Good morning, faithful Rereaders! Have you heard the wonderful news? We have an official release date for Stormlight 4! November 17, 2020! Huzzah! (Now, Alice and I would like to remind you that this could still change. Nothing is set in stone until Team Dragonsteel tells us that it’s set in stone, but still. Excitement! Jubilation! High-pitched squeals of merriment!)
::ahem:: As exciting as this is, we do need to get back on track, because we’re nearing the end-game here, people. And this is one heck of a long chapter. We’ve got painful confessions, and Syl locked up (No! Poor Syl!), and Kaladin drawing near to the Fourth Ideal, and Fused on the horizon, and… and… Hoo boy. Lots and lots to cover, so come along and prepare your seat on the Honor’s Path as we continue our trip through Shadesmar.
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.
In this week’s reread we also discuss some things (very mild spoilers though) from Warbreaker in the Cosmere Connections section, so if you haven’t read it, best to give that section a pass.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin POVs (accompanied by the rest of the Shadesmar Exploration Society)
WHERE: Shadesmar, on board the Honor’s Path.
L: I’ve done my best to chart out their likely path on the map below. Note the location of Thaylen City, southwest of their current location. If they’re going to deviate from their chosen route, as Kaladin hopes, now would be the time to do so.
WHEN: 1174.2.5.5 (one week after departing Celebrant, and some indeterminate number of days following.)
Aboard the Honor’s Path, Syl has been locked away but the rest of the Shadesmar Exploration Society (SES) have been given free rein of the decks. Shallan is trying to come to terms with which of her personalities are “real,” and starts collecting up some beads in case they need to make a quick getaway. She and Adolin have a frank discussion in which she explains to him about her personality issues, and Adolin admits that he killed Sadeas. Meanwhile, Azure makes a deal with the honorspren first mate to secure passage for herself—and only herself—in her quest to hunt down Nightblood, after they reach Lasting Integrity. Kaladin, however, is hell bent on getting them to Thaylen City instead, and as soon as possible. He attempts to convince the captain of the ship to take them there, and in the process starts drawing near to the Fourth Ideal. Windspren congregate around him, much to the shock and awe of the sailors and the captain. When Kaladin reveals that a Bondsmith has appeared, the captain reconsiders. However, it is then that they realize that they’re being tailed by no less than eight Fused…
Beginnings
Title: Honor’s Path
Their current vessel, Honor’s Path, was faster than Ico’s merchant ship.
Heralds
Jezrien: Herald of Kings, Patron of Windrunners. Divine attributes Protecting & Leading. Role: King.
Nalan: Herald of Justice, Patron of Skybreakers. Divine attributes Just & Confident. Role: Judge.
A: I can see Jezrien here because of the honorspren as well as his Windrunner—and especially this Windrunner’s leadership via his drive to get back to where he can protect Dalinar. I’m a little less confident on Nalan’s presence.
L: Well, Kaladin is doing a lot of thinking about his own Ideal and who chooses what’s right and wrong. That seems very similar to the sorts of questions that Szeth is asking over with Nalan currently.
Icon: Pattern, since we start with Shallan’s POV; it switches to Kaladin and then Adolin
Epigraph:
Chemoarish, the Dustmother, has some of the most varied lore surrounding her. The wealth of it makes sorting lies from truths extremely difficult. I do believe she is not the Nightwatcher, contrary to what some stories claim. —From Hessi’s Mythica, page 23
A: I’m… not sure what to say about this. I think this may be the first time she’s mentioned by name, though one time (one!!) someone cursed by the name “Dustmother” back in The Way of Kings. Hessi says there’s a wealth of lore about her, but we’ve yet to see any of it.
Stories & Songs
“What happens if we carry the beads away too far?” Shallan asked, curious as the mistspren handed her the bucket. “They are tied to objects in the Physical Realm, right?”
“You can carry them anywhere in Shadesmar you wish,” the captain said. “Their tie is through the Spiritual Realm, and distance doesn’t matter. However, drop them—let them free—and they’ll work their way back to the general location of their physical counterpart.”
L: This is very cool.
A: I know, right? This answers a lot of questions I’d had earlier—like the relationship between a deadeye spren and the Blade they form. If the connection between the Cognitive and Physical realms is actually through the Spiritual realm, there are all sorts of implications.
Relationships & Romances
A: This chapter opens up (at least in retrospect!) the dynamic between Shallan and Adolin vs. Veil and Kaladin. We’ll get it spelled out much later, but here we get several small hints that Kaladin is attractive (romantically) to Veil, rather than to Shallan. (There’s more on this in the following section.)
There’s a lovely, sweet scene between Shallan and Adolin, where he’s clearly worried about her. She’s oddly annoyed by his concern—which seems to be Veil coming through, even though she’d very much been thinking as Shallan about her recent avoidance of Soulcasting.
“Shallan?” he asked.
“Shallan will be fine,” she said. I’ll bring her back in a moment. I just have to recover … her…”
Adolin glanced at the fluttering pages with the different versions of her. He reached out and hugged her, saying nothing. Which turned out to be the right thing to say.
… “Which one do you like the most?” she finally asked.
A: She proceeds to explain her personalities to him: Veil, the one with the white outfit but currently troublesome. Radiant, the prettier swordplayer. And a new personality she’s trying to figure out, who can Lightweave.
“Shallan’s broken, so I think I’m trying to hide her. Like a cracked vase, where you turn the nice side toward the room, hiding the flaw. I’m not doing it on purpose, but it’s happening, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
A: She’s expecting him to give her advice; instead, he gives her honesty.
L: As he does.
“I … Shallan, I killed Sadeas.”
A: He pours the whole thing out, including that the whole time they were “hunting a killer” it was a sham, and that he thinks (essentially) that he did something very wrong, but he’s not sorry. And she surprises him by simply saying, “Good for you.”
L: (More on this in how it relates to Adolin’s state of mind down in the “Bruised and Broken” section.)
A: They share this moment of honesty, and it culminates in one of my favorite moments:
“You never did say,” she whispered, “which one you prefer.”
“It’s obvious. I prefer the real you.”
“Which one is that, though?”
“She’s the one I’m talking to right now. You don’t have to hide, Shallan. You don’t have to push it down. Maybe the vase is cracked, but that only means it can show what’s inside. And I like what’s inside.”
So warm. Comfortable. And strikingly unfamiliar. What was this peace? This place without fear?
A: I know there’s a lot of disagreement about this, but I firmly believe Adolin is right. He’s one of the very few—maybe the only person—who can see through all the disguises to the real Shallan, even when she herself doesn’t know who she is. (Incidentally, I think this might be connected to his Edgedancer-ish character; the same thing that makes him able to see “the real Shallan” makes him able to connect to Mayalaran and, I hope, will make him able to bring her back to life.)
L: It really is a beautiful scene, and a wonderful example of a healthy relationship—on Adolin’s side, anyway. He’s there to support her and to help her become a better version of herself, even if that better version is just realizing that she’s been the better person all along. However… I still don’t see the same level of emotional maturity from her. A relationship is two sided, and both partners should be supporting the other. I know she’s going through a lot herself right now, I just hope that eventually, when she gets herself ironed out, she’s going to be ready to be there for him when he inevitably needs her.
A: Sigh. Her relative immaturity (both emotional and intellectual) is definitely a problem, and I do hope she gets herself sorted out. I love how good Adolin is for Shallan, but I have to admit she’s not a terribly good match for him at this point. And unfortunately, we see it just a couple pages later in the same chapter. There’s this other scene… and I’m reminded that despite how I see Adolin, he’s not nearly as self-confident as I think he should be!
Kaladin, the storming bridgeman, stood at the bow of the ship, surrounded by glowing lines of light. They illuminated his heroic figure …
Just ahead of him, Shallan seemed to change. It was in her bearing, the way she stopped resting lightly on one foot, and stood solidly on two feet instead. The way her posture shifted.
And the way that she seemed to melt upon seeing Kaladin, lips rising to a grin.
A: Poor Adolin. :(
L: Well, I mean… who can blame him? From a monogamous stand-point, this sort of behavior has got to be pretty devastating. (You know… I was about to comment about how this is pretty close to toxic monogamy culture but honestly? Adolin’s got a pretty decent reaction to this. He’s not lashing out in anger, he’s taking the time to self-analyze and eventually he just offers to step aside, rather than letting jealousy control him. Boy’s got his head on straight. I would also like to take a moment to mention that it has been asked if Sanderson would consider having them in a polyamorous relationship and he’s said no. More’s the pity.)
A: I really, really feel awful for Adolin here. He just gave Shallan the perfect blend of support and vulnerability, and she seemed to return his love and trust… and then she does this thing. In the scene, he thinks about the drawings he’s seen in her sketchbook, too, and it all reinforces the idea that she’s not as committed to him as he is to her. She had given him some clues, in the way she talked about her different personalities, that some of her behavior wasn’t entirely her. But… but. It will be a long time yet before he can entirely accept that his “real Shallan” does love him and only him, and as long as Veil is such a strong piece of her I’m not sure I’m convinced, though I want to be. (For what it’s worth, I’m personally quite happy with Sanderson’s decision not to go with polyamory. Aside from thinking it’s a really bad idea IRL, I don’t think it would be a great look for an LDS author. I’m not sure that’s a big factor for him; he writes more based on what he wants to write than on how it will look, but… still. History is not irrelevant.)
L: We’ll have to agree to disagree about the IRL bad idea part, but I concede on the point of it not being a great look for an LDS author. While it would be nice to see more representation and normalization of these relationship dynamics outside of a very select few Fantasy/Sci-Fi novels (like Kushiel’s Dart), it needs to be handled with care and understanding, and while Sanderson is usually very good at researching such social topics, he’s stated that he doesn’t feel as if he could do this particular one justice.
Bruised & Broken
A: After several weeks of “just Shallan,” this chapter starts showing much more sign of Veil peeking through again, and even taking over. Have we seen this unintentional and sudden change before, though? Like this bit, where she’s totally Shallan, listening to Kaladin’s plan to get to Thaylen City and worrying about whether she can make the Oathgate work even if they get there. She’s been pondering on how passionate he is about getting there, but she was still thinking like Shallan. Then this happens.
She couldn’t help feeling that too much of this plan depended on her.
Yet those eyes …
“We could try a mutiny,” Veil said.
A: Just like that, Veil is speaking, without any apparent intention on Shallan’s part to change.
L: Seems like Kaladin’s a bit of a trigger for her, providing the eyes in question are his.
A: She continues to suggest things like “pinching” the Stormlight/gems that had been confiscated from them, admiring his rough look, etc., and then:
Wait.
Wait, had that been Veil?
Shallan shook free of the momentary drifting of personality. Kaladin didn’t seem to notice.
A: It seems to worry her, which is a little bit comforting, I guess…
L: Small comfort.
She wore the skirt that Adolin had purchased for her, hoping it would make her feel more like Shallan. Veil kept poking through, which could be useful—but the way it just kind of happened was frightening to her. This was the opposite of what Wit had told her to do, wasn’t it?
A: So… I’m glad she’s worried about it, but why is it happening? Is it Shallan simply falling apart? An effect of being in the Cognitive Realm? A result of her interaction with Sja-anat? She asks a most fascinating question later, as she practices gathering impressions from the beads:
What would someone see when looking at her soul? Would it give a single, unified impression? Many different ideas of what it was to be her?
A: I’d like to know!
L: I wonder if Pattern could tell her.
“They need to let [Syl] out,” he said. “Prisons are terrible for me—they’ll be worse for her.”
L: Because she’s an honorspren and used to being free to flit about on the winds? Or is Kaladin just projecting, here?
“I’ve seen a lot of young hotheads in my time, and young Stormblessed feels like another color altogether. I wish I knew what he was so desperate to prove.”
L: That’s actually a really good question. Kaladin’s got his own swath of issues he’s working through, true… but what’s he trying to prove, exactly, and to whom? My spheres are on “that I’m a good person” to “the world.” He joined the army against his father’s wishes, and now he’s trying to prove to everyone around him—but most importantly to himself—that he’s not just a murderer, like his father said soldiers were. This is just speculation on my part, obviously. But it feels right to me.
Why… why hadn’t she tried to Soulcast since then? She’d made excuses, avoided thinking about it. Had focused all her attention on Lightweaving.
She’d ignored Soulcasting. Because she’d failed.
Because she was afraid.
L: Well… good on her, for figuring out what was going on in her own head, for this instance at least!
A: She has good reason to be afraid, given her experience; it was dangerous. But if she’d been honest with herself earlier, she could have taken advantage of Jasnah’s return to learn about it, instead of continuing to avoid it.
“The honorable Adolin Kholin, the consummate duelist. A murderer. And Shallan, I… I don’t think I’m sorry.”
L: There’s a lot of debate about this in fan circles, and honestly? Yeah, what he did may not have been strictly ethically correct. But he was protecting his family from someone who would certainly have tried to kill them. I don’t blame him for not feeling bad about it. But the very fact that he’s worried about the fact that he doesn’t feel bad speaks volumes about his character. He’s not simply justifying it to himself and moving on with his life. He’s still beating himself up over it—not because he killed someone (who deserved it), but because he’s afraid that not feeling repentant makes him a bad person. And he doesn’t want to be a bad person.
A: Once again, I love this guy. I think you’re right, too: in one sense he knows he simply did what had to be done, but he also thinks he ought to feel bad about it.
He’d failed so many people in his life…
…The Second Ideal made more direct sense. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves. Straightforward, yes… but overwhelming. The world was a place of suffering. Was he really supposed to try to prevent it all?
…The Third Ideal means standing up for anyone, if needed. But who decided what was “right?” Which side was he supposed to protect?
L: I’d just like to take a moment to interject here and note that the Third Ideal has been different for each Windrunner who’s sworn it. Interesting…. Anyway. The reason I’m putting this here is obviously because Kal’s really, really struggling. We’ve seen him struggling with this concept ever since Elhokar’s death, but this is the closest he’s come to really sitting down and trying to come up with an answer, as is evident by the windspren. I’m so very curious to find out what that Fourth Ideal is going to wind up being.
Places & Peoples
Notum had confirmed that the Voidspren were creating their own empire in Shadesmar. And they controlled Cultivation’s Perpendicularity, the easiest way to get between realms.
L: Whoa whoa whoa. Does this mean that Cultivation’s left? I can’t imagine that she would have let them use it without a fight! Or… is she maybe captured? That’s a scary thought!
A: I’ve always been really baffled by this. Her Perpendicularity is in the Horneater Peaks, but the only place anyone has physically seen her is in the Valley, near Urithiru. So… how much proximity does a Shard need to their Shardpool? Some? None? Lots? From what little we know, a Shard can probably take physical form anywhere on the planet, so maybe the question is moot.
Tight Butts and Coconuts
He walked across the deck, passing by Pattern—who stood with hands clasped behind his back, thinking number-filled thoughts.
L: I just really love the idea of “number-filled thoughts.” It made me chuckle.
“I would prefer,” Captain Notum said, “if you would refrain from upsetting my crew.”
“I would prefer that you let Syl go,” Kaladin snapped.
L: Yeah. You tell him, Kal!
“We certainly are an odd bunch.”
“Yes. Seven people. Odd.”
L: Classic Pattern.
Weighty Words
“But your bond is dangerous, without Honor. There will not be enough checks upon your power—you risk disaster.”
L: TIN FOIL HAT THEORY TIME! I wonder if all the power that normally would have been kept within Honor is now spread out amongst the Windrunners, and this is why they’re so powerful in terms of this story? They do seem to be a bit overpowered compared to the other orders, except for the Bondsmiths…
A: Hey, that’s a cool theory! We know that the Stormfather is the single biggest Splinter of Honor (don’t we?), but he certainly doesn’t hold all of Honor’s power. What if it is spread among the honorspren, so that when they form bonds, the Radiant is overpowered by comparison? That would be pretty cool.
It’s interesting that the Honorspren in this chapter are so opposed to Kaladin’s bond with Syl. They really do seem to think the bond is a bad idea.
Cosmere Connections
Nearby, the ship’s first mate … left the hold. Curiously, she was carrying Azure’s Shardblade. …
“Draw her carefully,” Azure said to Borea … “Don’t pull her out all the way—she doesn’t know you.”
… [Borea] undid a small latch on the Shardblade, eased it from its sheath a half inch, then drew in a sharp breath. “It … tingles.”
“She’s investigating you,” Azure said.
“It really is as you say,” Borea said. “A Shardblade that requires no spren—no enslavement. This is something else. How did you do it?”
A: And of course, we don’t get an answer to that! Still, what we do learn is pretty interesting. This is definitely an Awakened sword, with intelligence and personality. We don’t know yet what her Command is, but she clearly has some moral guideline by which she “investigates” people who touch her. I really do hope we learn more about her soon.
“But,” Azure continued, “even if his mission is critical, it doesn’t mean mine isn’t as well.”
L: What’s so critical about getting Nightblood back? Is she just concerned that it’s going to cause havoc here on Roshar unless it’s contained, or is there something more going on? Is there some time-sensitive reason that she needs it back home? So many questions.
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
A: Who, or what, are the “mistspren”??
She glanced toward a passing sailor, a mistspren who had gaseous limbs that ended in gloved hands. Her feminine face was the shape of a porcelain mask, and she—like the others of her kind—wore a vest and trousers that seemed to float on a body made of swirling, indistinct fog.
A: From what Our Heroes say elsewhere, the mistspren seem to work for the honorspren, doing most of the labor of the ship while the honorspren command. My initial assumption was that they, being described this way and appearing to be sapient spren, were probably the spren of one of the Knight Radiant orders, but I’m not so sure now. Which order would have spren who work for the spren of another order? They certainly understand the humans, and yet they seem to take no initiative; when Shallan asks one for some beads to study, she simply goes and gets the captain to make a decision. And yet they clearly aren’t the “cousin” spren we’ve talked about before; those are the windspren, and we see them in this chapter as something very different:
Something crystallized in the air beside him, a line of light like a pinprick in the air that trailed a long, soft luminescence. … A second pinprick of light appeared near him, spinning, coordinated with the other. They made spiral trails in the air. He’d have called them spren, but they weren’t any he’d seen before.
A: Much to his shock, Kaladin can suddenly hear Syl in his mind, even though she’s still imprisoned. And the rest of the spren are far more shocked:
The strange pinpricks of light continued to whirl around him. Sailors gathered behind, making a ruckus until the captain pushed through and gaped.
…
“They’re not common on this side,” the captain said. “They live on your side, almost completely. I … I’ve never seen them before. They’re beautiful.”
A: So that’s cool: something we thought was incredibly common, if pretty, turns out to be a beautiful wonder to the spren in the Cognitive Realm. The following discussion is pretty funny, as Kaladin discovers that there are other things that will surprise the spren:
“Captain,” Kaladin said. “I have taken an oath, as a Windrunner, to protect. And the Bondsmith who leads us is in danger.”
“Bondsmith?” the captain asked. “Which one?”
“Dalinar Kholin.”
“No. Which Bondsmith, of the three?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Kaladin said. “But his spren is the Stormfather. I told you I’d spoken to him.”
It seemed, from the captain’s aghast expression, that perhaps Kaladin should have mentioned this fact earlier.
A: I don’t know about you, but this cracks me up every time I read it. The fact that the Stormfather has bonded to a human again is a shock to Captain Notum; that, combined with the windspren spinning around Kaladin in Shadesmar, is what it takes to convince him that, just maybe, they should consider the requests (okay, demands) these humans are making.
“Besides, the Ancient Daughter is too young.”
“Young?” Kaladin said. “Didn’t you just call her ancient?”
…“The honorspren were created by Honor himself, many thousands of years ago. You call him the Almighty.”
…“Well, sometime before his death, Honor stopped creating honorspren. We don’t know why, but he asked the Stormfather to do it instead.”
…“The Stormfather created only a handful of children. All of these, save Sylphrena, were destroyed in the Recreance, becoming deadeyes. This loss stung the Stormfather, who didn’t create again for centuries. When he was finally moved to remake the honorspren, he created only ten more. My great-grandmother was among them; she created my grandfather, who created my father, who eventually created me.”
L: Wow, lots of cool information in here. So Stormdaddy only made twenty spren, and the honorspren can reproduce asexually, apparently. I’m also curious about why Syl wasn’t made into a deadeye… she told Kal that she had a Knight Radiant before, didn’t she? I’m not misremembering that?
A: She had a Knight Radiant, but he died in battle rather than destroying their bond in the Recreance. So, while his death was hard on her and she “slept” for a long time, it didn’t damage her in the way that a broken bond does.
L: So it was only spren that were abandoned that went eyeless, not those whose Radiants died? That seems odd to me. I almost wonder if her Radiant hadn’t sworn the Final Ideal yet.
A: I love reading this section today; there was just a discussion on Facebook when someone asked who Timbre’s mother was, assuming her father was Ico. My best conclusion is that, as you say, it’s an asexual reproduction; I can’t recall a single time when a single spren has referred to both a mother and a father. It’s always one or the other.
Arresting and Ambivalent Artwork
A: Well, that’s a mix! Most of it is typical of Shallan’s natural history sketches—and then there’s the thing in the upper right. Veil’s handiwork? Gloryspren at the top, anticipationspren in the middle & right, and … awespren, maybe? I’m not sure about those. I’m also not sure about the branchy thing in the lower right, but I love the little doodle sketches in the corners, like she’s thinking on paper.
L: I’m certain that this is Veil’s handiwork in the top right, especially given the little “Drawing is easy!” “Clearly it isn’t.” dialogue that goes back and forth near it. I’d wager she was trying to draw the Captain, if only because I’m certain that this isn’t representative of either Kal or Adolin! There’s also a little Ghostblood symbol drawn under there.
A: I think you’re right on all counts, though I can’t prove it.
L: I don’t know what the tenacious ones on the bottom left are, but I kinda love how creepy they are. Lookit their little vertical mouths! So horrifyingly charming!
A: The little note in the corner: “Why 2 mouths at all?” (or at least that’s what I think it says). It must be so fun coming up with these drawings.
L: It’s “Why a mouth at all?”, actually. Which makes sense… as spren they wouldn’t really need them, now would they?
Next week we’ll be delving into chapter 109, in which Dalinar pulls Venli into one of his visions. Stay tuned at the same storm-time and the same storm-channel, and as always feel free to join in the conversation in the comment section below!
Looking ahead, there will be a break in posting over the Christmas holidays. Stay tuned for details.
Alice is now deep into the various celebrations and busyness that accompanies Christmas-tide around her home and family. Next up: school Christmas concert, in which her daughter tries to do just about everything, including flute, saxophone, and singing an octave above the staff. Hopefully all the pieces come together!
Lyndsey is heading into Boston on Saturday for a cosplay ice skating meetup, then to Providence on Sunday for even more ice skating fun! If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or Instagram.
“I’m so very curious to find out what that Fourth Ideal is going to wind up being.” I see what you did there.
I do think that Shallan isn’t on the same level on support as Adolin, but she is actually quite supportive. When he talks about Rathalas or Kholinar at the start of OB, she makes sure to touch him on the arm and I believe that’s a sign of support.
I do think that now that they’re married, they will both let each other into their feelings. A lot of their lack of communication around the way the feel about themselves or what the did, in Shallan’s case, is because they’re so afraid that the other will leave them because if they don’t like who they are, why would someone else like them?
But as Adolin says, they’ve got to let each other see what’s inside. (ik he says that about her feelings, but I think that at some point Shallan will do the same for him)
All in all, very excited to see where their relationship will go!
I agree with Alice; there’s no way Brandon would tackle a polyamorous relationship. Although he’s more or less promised that we will get a gay main character, I get the impression that he’s very reluctant to do even that.
So a few things:
Shards do not need to be “physically” close to their perpendicularity. Their power resides in the spiritual realm (except in one case which is Elantris spoilers Dominion and Devotion’s power shoved into the cognitive realm by Odium to prevent the power from being picked up by a new person) so it is all time and all places at once.
Cultivation is playing at not caring about the state of humanity to Odium, so not preventing the fused from using the perpendicularity to me makes sense.
To add, I do not think a Shard can prevent their perpendicularity’s usage. The concentration of investiture punches a hole through all three realms. So just its existence is what provides the “gateway”. Baring moving the perpendicularity, I do not believe the Shard can prevent transit via using it. Otherwise Mistborn spoilers ( Why wouldn’t have Ruin prevented it? Or Preservation preventing Hoid from using it?)
It has been confirmed that mistspren are not radiant spren.
As to the polyamorous situation, I believe in Sanderson that if he felt it was good for the character or made sense within in the world, he would research and portray it. It to me, would not be him personally endorsing the life style, but realizing such a life style exists, the people involved are people, and they have their own understandings and feelings. Just like how he wrote an atheist does not mean he is endorsing or saying he himself is an atheist, I feel the same would apply to polyamory, as well as LGBTQ. People are people, and they deserve to be represented as genuine people.
As for the different 3rd Ideal, while the phrasing isn’t identical, the concept is.
“I will protect even those that I don’t believe deserve it.” Kaladin didn’t think Elhokar deserved his protection, but swore anyway. Teft didn’t believe he was worth saving, but swore anyway.
I wonder what The Lopen thinks isn’t worth protecting.
I think it’s a little harsh to criticize Shallan, from the reader’s perspective, for not being as “wonderful” a partner for Adolin is to her. The whole triangle sucks especially for him, and that I can understand, but for not being as attuned to him, I don’t think that’s fair game. She’s already the “shining light,” however fake, for others. I think being allowed to look “weak” is a good thing. Also, in WoR, I was leaning into Kaladin + Shallan, but I think this is where it really turned for me. I’m curious to see where it came in for other people.
Also Sadeas got what he deserved. *No ragrets*
This chapter contains my favorite Adolin/Shallan interaction scene because, for once, they told each other a truth about themselves. They opened up. They shared an uncomfortable truth and they ended bonding over a surprising narrative element: Adolin too doesn’t know who he is and offers no solution to Shallan, he merely asks her to tell him once she figures everything out. Now, that was quite unforeseen! Yes, he tells her he loves the real *her* and yes I agree this probably has to do with his Edgedancer qualities, but bottom line remains Adolin too has spent a lifetime playing pretend with other people. He too is lost in the mist of it though for different reasons than Shallan and in a very different manner.
Speaking of which, Alice, here, saying how Adolin’s lack of confidence clashes with her she has viewed the character does illustrate one recurrent issues some readers have had with the character. In other words, it isn’t rare I stumble on readers having shoe-horned Adolin into one specific box, the one which befits how those readers have viewed the character based on how he has been presented within the narrative. Per this box, Adolin is over-confident, arrogant, perfect, definitely not broken, strong, steady, definitely doesn’t know what an inner struggle is, and he most definitely fits within this “happy cheery jock/side-kick” trope which is so common I cannot blame anyone for linking it to Adolin. After all, this *is* how the in-world characters have viewed Adolin and given Adolin’s limited exposure, this *was* the most straight-forward approach to his character.
Hence, per this box, Adolin is not… capable of being vulnerable, unsure of himself, doubting nor without self-confidence. This *cannot* be. The character has basically been the poster boy for the meaningless unimportant smiling “goofy friend”: there can’t be more than meets the eyes. From times to times, I have interacted with readers claiming those bouts of insecurities Adolin has are OOC and clashes with how the character had been portrayed so far, from their perspective. They come out of nowhere. And this forms up the main reason why I disliked Adolin playing dressing up in Kholinar, because it reinforces those impressions. I might personally believe Brandon had other reasons to write those scenes, but facts are many readers just take them as yet another expression of Adolin’s “happy goofiness”.
But this isn’t true. As early as WoK, Adolin opens up, to the readers, about his lack of self-confidence and his doubts. He tells us how he has always put on a brave smile such as to avoid having Renarin worry about the outcome of events. Even back then, even within the limited scope of his own viewpoints, Adolin does tell us: “Hey, I act this way because this is how everyone expects me to act and also because my family depends on me being strong, but I don’t *really* feel this way most of the time”. However it was ignored. The perfect poster boy trope was too strong, it was too perfect, it fitted Adolin too nicely.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising to meet resistance, from the readership, at accepting Adolin does have those doubts, there aren’t meaningless and yes, he does not have strong confidence in his own capacities. He berates himself for falling short of a role model he believes he needs to meet if he is to be a good person.
This brings me to one of the WoBs I got from Brandon. I think I posted it, a while back, but it is relevant here. So, I asked Brandon to tell me something about the Dalinar/Adolin relationship which would be relevant to the main narrative. He answered both Dalinar and Adolin needed to realize one could be a good person without being what Dalinar wants. This goes really nicely with Lindsey’s comment: Adolin is not sorry he killed Sadeas, but he angst over his lack of guilt since he believes it makes him a worthless bad person. Why? Because Dalinar wouldn’t approve, because it goes against Dalinar’s codes, because it isn’t how he was told he *should* think, feel, and behave. Brandon seems to corroborates those thoughts in the WoB I got.
On Shallan not being good to Adolin: I think she will eventually be good for him. In fact, I think she has been the best character towards him since she is the only one to ever ask him how he is, how he feels and to note when he seems to not be OK with events. She asks him early in OB, many times. She was the only one who noted who emotionally compromised Adolin was, she noted when Adolin balked at being compared to his father: she saw the hints there was more. So while yes, she is very focused on herself, she has shown she could be focused on *him*. This is far more than other in-world characters have done for Adolin (*cough* Dalinar/Kaladin *cough*) so far, so yes, I have good hopes Shallan will be there for him when he needs her.
On Adolin and Kaladin: The scene where Adolin leaves, saddened at seeing Shallan suddenly more interested in Kaladin than him just illustrates how little self-confidence he has. He sees Kaladin as a God. He is nothing. In his mind, why would Shallan choose him? In his mind, if it weren’t for the betrothal, Shallan would never spend time with him, she’d be with Kaladin. He sees Kaladin as the better man, the better suitor, so yes, he bows down. He won’t fight for her because this isn’t a fight Adolin believes he can win not now nor never. He is just *him* and *him* is only worth as much as his association to his father makes him worth. And that’s really sad.
On polyarmory: I think a polyarmory relationship would have required a lot more work than what we have seen. We would have needed to see Adolin being attracted to men, in the first place, to see Kaladin being romantically attracted to Adolin, and to see all participants being willing to have an open relationship. Instead, we saw protective Adolin who’s basically a typical family guy, we saw Kaladin who seems to have no interest within those relationships and we never saw Shallan name it as an option. Hence, I would argue the context and the narrative wasn’t right for it. While I know this remains a popular option for many readers, I just do not think the characters dynamics we have read lent to it within this current narrative without going OOC. Perhaps in another series or with a different set of characters Brandon can properly flesh it out.
I never actually thought about the location of Unyielding Fidelity, but it seems to be near to or even overlap the position of Kharabranth in the physical? This is very interesting, given that Shallan detected those Cryptics spying on Taravangian back in WoK. Really surprising that the Honorspren tolerated their presence in or near their city.
It is also very curious that non-sapient spren like the mandras and the windspren clearly can use Gravitation in the Cognitive, while the Honorspren can’t. And yet, when Rock watched them in one of his chapters, seeing farther into the Cognitive than is normal, it seemed to him like they were flying? I am confused. For that matter, shouldn’t Lift _also_ be seeing at least as far into the Cognitive as Rock, because of her special boon? Shouldn’t it be impossible for spren that can make themselves invisible in the physical to hide from her? And yet, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Hm…
Nalan could be on the chapter heading because of Azure’s mission, among other things, and how supposedly important it is. Didn’t she claim that she was after a criminal? And I imagine that she wants to prevent Nighblood causing havoc and destruction on Roshar, like it did on Nalthis in Manywar – and maybe after Warbreaker? I don’t see either her or Vasher taking it away from this world, though, since Sanderson didn’t write a whole book-long origin story of this most special among all the other special magical swords, for it not to be vital in the SA.
So, what happens if a worldhopper tries to carry the beads into interstellar space in the Cognitive or even to another planet? Inquiring minds want to know.
I love that Adolin admits to Shallan that he, too, lived a lie and pretended to be a different person lately. Too bad that she is, at this time, unable to reciprocate as fully as I’d like. I can’t help but think that it would be harder for Adolin to accept the dark secrets of her homicidal past after the emotional explosion that he will experience when he learns that his father murdered his mother. To then find out that Shallan also kept similarly dark and weighty things from him is going to be painful and make trust that much more difficult. I fully expect them to get over this eventually, but the road is going to be much thornier than it needed to. And yea, I agree that Adolin is showing very Edgedancerish qualities in this interaction.
Speaking of Mayalaran – I wonder if both Shallan and Adolin touching the blade at the same time isn’t going to help him grow the bond? Since the deadblades “come to (half-)life” and communicate with the person that they are bonded with when touched by a Radiant.
I disagree that the new Windrunners are disproportionally powerful when compared to other Radiants. Honor’s power checks applied to all Orders – that’s why all but the Skybreakers participated in the Recreance, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Nale took care to ensure that as few as possible of them reached the Fifth Ideal to limit their powers. It is possible that there are more Honorspren in existence then before due to Honor’s splintering, though, so they might become more numerous than they have been historically.
Lyndsey:
Radiant spren don’t become deadeyes when their Radiants die! They aren’t even normally as strongly affected as Syl was with her first knight – she just wasn’t yet mature enough for the bond, as Notum explains in this and possibly in the next chapter where he appears. It is only broken Radiant Oaths that “kill” the Nahel spren and turn them into deadeyes.
That exchange where Shallan starts talking about how Shallan is broken and hidden away and now she’ll have to make new personality to Lightweave… Brr. Like really this chapter is the one where she seems closest to falling apart completely. The fact that Adolin was there for her in this moment and held her together… well, I can’t but think that significant factor in why she ends up choosing him.
If the Radiant dying made the spren into a Deadeyes, we’d have a lot more Shardblades lying around. There’d be tens of thousands of them in the world. Because Radiants still age like regular people, and the organization existed for at least 2000 years, probably far longer.
I think the third Spren is that picture is supposed to be a Fearspren- its got the long antenna with a globule thing on the end. The mouth might not be functional, it might be more just about how an embodiment of fear is ‘supposed’ to look. Certainly not all spren have mouths, so it can’t serve any hugely vital role for them. I do feel fairly certain that the sketch in the corner is Veil’s, anyway, because the ‘drawing is easy’ comment appears to be written in the same handwriting as the rest.
The Mistspren are weird to me as well. Do we see any of the Honorspren call them that, or it just what the humans decided to call them because they seem to be made of mist? Because I feel like if they were actually embodiments of the idea of mist, surely they wouldn’t be just servants like this- seems to be me that they would be running around wild like the rest of the lesser spren we see. But the only kinds of Radiant Spren we haven’t seen in Shadesmar are the Skybreaker and Truthwatcher ones, and neither of those strike me as similar to these guys. It’s really disappointing that the idea of them being Windspren was conclusively disproven.
Alice & Lyn. I think Nale is pictured as the captain is taking Syl back to the Honorspren city as a form of justice. She is wanted and the captain is following his the Honorspren’s order.
Alice. I disagree. I do think Shallan is a good match for Adolin. She showed that when she was first courting him in WoR (before she really had the complete personality splits). She showed that when she carex for him when he is injured. I think deep down she realizes that each of them compliments each other. I believe that by then end of this book she is able to realize that and will be there for Adolin whenever he needs her.
Lyn. I completely disagree with you. I have no interest in seeing Adolin, Shallan and Kaladin in a polyamorous relationship. I do not think it is within any of the three to be party to a polyamorous relationship. The Vorin religion would seem to frown against such an arrangement. IMO, none of their personalities would let them stray so far from traditional (as the three grew up learning) Vorin values.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
8 Fused, eh? Won’t Kaladin be fighting 8 Fused later in this book?
The windspren swarming around Kaladin foreshadow gloryspren around Dalinar, too. Approach an oath, get cousin spren, apparently. And Captain Notum was just talking about how spren are made … I have a pet theory that Kaladin and Syl (who was talking about being a mother earlier in the book) just made those windspren, and later Dalinar will be creating at least one gloryspren.
Adolin and Shallan reveal their most feared secrets to each other … and they both expect to be rejected, and it literally never occurs to either to reject the other. Shallan telling all these Truths has to be approaching the Fourth Oath of the other orders. I think revealing the matricide/patricide will be her version of the Fifth Ideal.
Note the ketek structure. We saw Kaladin looking through the sketchbook earlier.
All two of them?
As mentioned upthread, Shards don’t necessarily minute-to-minute control their Perpendicularities. Heck, Devotion’s Shardpool is still working on Sel.
@Gepeto:
Polyamorous relationships don’t require every person involved to be romantically or sexually attracted to each other. I know a poly family with two straight males and one straight female as members. The men don’t have sex.
Mistspren? Does anyone else think of Preservation when reading about “mist spirits.”?
@10 AndrewHB
Vorin religion is primarily concerned with the keeping of oaths. So extra marital affairs are frowned on, but that does not preclude an oath among multiple people. This is a long WoB, so I will just include the link, but Brandon does mention other forms of relationships that Vorinism would allow other than marriages.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116/#e1443
@11 Carl
Good point. There was a comic strip I read for awhile that included two women in a relationship where one was asexual, while the other was bi. The asexual woman encouraged the bi one to have physical relationships with others to have the physical intimacy that the asexual woman could not provide. The two women loved each other deeply, but one could not give the physical intimacy the other needed. So a third individual, a man in this case, provided emotional and physical intimacy in the relationship. They all knew each other, and cared for each other on an emotional and mental level, but not all parties were physically intimate. And that worked for them.
Are the mist spren related to mistwraiths? The different worlds seem to be connected in Shadesmar, there could be nonhuman travelers between worlds. That would explain why they don’t fit into spren classifications.
Why isn’t Shallan using the soundwave writing system like Navani?
My issue with a polyam relationship in this case is that any sort of relationship between Shallan and Kal right now would completely toxic. Kal’s attraction to her is strictly based on how she reminds him of his brother, and how he feels around her. It’s not actually about her as a person. Shallan’s attraction is well, based on a facet personality’s idea of attraction. Kal is a “bad boy”, and so Veil, a “bad girl” would be attracted. Those are terrible reasons to want a relationship that’s anything other than superficial acquaintance/starting friendship.
Polyam is as varied as the people who participate in those sorts of relationships. Mutual physical attraction among all members of a polycule is *not* required, and if Shallan and Kaladin’s attractions were anything closely resembling healthy, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a more complex relationship between the three (I understand it would never happen anyway). But since it’s not, I’m all good with how the story is progressing.
@13 My first thought was that her notes follow the “translation” aspect of the Stormlight Archive, namely, she wrote them in the ‘soundwave writing’, but they are being translated for convenience, and that’s all there is to it. But, I think you’re right that most, if not all of Navani’s writings are shown in the ‘soundwave’ and then an alternate translation is often provided underneath. So… it could just be convenience vs worldbuilding but I wonder if there is a reason that one character’s notes are consistently done one way and the other, another. I do think it has been consistent, though, so that’s a fun distinction between the two. Maybe it’s that Shallan’s are written for herself, so we see them immediately translated, just like a character’s thoughts, while Navani’s have tended to be diagrams or blueprints, written as in-world artifacts that someone – Khriss’ assistant (Nath?) has stolen and added the “translated” annotations for Khriss.
A keyboard, a cat, my post is toast. Trying again…
Veil is a horror novel character to me. She is trying to take over Shallan and subsume her original personality. She embodies all of Shallan’s internal self doubt and self hate such that Veil looks down on Shallan and wants to eliminate her or at least push her to the side.
@goddessimho, I see Veil as a Mary Sue for Shallan, having characteristics she feels she lacks (self-confidence, physical competence, social competence). Radiant is a different Mary Sue, interestingly enough. Shallan is mentally ill, so instead of just having a possibly healthy fantasy, “becoming” Veil is a very maladaptive coping strategy. (Oops, slipping into jargon!) For one thing, even with Surgebinding, Veil doesn’t actually have the skills Shallan fantasizes for her.
I like Sanderson’s character variety here. In all the huge cast of the Stormlight Archive, I can’t think of a single other character who seems to fantasize extensively about being someone else, someone imaginary. Kaladin in particular is remarkably unimaginative … and now that i think about it, that’s something he shares with Dalinar. They are both highly intelligent, and even creative, but not “imaginative” in the sense I mean. Syl, in her own weird way, is actually more like Shallan, which might be why she’s pushing a Kaladin/Shallan romance so hard.
@8: I agree Adolin finding out Shallan has kept her “dark past” from him at the same moment as he finds out the same about his father will hurt. I struggle to foresee how the character, as I read him, wouldn’t feel betrayed, hurt, and left out, but I have been disappointed before, so… I’ll keep an open mind on how Brandon chooses to tackle it.
This being said, what will hurt the most is not what Shallan did, I think it will be the fact she didn’t think he was worthy enough to know. She didn’t trust him with it. Even if he agreed it is OK if they have secrets, once he told his, I do think he was more or less expecting more transparency from now on.
I personally expect Shallan and Adolin to have a joined narrative within the second group in RoW and I more or less expect their “early climax” will pan out in a bad ending… or a cliffhanger one… but huh that’s my thoughts. What I do know about RoW doesn’t allow me to conclude much. Brandon is not really dropping much.
@11: While I am aware there are various viable models for polyarmory relationships within real-life, I will argue the fleshing out such a relationship within a work of fiction requires a stronger context than the one we got in SA. In other words, it needs to work with the existing characters due to their respective personalities, desires, and choices, not merely because they are three young people and, as a result, readers ship them together.
My main gripe against the polyarmory is I just do not find it *works* with Adolin, Kaladin, and Shallan as they have been written in the actual books. In fanfiction, whenever I read one featuring the threesome, Adolin is always pictured as s sexually out-going man, loving to flaunt himself naked while winking at Kaladin: he is literally exhuming confidence and comfort with himself. While this is a popular interpretation of the character, I find it clashes with how the character has been portrayed in the series. Saying this, I am aware Brandon took a turn with Adolin, in OB, many readers had not foreseen: not many thought the small hints Brandon dropped in WoK/WoR about Adolin’s lack of confidence would actually grow in importance.
It however happened and, when it comes to the canon, Adolin is insecure, he lacks confidence, and he does believe Kaladin is the better man. For polyarmory to work, even in a relationship where Adolin/Kaladin do not have sex together, Adolin would need to be confident, to believe he has something to bring to the relationship, and not to feel the lesser man next to Kaladin. This is not what is happening in the narrative though. When Adolin finds out Shallan has feelings for Kaladin, his reflexes aren’t to think of how they can make it work (like Rand and his girls in WoT), they are to bow down and let Shallan be with the one she loves the most: the one, not the ones.
Hence, from my personal perspective, polyarmory within SA will remain a topic for fanfiction where all three young characters are pale copy of their canon self, where Adolin is terribly OOC (and Kaladin too).
No Cultivation is still active, just today i read one of the next chapters, where Dalinar meets Venli in his Vision and Odium destroys it. The stormfather was recovering afterwards and it was noted, that the only reason Odium didnt destroy it was, that he was afraid cultivation would attack him in this moment.
I think I just figured out what Alice meant by “… not a great look for an LDS author …” (about polyamory).
Maybe a practicing LDS member would be reluctant to seem to endorse “plural marriage.”
Now I feel silly.
@20 Carl
Personally I do not think writing something means you necessarily endorse it, but I guess to each their own.
@20: It is the opposite… Google LDS and polyarmory… There were quite a few scandals. I can see why it wouldn’t be good publicity for a LDS author to actually attempt at writing polyarmory. Readers might want Brandon’s religious affiliations never to matter, but they sometimes do.
“I’m also not sure about the branchy thing in the lower right”
Time for some WILD speculation! That branchy thing, ladies and gentlemen, is a simple fractal (a pattern which repeats itself at increasingly smaller intervals, and can be presumed to be a piece of a larger pattern). Someone should ask The Sandman if he explicitly told Issac to put it there, because I think it’s a wink to the fact that the Cosmere is quite fractalized: Adonalsium was Shattered into Shards; Shards can be Splintered; Splinters can presumably be Slivered (or Slivers are more like a type of Splinter, and the pieces of a Splinter are called something else…). Unfortunately, I can’t remember any other examples off the top of my head, but there are a few more throughout the Cosmere.
The implication here is that whenever we find something which is fractal in nature, there’s the possibility that it continues, getting both larger and smaller (as many people have considered, with regard to the Shards, wondering if Adonalsium is only a piece of something even larger).
@23 Matthew D
Interesting thought. Pattern the spren is a fractal pattern, and Roshar the continent is a Julia Set, so could be. Sanderson slips in all sorts of fun secrets :)
The branchy thing actually reminds me a bit of a carbohydrate molecule, or a fatty acid chain, but the fractal thing makes more sense.
Adolin and Shallan are so adorable here, and while Shallan is not as strong, emotionally, as Adolin right now, I tihnk it’s okay. Count me as somebody that never saw the Shallan/Kaladin ship (poly or otherwise) as working; her attraction to him is for the wrong reasons, and not even really ‘her’. I think it’s interesting that Adolin seems to also be a bit more in tune with Shallan’s mood whereas she notes that Kaladin doesn’t seem to notice.
And I think Adolin’s feelings (and his insecurity/self doubts) are perfectly reasonable. I’ve got some friends who have done the polycule thing and it’s no antidote to jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity, etc. I think sometimes people THINK it is (or, one partner is doing it to appease the other partner) but really in any relatiosnhip you have to be on the same page, know what the expected commitment is, what that looks like, what the other person needs, and then commit to it (to the best of your ability). There’s nothing wrong with feeling like a person you love/admire doesn’t return your feelings in the same way, or to feel badly that you can’t make them as happy. And as you say, Adolin is willing to be mature about it and not double down on clinginess. It hurts, but he’s willing to let her make her choice.
@23 and 24
Cool point. More directly, though, I imagine that’s supposed to be a drawing of some of the spiny, fragile plants of shadesmar. Which, having them grow in a fractal manner makes a ton of sense.
@20, 21, 22
While I agree you can write something without believing in it or endorsing it, and many people understand that, there will always be people who equate characters’ actions with author’s beliefs. And while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did have some of its members practice polygamy during the mid-late 1800’s, it hasn’t since then. Yet, that idea still persists in common culture (with the implication that it is still practiced) and so to have an active member of that church “appear” to endorse that by doing a storyline around that, especially if it paints a polyamorous relationship as positive, invites people to make misguided comments, jokes, assumptions, etc.
OP: “I’ve seen a lot of young hotheads in my time, and young Stormblessed feels like another color altogether. I wish I knew what he was so desperate to prove.”
L: That’s actually a really good question.
I’m probably oversimplifying it, but I always thought Kal was desperate to prove he can protect someone, save someone. I mean, he just watched Elhokar die and the people and singers he cared about butcher each other. And he got out of his numbness only after he was convinced that Dalinar is in direct and immediate danger. So I always read it he sees it as a second chance after Elhokar to prove he is capable of saving someone (especially someone he is duty-bound to). At least that’s my take on it.
@26: I think this isn’t a topic which can really be discussed… As I said in my previous post, anyone who’s interested can google it up and make up their own mind about it. I’d just say Brandon’s religious affiliations and the fact he is being very vocal about them do place him in a situation where it would be ill-advised for him to try to depict polyamory not to forget how difficult it is to actually do it right.
@Scáth:
Of course, but neither we nor Brandon can ignore the fact that others would make that connection, as whitespine said.
@29 Carl
People say Brandon tends to write arranged marriages because he is a Mormon but that does not stop him from writing them. Mormons do not approve of alcohol but that does not stop him from writing people that drink. Brandon has written about a serial killer, and that does not mean he endorses killing people, preserving the bodies, and displaying them. And to be clear I am not writing this in an argument to say Adolin, Kaladin, and Shallan should get randy together. All I am saying is I would like to believe that an author that has stated below:
“I feel that, as a writer, one of my mandates is to express multiple viewpoints on topics, and try to work through them by having rational people, sympathetic people, on multiple sides of an argument. Few things bother me in fiction more than a cast of characters who all agree on some topic, except for one idiot who exists to be proven wrong. I don’t think that’s who we find truth. I think we find truth through disagreement by people who all have good arguments. When two people who disagree discuss an issue, and both listen to each other, both learn, and their understanding of the world expands. And because of my own inherent biases, by being religious, one of the things I seek very strongly to do is to make sure that the opposing opinion to what I believe is strongly represented by someone making the arguments that that side would make if they were writing the book. A falsehood or a weak belief can survive dumb challenges to it, but truth can survive good arguments against it, is what I believe. So you can see, I’m very fascinated by this topic, and the things that fascinate me come out in my books, but it is very important to me that my stories be about questions and not about answers, because of all of this, that questions lead to truth, and thinking you have answers don’t go anywhere.”
would carry the same thinking to most situations, and not only those that are convenient to him. I personally am in a monogamous marriage, that I am very happy in, and wouldn’t want to be with anyone other than my wife. That does not mean polyamory doesn’t work for others so long as all involved are responsible consenting adults. If it makes sense to the characters and the narrative, then I see no reason to not include it. But as I said, to each their own.
I’m genderqueer, queer and poly and have attended a couple of polyamory meet up groups.
it’s kind of like celibacy, and I would recommend the dialectic of sex by Shulamith Firestone for anyone seeking to write a poly character
RE: branchy picture
Why are people not seeing this simply as a picture of something branchy, like a Cultivationspren?
I don’t think Shallan and Kaladin would function well in a romantic relationship with each other. It feels like they’re both drawn to an idealized version of each other – Kaladin to someone who can maintain a bright outlook even in the worst circumstances, Shallan (or rather, Veil) to the to the great hero and inspirational commander. Adolin is good for Shallan because, well, he’s not as psychologically messed up as she is, and so he has the stability to provide the emotional support she needs.
Kaladin is my favourite character. I am continually impressed with his heroism, compassion, and leadership. I’m not sure, though, whether he’s in the right place for romance. His ability to give emotional support to and recieve emotional support from is stronger with Bridge 4 than it is with any prospective romantic partner.
@33: I am personnally bothers by having Adolin’s sole purpose in life to be someone else’s emotional support. He just spent his teenage years being both Dalinar and Renarin’s steady rock, can’t he just be himself in a relationship with a partner who will BE there for him? How his emotional need, how come they are so unimportant next to the Radiants?
I wish for Adolin and Shallan to have a two sided relationship, one where they support each other, not one where Shallan sucks the life out of Adolin with her needs.
Hence, I strongly disagree with Adolin being anyone’s emotional support. He deserves better.
I had to look up what a Julia set is and my head still hurts. I guess I’m never going to catch all the gems Brandon sprinkles through his worlds.
How about the Buddha-Brot-Bot?
available as an adobe photoshop extension
and it looks to me to be more like lactic acid fermented with a nasty norovirus
hot buttered rum
@34: I like having a male character who has “emotional support” as one of his major roles. It’s a nice change from the usual. It’s not that Adolin’s emotional needs are less important so much as that they’re less severe. He hasn’t spent his whole life being stepped on like Shallan and Kaladin have.
Shallan spent her entire life being emotional support for everyone in her family. She desperately needs a moment when someone else can take care of her emotionally, and Adolin’s in an emotional position where he can do so. That doesn’t mean Shallan never does, or never will, provide support for him.
@37: I like having a character who needs emotional support too, but from my perspective, both Shallan and Kaladin have had enough of it already. They have had so many people look out for them, care for them, worry for them whereas Adolin has been asked, all his life, to be someone he is not for the shake of a father and a family who never returned the favor.
In other words, Shallan and Kaladin have had enough support already in the narrative. I do not want Adolin to be reduced into being nothing more than a pillar for them. He deserves better than this. No one deserves being reduced into nothing more than an emotional support for others, no one should be told who they are, what they feel, what they think does NOT matter next to this other person with a “terrible past”. And that’s what the narrative has asked Adolin to do and it isn’t fair towards him.
Just because Kaladin and Shallan have suffered does not mean they should not look out for others. Mind, I am not saying they aren’t looking out for others, but I disliked when Adolin’s role in his marriage is just this one function: being Shallan’s rock. Gee. Poor guy. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
@23
Im pretty sure that “branchy thing” is one of the glass like, spikey plant of shadesmar
@39 Havi
In the words of the little girl from the taco commercial “why not both?” Why can’t it be a fractal pattern produced by the spikey plants in shadesmar? That would make the flora even cooler in the cognitive realm to me lol.
@Gepeto, #38:
You seem to be treating Adolin as a living human being, not a character created by a writer to serve a narrative purpose. Either that, or one could read your point as being that you’d rather Adolin was a “main” character instead of Kaladin or Dalinar.
In any case, I’m not sure why you devalue providing emotional support as less desirable or praiseworthy than, say, beating up the Singers.
This book is filled with great action sequences, but my favorite is Adolin in the Battle of Thaylen City, specifically because he isn’t a god. He has to think on his feet, improvise, and just barely squeak through in a way I find extremely compelling.
@41: I like the response I initially wrote, but on retrospective, I don’t think it is helping to fuel the discussion. Sorry about that.
@40
you are right, why not. Brandon will have a reason, why the plants look, like they look, its very rare with him, that he does stuff just because its cool
@43 Havi
Also makes you wonder what do the plants feed on. Stormlight when the highstorm passes in the cognitive? The plants do not seem to consume “water” as they are on “land” away from the stones which is “water” in the cognitive realm. There does not seem to be “rain”, unless the highstorm passing counts. There is the sun in the cognitive realm, so I suppose they could feed off of its light.
“I could spend another lifetime studying these spren alone.” Me too, Shallan, me too. *fond smile*
OK, maybe not a lifetime. They look awesomesauce, though. And now I also want to know why they have mouths.
It looks like Veil wrote “drawing is easy!” and Shallan wrote “clearly it isn’t” Is that Shallan saying that drawing well clearly doesn’t come easily to Veil, who failed at it whike thinking she’d succeeded? Drawing well seems to come easily to Shallan when things aren’t messing with her mind. I mean, it’s a skill that takes practice and revision, but…she tends to do it offhandedly, spur-of-the-moment, inspired by anything at all. I used to write poetry like that — a default response to any observation, thought, or emotion — and it often was pretty good poetry, according to my schoolmates and others I shared it with.
I was surprised by the idea that Windrunners are more powerful than the other orders, barring Bondsmiths. I don’t see it– in fact by the end of Oathbringer I was thinking that Kaladin really needs to say his fourth oath to catch up because the power disparity really showed in the final battle. Mostly he relied on his combat skill and standard Stormlight healing powers. Shallan is a powerhouse, and Lightweaving is cool and versatile. She’s not even using her Soulcasting yet! Soulcasting seems very overpowered to me, as presented so far in the book. As it stands I’d say Elsecallers and Lightweavers are at the top of the powerheap, but it is hard to compare when everyone is at different Oath levels and experience using their powers, and there hasn’t been good demonstrations of many of the Orders yet.
@nightheron, remember that Kaladin was consciously not winning too much because his goal was not to drive the Fused off, or temporary-kill them. It was to keep Amaram and the Fused focused on him, not Dalinar.