enasor’s post one step further, there are people who feel Adolin’s character would best serve the narrative by dying. Maybe Brandon was intending to kill off Adolin all along, but if enough people voice this critique, should he do it sooner? Some people think Adolin does not serve the story anymore. If enough people voice this critique, should Adolin get less scenes/viewpoints? To be clear I am not saying these critiques are “right” or “wrong”, “valid” or “not”. But I think you agree, they do exist. I am not making these up. Just like there are people who utterly and completely cannot stand Lift. Brandon has gone on record on numerous occasions on how much he enjoys the character. He enjoys Lift so much he wrote a novelette to flesh out her character some more and tell more of Nale’s story. If there were enough people critiquing their desire to see less scenes of Lift because the way she talks grates on them, should Brandon cut some of her scenes? How many critiques is needed for this to be considered? To continue on what you were saying, if we are unsure what number validates critiques, then who decides what is a “valid” critique? You? Me? EvilMonkey? If you do not think Adolin needing to die is a valid critique, but a beta reader does, does that give the critique more credence? That I believe is EvilMonkey and my point. It is a very slippery slope that I honestly do not think we can have an answer for. The one thing I can say is Brandon has very clearly as per the WoB heard the critique about viewpoints for Adolin, and he personally disagrees. Just like the other WoB I posted shows Brandon has very clearly heard how divisive Shallan is, and he feels that is a good thing and was his goal. So at the end of the day, he is the arbiter of that decision.
@53 BenW
That is one of the many things I love about Brandon’s writing. Being on my third re-read of the stormlight series, I have found so much depth to every character. Even ones we hate, you can’t help but sympathize with and try to understand.
#27, Dalinar literally shouts the First Oath at the sky (and the Stormfather).
Late to the party again! I really liked Jor, he was definitely interested, a class act too!
About spren eating… I have been wondering about that for awhile. Later on in the book isn’t there evidence of food?
There are times I just want to shake some sense into Shallan, but I felt the same way with Perrin in the PLOD! Otherwise I like her, she has so much to work on, I’m hoping as she get’s older she will confront the truth of her past. I know I was pretty messed up at 18, what teen has a handle on their world anyway?
@55 Carl
And in the same breath he says “I know the second oath I am to make. i don’t need to be told it. i will unite instead of divide”
So you could take him saying both oaths in a row as him swearing the first and second right after each other, or personally I think that Dalinar, by reciting the first oath repeatedly throughout Way of Kings was him swearing the first oath. Agree to disagree.
Whoa! lots of comments about Brandon’s choice of plot POV’s and paths of his characters! I was surprised that people actually email him with their grievances! Actually I was shocked! He is the AUTHOR! It is his story and he should be left alone to tell it! I agree everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but just….wow! I love his stories!
@54: I will take your word on Jasnah: I haven’t re-read the passage you are referring to and I do not recall it from my first read. Of course, I am absolutely not debating your word on it: it is perfectly reasonable to think I might not remember, which is why I am re-reading. Last I read of Shallan was chapter 50. To follow.
For the rest, I do not feel the example you plucked out really illustrates what I was trying to say. What I was referring to was inline with how many readers have come forth, through various mediums and into various threads, to say they had issues with Shallan’s narrative for one given reason or another. The example you provided was one specific reader having issues with the proposed book structure. This reader had not read OB at the time and was thus reacting to a planning structure, not the actual narrative. I fear those are two very different topic of discussions, both interesting, but different.
The closest real example I feel works with what I had in mind was the two death/revival in WoR. Some readers independentally commented on this being a narrative choice which diminished their enjoyment of the series. There were a few threads made, on the matter, by independant individuals. Brandon Sanderson eventually commented and while other readers were perfectly fine with the author’s narrative choices, Brandon still agreed he had over-used this specific narrative. He explained how ressurection was a theme within the Cosmere, but he did agree with the critic he needs a better way to make it clear who is dead and who isn’t. In this specific instance, Brandon listened to the critics and not to the other readers who had no issues with how this particular plot point went down. How much of this caused him to change his narrative, I have no idea! But I have read readers theorize he perhaps killed Eshonai for this specific reason. Now, I don’t think he did, but some are feeling it may be the case.
This is more what I had in mind as opposed to readers argumentating on different book structure or expressing disappointment at how it is planned to go down. My personal impressions are Shallan is more than just a dividing character and I do wonder how many readers not liking reading her is too much. After how many readers publicly stating they didn’t like it does it become a problemn? I understand it may have been the author’s intend all along, my initial comment is I felt this was a dangerous line to walk on. Let me push it to the extreme, if 100% of readers publicly posted on various mediums how much they disliked Shallan’s arc and wish it were not such a strong focus, then does it become a better critic even if the author’s intend was not for everyone to like it? What happens if too many reader are NOT liking it? Again, I am not saying this is the case here: I do not know if it is the case.
I think we both agree critics do exist, some are better formulated than others, some are very emotive and were likely written out after a shock moment of seeing how a preferred narrative was not going to be into the book, like the one you posted, some are just pesky or mean and this is unlikely to change. A vivid fandom will always have critics.
My questioning is thus at which point does a critic remain “just one among many critics” and at which point does it represent a narrative aspect it would preferable if the author addressed it? I mean, if a given arc is really not working (again I am not saying the Shallan one is within this situation, I am musing on whether or not it may be), then shouldn’t he work towards making it flow better? Sure his intend is for readers to be divised on the character, but does he intend the readers to not like reading it? This is hard to evaluate, at least, it is for me. So again, we go back to my hyperbolis.
You bring about Lift, a very good example. How much the Edgedancer novella was Brandon wanting to write this specific story (which wasn’t initially planned) and how much was him realizing his character he planned to be major is perhaps not as well received as he hoped she would? We don’t know, but fact is Edgedancer did allow many readers who didn’t previously like Lift, to warm up to her. Hence, while the novella most certainly serves other obvious purposes, can we really say, without any doubt, it didn’t occur to Brandon this might help his character work better for more readers? Because it did.
You ask who decides? Well, we are all going to agree Brandon does, but I think you need to separate what are critics for the existing narrative and speculative theories.
Any readers saying “Adolin should die” are merely voicing out what they want to read in a future book: this isn’t a critic. This is a speculation, one which can be pushed with more or less strength. It is obvious authors should not listen to readers speculations, but sometimes they do, like Jordan changing Taim from being Demandred because too many readers guessed it was the case. They can however use popular speculations to get an any of which plot points readers are more engrossed on and have the narrative answer to this hype or kill it in interview, whichever.
A critic is when a given arc, which has already been written, is perhaps not reaching its intended purpose. Since he keeps coming back, here is an example involving Adolin of a valid critic (or one I feel is valid): “If the intend is for readers to believe Adolin is broken enough for a Nahel Bond and thus be able to revive Maya, then the narrative, as it is written, is not convincing.”. So there. Very simple. A given narrative was written. Readers do not know what the author intends the readers to get out of it, but if his intentions are for readers to believe Adolin IS broken, then he isn’t quite reaching his target. What he does to fix it though, it belongs to him. He could do nothing, but not fixing it might diminish the impact of future narrative. Is this what he wants? Only the author knows this, but he won’t know if he doesn’t know the readers are not getting what they should out of the narrative.
Thus, for my part, critics are very important as they help get a perspective on how the readers are reacting to the chosen narrative. Discussions such as this one are important too because they allow different readers to share how they viewed the narrative. I also think it is important for the author to know how his readership is reacting to his narrative, but what he does with those critics ultimately belongs to him. I just don’t think ignoring them all together is the best of ideas, but YMMV. Of course, as I have explained above, I do not consider stuff like “Adolin should die” to be critics, those are speculations.
I hope this does not come across as negative or antagonist. This was really not my intention. I started this as I mused on how Shallan’s arc was being received. My impressions are it is either a hit or a miss which made me ask the questions I have asked. I certainly do not want nor think Brandon should pander to me or to anyone.
Ah and I do think a critic being voiced out by an official reviewer is more likely to carry weight than a critic being voiced out on Tor.com/Reddit/17th Shard/Tumblr. After all, Brandon chooses his reviewers: I am assuming he is choosing people he wants to hear the thoughts of, people he respects, people he likes to work with.
@58: And I am shocked at hearing voicing out critics is badly viewed or thought of in a negative way. To each our own.
Re: the POV debates
I think it basically comes down to trust. Every one has a right to their opinions and to air out grievances about a work they have invested precious time in. When Brandon finished WOT he gave outside imput more weight than he does on his own intellectual properties (hence the fixing of Mat from TGS to TOM). That makes sense since he was writing what amounts to highly informed fan fiction. For his own stuff it’s different because unlike us, he knows the endgame. He knows how it all ends and what needs to happen with each of his characters to achieve that ending. Now, I think it’s a safe assumption that we are all fans of Brandon’s writing. We like some books better than others but we like them enough to comment on a forum like this. There’s a lot of emotional investment that goes into reading and enjoying his literature. Naturally when that much time and effort is expended one wants to take as much ownership of the story as is possible for an outside observer and maybe more. But think back for a second to the first time you sampled Brandon’s writing. When you read that first book, whether Elantris or Mistborn, Warbreaker or WOK, whatever your entry point into the worlds created by Sanderson something grabbed you. Something made you want to read more, hear what he had to say. Before he had a fandom he relied solely on his instincts as a writer and his trusted team. That was good enough to make you want to see more. So the question is do you trust his instincts? Do you trust that the story he tells is one you want to read? His writing was good enough to draw you in; do you trust that it’ll be good enough to keep you coming back? Do you trust that his decisions will lead to a satisfying conclusion even if in the course of the story the character you love ends up in an unfavorable situation, or that the character you hate rises to prominence?
I think the writer has no responsibility to tell the story we want to hear. His responsibility lies in telling the best story he or she knows how to tell, taking whatever critiques to heart as he or she deems appropriate. Ultimately the writer’s opinion is the only one that matters. By that same token, we as readers have no responsibility to read an author’s best effort. If we deem that author’s best efforts to be lacking, if the direction they take the story is completely wrong in your opinion, you are under no obligation to continue to consume their intellectual property or support them with your hard earned dollars. You engage with the writer and their work trusting that the decisions they make will be the right ones. Or at least you should. And if in the course of things the author misses the mark to the point where you can no longer trust his decisions then no one is forcing you to stay. For instance, say Dalinar becomes a serial rapist and ultimately rapes Shallan during the course of the remainder of SA. If Brandon were to make that choice I’d be putting the book down. I may still engage with other books of his but I might have to kill my love for SA. If Brandon were to continue making narrative choices like that I would probably leave his fandom altogether. Not that I don’t read grimdark fantasy. I just don’t trust Brandon to write that sort of story, nor can I see a way that he could make those sorts of acts true to what we’ve seen of Dalinar’s character.
Now, I am not being an absolutist, it’s not a love it or leave it kind of argument. Feedback is important to an author, even necessary. I think feedback has improved Brandon’s writing immensely. He has become a better author by seeing what elements of his stories clicked for the readers and which fell flat. My personal opinion is that he has steadily improved from Elantris to now; taking the pulse of the fandom I’m sure played a significant part in that improvement. And I would argue that he has bent some to the fandom due to feedback. Adolin is a runaway train, starting as a near throwaway character and rising to near main protagonist status due to the positive reception for our Prince Charming. Another example of feedback helping Brandon is the one Gepeto mentioned in the post before, the death fakeouts in WOR. He does use feedback. He does listen to us. It’s a balancing act and I think Brandon handles that balance quite well.
@59 Gepeto
So this is where I get confused. You said “What I was referring to was inline with how many readers have come forth, through various mediums and into various threads, to say they had issues with Shallan’s narrative for one given reason or another”. So my response was what is the threshold in number of critiques where the author, Sanderson in this case, who has stated he likes how the character turned out in Oathbringer, should change his approach? And to take it further, if the author changes Shallan despite his own wishes on the matter in response to a certain number of critiques, then should he do the same with other critiques such as reducing Adolin’s or Lift’s parts? If he should not do so in that case, but he should do so in Shallan’s case, then what determines whether a critique is valid enough to change the author’s decision? I am not criticizing how you feel about Shallan. You are perfectly entitled to dislike this characters arc. I am just trying to understand what is the litmus test that an author should use in regards to their work. Basically from the WoB I posted, Brandon does know how people are reacting to Shallan, and he feels that is good. He wants them to react that way. That strikes me as listening to his audience. Just it also reads to me as him intending to continue on his path.
Well that is the question we are all asking. When does the author have to change his or her intent when regarding his or her fan base? If every single fan cannot stand Shallan, but Brandon feels it is a story that must be told for his narrative to be successful, should he alter it going forward? If your answer is yes, then does that apply to other critiques and opinions? If 99 percent of the fandom wants less Adolin, or less Lift, but Sanderson feels the amount they are in is crucial to his narrative, should he alter it? Which is why I said I feel it comes down to the writer, and Sanderson has already said his opinion on the matter. I guess Sanderson is willing to take the risk of losing this readership in the interest of the narrative he is aiming to tell. Only time will tell if he will suffer for it. Personally I do not think he will. But that is my own opinion.
Regarding your comment “some are better formulated than others, some are very emotive and were likely written out after a shock moment of seeing how preferred narrative was not going to be into the book, like the one you posted, some are just pesky or mean and this is unlikely to change”. I do not personally feel critiques are meant to be personal attacks, or mean. You disliked Shallan’s arc. I doubt you mean your dislike to imply you dislike people dealing with similar mental issues. Just like those that disliked Kaladin’s arc does not mean those people disliked people that suffered from depression. It was just a personal critique that those people felt. That does not make those critiques any more or less valid. Otherwise we go back to who gets to decide which critiques are allowed?
I feel like we are going in circles. We both ask at what point should critiques of a body of work affect the production of future works. I have come to the conclusion that a certain number cannot be established, an authorized body of individuals cannot be enforced, and no critique should be held as better or worse than others. At the end of the day it is up to the author to hear critiques of his or her work, and decide whether or not to apply them regardless the origin. Brandon has commented he likes it the way it is, so it appears he has chosen not to.
Can I ask you this next question without it seeming like an attack? I hope so. Why do you get to decide that those that say “Adolin should die”, is not a valid critique? If we go back to the numbers game, if enough people support it and consider it a critique, while only some are against it, does that make it then be considered a valid critique? Why is the critique of Lift valid but not the one of Adolin? The definition of critique is
a detailed analysis and assessment of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory
If someone provided a detailed analysis on why the narrative would benefit from Adolin’s death, why would it not be considered a critique? And if critics of works are so important, why is this one not?
@60: I did not mean to infer I didn’t think Brandon handled the feedback well. Based on what I have observed, he actually does. This being said, you have the right of it when you say there is a lot of emotional investment within readers who decide or even want to get involve within the fandom.
It is also a matter of trust, but on this one, we aren’t all equal. Some of us have an easier time with it than others.
@61: One element which does bother me, within our argument, is how it is implied a “change” made based on “readers critiques” necessarily passes through either increasing nor decreasing a given character’s page time. It is true I will always petitioned for “more” page time for Adolin, but this is my soft spot, my weak spot, I just love his character so much! I however do not want to Brandon to do it in an attempt to pander to me nor to other readers having voiced out similar thoughts. What I want is intrinsically more complicated: I want Brandon to genuinely want to give Adolin more page time, independently of how popular the character has gotten. Hence, I have tried to keep his character our of this particular discussion because I am very invested in him and I am trying to broach this topic in an objective manner.
So, you say if Brandon reduces Shallan’s page time because of too numerous feedback from readers who disliked her arc, then why shouldn’t he do the same for readers arguing the same for Lift or Adolin? My answer to this is why should “page time” be the only way to treat a critique? Perhaps what characters arcs which didn’t work out for a significant enough number of readers need is not more or less page time, but a different angle. I spoke of angles in one of the threats. Angles of perspective are important. Look at a square from one angle and it looks like a rectangle, move your perspective and it looks like a diamond. It is all a matter of referential. Hence, Shallan not working for some readers, such as myself (I haven’t finished re-reading, I am sharing my thoughts as I go along, they will evolve as I move further into the book, they always do) might be a matter of the author not having found the right perspective to present this given narrative. So while yes, it is true I have said I feel Shallan’s arc could have been shorter, I can’t say this is the only way by which the same narrative might have worked better for myself, as a reader.
Hence, the answer to a critique is not necessarily linked to “page time” even if it is the easy answer. I also do not think the answer to a critique is changing the intend of a given narrative: it can’t be! The narrative happens for a reason: intend cannot be changed on a whim nor because a bunch of readers don’t dig into the final product. But what if the narrative isn’t reaching its intend? This is where I am getting. Let’s take Lift again. If the author’s intends (I do not know what they are here, I am just theorizing) are for his readers to be sympathetic to her character, to enjoy reading and to smile each time she pops around but, within the end product, readers end up feeling annoyed at the character, then did the arc reach the intend the author initially had when he wrote it? No, it doesn’t. Then this is bad, the author wanted the readers to receive a given narrative in a given way, but it doesn’t happen as planned. What is the solution? Kill Lift? Remove her? Re-write SA’s entire plan to make do without her as a main protagonist? No. Well, this is one answer, likely the worst one, but certainly not the one I would suggest. Then perhaps the solution is to find another perspective on the same character. See my square example. Sometimes what a character who isn’t working as well as the author intended it to work needs is not linked to page time, but to perspective. See also my comments on Rand: Jordan wrote the character from a given perspective. Pass a given book, he stopped working for me, but when Brandon took over, he used another perspective and it worker. Well, for me it worked, brilliantly.
So when it comes to critiques, I think the first question an author should ask himself is: “Is the narrative reaching its intended purpose?”. If the answer is yes, then case closed. Considering the WoB you have provided, it does seem like the Shallan arc falls within this category, though I’d love to hear more of Brandon’s thoughts on the matter. If the answer is no, then what is the solution? If you take my death/revival example, the solution was to publicly comment on it, to state readers have not gotten out of it what the author wanted and to explain how he will try to make it clearer, next time, so his future narratives reach their intended purpose. Now, this was a good solution, everyone is happy.
I agree Brandon is likely to take the risk to lose some readers to tell the narrative he wants to tell, but if this narrative isn’t reaching its purpose, then the quality of the final product will be reduced. Hence, my thoughts. When enough critique is made on the same narrative element, then perhaps it is worthy to ask ourselves if adjustments perhaps need to be done. Like when Jordan commented on having excluded Mat from one of the WoT book: a decision he defended in saying the character was injured and not doing much, but this caused great dissatisfaction within the fandom.
Oh and another great example was WoK! Reviewers felt Dalinar’s arc, as the author originally wrote it, did not work out. It did not reach its intended potential, it did not yield the reactions, from the readers, the author wished to created. Brandon commented how, on paper, what he planned to write worked, but once executed within the actual narrative, he didn’t. But this was his plan! This was how he wanted to write the story, but it just didn’t yield the expected results. Hence, based on those reviews, Brandon re-wrote Dalinar’s arc and this also is how Adolin earned his viewpoints.
On the matter of the word “mean” I used, I meant some critics are really… over the top. Some of my own may fall into this category: I will certainly not point the straw into anyone’s eyes without acknowledging the plank within mines. There are however cases where the critiques are… well not formulated in a nice, polite way. They are angry and they can be unfair towards the narrative. There is a way of saying a given arc didn’t work out for us, as readers, and there is a way to say it which is akin to bashing. This is what I meant when I said “mean”. All critiques have the right to exist, but all of those writing them should try to it while respecting the product, the author and the fan base. I am not saying I am always succeeding here, but this is the ideal I try to achieve.
On the “Adolin should die”, I think we are arguing over semantic. Independently of the right definition of the word “critique”, I personally make a difference in between criticizing written narrative elements, how they are interpreted, how they work, what readers got out of them and suggesting the narrative should take a given path. Hence, when a reader says he wants “Adolin to die” because he believes it would make a “better narrative”, he is speculating. He is making a comment on where he believes the narrative should go for maximum “shock value” or whichever other reason. I do this very often. I cannot however rank it on the same level as criticizing whether or not Shallan’s arc works in OB because one is based on existing canon whereas the other is based on speculative canon. Adolin did not die. This was never written into the book. Thus, it isn’t I get to decide what is a critique and what isn’t, it is just a matter of one referring to existing work, one referring to the narrative Brandon has written inside the context of the story he wants to tell whereas the other is about what a reader believes future narrative should include. None of this has anything to do with myself not wanting Adolin to die, it is more a matter of it not really applying to the existing canon. No one has read the narrative where Adolin does die or does not die (as the series is not over), hence any statement it would be better or not exist outside the context of the full narrative as only Brandon has this information.
So even if someone could produce a detailed analysis of how the narrative would benefit if Adolin were to die, it would remain… speculations because this reader will always be lacking information. Now, I don’t say speculations have no place to be. I love speculations! I am just saying I don’t find them the same as discussing an existing arc. And no, the author should not change core elements of his narrative based on what readers speculate for: Brandon commented on this. He can’t change his plans because some have guessed it. In the same way, he can’t kill Adolin because some want it just as he can’t make him divorce from Shallan because others believe it is the only plausible outcome.
Yeah, this is more or less going in circles though I find it very interesting. By no means do I meant for anything I have written on the topic to come across in a negative way. I just think it is a matter of reflection and thank you for helping me reflect on this.
@62 Gepeto
Conversely I brought the topic of Adolin having a reduced presence in the novel, not because I myself desire it (I do not, I am of the camp I like him how he currently is), but there are individuals that exist that do feel that way. I brought it up to illustrate that if a critique should be listened to based on numeric population, then should that not also apply to a critique you yourself find unsavory? That is why I feel it was valid to bring that forward. To further illustrate, Amazon has 1,851 reviews of Oathbringer. Of that 1,851 reviewers there are
1,460 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 5 stars (79% as per Amazon)
162 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 4 stars (9% as per Amazon)
101 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 3 stars (5% as per Amazon)
63 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 2 stars (3% as per Amazon)
65 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 1 stars (4% as per Amazon)
With Amazon we have the advantage of being able to do word searches in reviews. Of each rank, Adolin has been mentioned in
11 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 5 stars (.8% of 5 stars, .6% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
8 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 4 stars (5% of 4 stars, .4% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
4 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 3 stars (4% of 3 stars, .2% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
3 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 2 stars (5% of 2 stars, .2% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
3 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 1 stars (5% of 1 stars, .2% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
So that means in total, on Amazon, 2%(29 people) mentioned Adolin in any capacity. Now lets look at Shallan
40 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 5 stars (3% of 5 stars, 2% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
27 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 4 stars (16% of 4 stars, 1% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
24 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 3 stars (24% of 3 stars, 1% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
12 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 2 stars (20% of 2 stars, 1% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
13 reviewers ranking Oathbringer 1 stars (20% of 1 stars, 1% of the total reviews)(percents have been rounded up)
So once again, this is for any mention of Shallan, both positive and negative in all the reviews on Amazon. That comes to 116 reviewers or 6% of all reviews.
Does this mean this is a full showing of everyone who has read Oathbringer? Of course not. There are those that buy from a local book store. There are those that take books out from the library. And finally there are those that buy from Amazon, but do not review the books. You already stated in a prior post that the 17th shard, Tor, reddit and so on does not encapsulate the entire fanbase either. So where does this leave us? Why did I go through the trouble of doing the math? I did this to show there isn’t a clear indicator due to number, due to source, nor due to content of whether a critique should affect the writer or not. At the end of the day, it is the writer that decides. At the end of the day Brandon decided he liked it the way he did it.
The thing is, you are saying Shallan’s arc is not reaching its intention to its readers. Brandon has said in the WoB that it was his intention for her to be divisive. He said he liked the way she came out. So Shallan reached the intention Brandon had for his readers. Shallan has reached his intended purpose. So as you say, case closed.
Actually there is a narrative where Adolin dies. In Way of Kings Prime. As you say, we are using semantics. Categorizing it by a different name so then it does not apply by your definition does not negate it is a critique. Regardless the intention was a thought exercise. Take a theoretical change to Stormlight the series that you personally would not like. Whatever it may be. Then tell me if there was a preponderous amount of fans who supported that change, do you agree Brandon should make that change going forward?
I like Shallan and her story line, but the moment when she wasn’t sure if he brothers were really alive or if she had killed them too hit me hard. I think that what she does in this book is the only way that she knows how to cope, but there are moments when even she knows that she’s not coping well, and this is one of the most poignant and sad ones.
He always does a really good job with Shallans personalities, even though unlike Kals depression its still a controversial diagnosis, and is closer to possession or other religious peoples experiences where it isn’t real outside the context of their own perceptions, unlike actual disorders based on chemical imbalances. The vast majority of cases were misdiagnosed by a handful of therapists for decades and only really began after a few films in the 70s and the famously fraudulent sybil. There’s people who definitely experience it, but besides just being an extreme form of regular disassociation its still a bit nebulous and not really commonly accepted as a real condition by professionals.
That said, in the context of the story it reads so realistically and he’s insanely good at depicting it.
But yeah, even after reading/listening to the graphic audio so many times over the years it’s crazy how dense OB is, it just covers so much ground, still my favorite book of the 4 (though KoWaT has been insanely good so far)
It’s kind of goofy that adolin is able to freely date and fool around for years but suddenly when they’re actually engaged they have to act like puritans haha. Probably my only critique of Sando of the last 15 years is the sterile, sexless relationships, only allowed with arranged marriages, forced noble on Skaa atrocities, or prostitutes. No just healthy dating and sex. I don’t even care that much or need it in the story at all but it’s definitely jarring haha. I know it clashes with his values but he can realistically depict atheists why not that