Greywatch

Kaladin and Adolin, been shipping it since WoK. I'm surprised it's gone down in popularity, being honest!

Yeah... I think what Dalinar said in response to Kaladin is one of the worst things Brandon ever wrote. It was 2014 and I try to have grace, but he said "be a model minority". I am truly disgusted with that scene.

I guess I totally fundamentally disagree that Dalinar had any redeeming qualities, or at least, none that make him deserving, so I don't really feel like playing a game with this? People don't deserve redemption, otherwise the word redemption is meaningless. For me, that's a "words mean things" argument. For me with Moash, I'm fully on his side vis a vis how meaningless and cruel the system is, and I'm resentful on his behalf how the Kholins and such get to walk through life squeaky clean, on top of the world.

Difficulty dealing with pain causes some to run away from it. Both Dalinar and Moash ran away, it's just that people are more willing to ascribe nobility and give sympathy to Dalinar because they know he eventually pulls out of it.

Yes, Dalinar getting super drunk was him being unable to face what he did - and running from facing it is denial, 100%. He didn't face what he did, he refused to accept it, he ran from the pain. That's Moash.

I think Dalinar responded basically the exact same way as Moash: with complete denial and avoidance of his own responsibility for his actions. He had a period of wretched and immoral denial of his own actions for years. He didn't respond to his own actions "the right way" until Oathbringer, which is multitudes more time than Moash is getting before judgment. If Dalinar can try and turn himself around in the face of righteous hatred from the people whose lives he's wrecked (the Herdazians were too nice to him), then so can Moash.

No need for spoiler-tagging OB and RoW here, they are well out of spoiler period. Personally, everything Dalinar did in the war and at the Rift was worse than what Moash did, Brandon just wrote it so that the people of the Rift don't matter to us as much as the people Moash killed. Evi being an accident doesn't make up for the fact that Dalinar killed people on purpose. That's just me, but I 100% am not on board for rating Moash's crimes worse just because we like the people he killed more.

That line is exactly why I decided it's denial and not a genuine lack of regret. That's literally Moash feeling terrible, the depths of misery, and unable to admit to himself why he feels bad. He feels bad after killing someone who was a friend; the words he says about why that is are not true. I simply don't take his internal narrative at face value, because his internal narrative is swimming in Odium's no-emotion juices. Brandon has shown complete willingness to have characters' prejudices and lies they believe and misconceptions exist in their internal narrative and I don't think Moash is in any way exempt from that.

I 100% believe it's possible and also I'm rooting for it. Brandon actually lost me, a bit, in RoW with just how terrible Moash was, it was almost unbelievable in a literal "oh, I don't know if I believe you, Brandon". Moash in RoW is so clearly not fully on board with what he's doing, he's fully in denial. Big difference. Can't wait to see how his arc shakes out, it's one of the things I'm MOST curious about for SA5.

Yes, thank you for grabbing the quote, that was exactly what I had in mind when I said what I said. Insisting that he's not sorry is great character writing for a character who can't get what he's done out of his own head and trying to put a different spin on why he can't stop himself thinking about it. I appreciate the help in backing up my point.

Moash definitely feels bad. If he wasn't sorry, he wouldn't have to constantly tell himself that he doesn't feel bad. Brandon doesn't hand-feed character; sometimes the text requires us to understand that what a character believes isn't necessarily true.

Thanks for the explanation, Treamayne! Couldn't have said it better.

Against the grain, but I do want to see Adolin become a Radiant. I don't think there needs to be a normal guy, this is the people becoming Knights Radiant series, becoming a Radiant is tied to tons of catharsis in characters' journeys and growth, and that's what I want to see. Other than the Kholins, though, I like the idea of more middle-aged people being chosen by spren. I would enjoy Kaladin's mom being chosen.

Gavilar is exactly who I thought he was going to be and I couldn't be happier about it. He thought he knew so much, and hey, at the time he died, he did know a lot more than anyone else what was going on. It was just such a perfect and dramatic choice for his POV to be revealed like this, in book 5, when the reader knows more than Gavilar. I am ecstatic that Gavilar is much more ignorant and overconfident than anyone knew; all I'm sad about is that Dalinar held such respect and admiration for this worm of a man.

I don't hate him; RoW is where he went so cartoonishly evil that it was hard for me to take "Moash is evil" seriously anymore. Like Brandon wrote him to be SO bad that it rolled around in a circle into me thinking, okay, he can't actually be that bad. I am watching and waiting for what happens in SA5 with a lot of bated breath and suspicion. It was him being blinded at the end of RoW that made me think something interesting might happen. If he stays flat and evil just because in SA5, that would be just such a waste. Keep it interesting, Sanderson!

I feel like Hoid knows Kaladin isn't going to break if he teases a little "meanly". Shallan has different needs.

Part of the risk we take on getting on the internet is also that we might be banned from communities who are able to set their own rules. Asking people to be responsible for their own blocklist in lieu of removing people does nothing to protect a community. It's one of those nice ideas that doesn't line up with how people actually use spaces on the internet. It wouldn't work in a nice, clean way, and there would be constant issues with things falling between the cracks. Rather than making anything easier, every aspect of interacting in the community would become, quite frankly, miserable. There are all kinds of examples of the misery: (1) Curating blocklists to pass around can very easily become a new way to exclude, harass, or bully someone; what if someone decides they don't like x person and put their name on a list so people will refuse to interact with them? This is just banning someone but based on social dynamics instead of community standards and with a bunch of extra steps. (2) What if someone is harassing another person, and because we refuse to ban anyone, they can just create new account after new account to send messages to the person they're harassing to get around account blocks, again and again? (3) Every time new people join, it would take them time and effort to sort through the people they're okay with and the people they're not okay with. Why should people have to go through that effort and see things they don't want to see, when they should have an expectation of people being civil right from the start? When people find a group of people they really like to talk with without certain others, they make group DMs or private discords or all of that, and that's something people already do when they want a more controlled space to socialize in. But it doesn't make the public space safer or more pleasant. It's not plausible or appropriate to suggest that blocking is a sufficient defense against people who are breaking the code of conduct. We're pleased with our moderation standards. Speaking for myself only here, I stand by the belief that firm and clear community standards, enforced by strong moderation, makes for a great community. Lax to no moderation leads to jerks basically controlling the community, and everyone else too miserable or unsafe to want to go to those places at all - which will mean that shortly, the community will be only jerks. Bans are not something we love doing, but are one of the tools we have at our disposal to actually protect our community. We use bans as infrequently as we can, using them in extreme cases or in cases of repeated (and repeated, and repeated, and repeated) behaviour - but it is a tool that online communities need.

Seems to me like the reveal of the aethers thinking that is the implication that not everything in the cosmere is of Ado. Much more exciting and interesting than the aethers just making a mistake.

@sugjesstive Oops, it's on me for not checking the 17th Shard post too often, so this is very late - but thank you! I was going in with schizophrenia, but I found a similar link on childhood psychotic episodes pretty much as we were filming there. Thanks so much for your thoughts! PS - I love your hair!

Very much agreed. Brandon is on record many times for for many situations when it comes to representation of feeling responsibility to do it well. Despite many readers just dying to absolve Brandon of any mistakes he may make, Brandon takes this responsibility seriously. Brandon may have his reasons why he did it one way and not another, but that does not mean anyone with criticisms is automatically wrong.

I am very sorry, but looking for mascots is not what's going on here. I apologize for being blunt, but to write off disappointment in other readers in this way is missing the point. My reaction to posts like this are resentment; I don't believe you understand that readers can identify with characters and still be disappointed. Identity still matters - it's part of the journey.

Shallan likes people who love at her (bad) jokes, so I'd say absolutely!

While I don't agree with the first paragraph (I think Jasnah only follows social norms for its advantages it gives her to be the epitome of perfection, not because she personally feels Vorins set the best boundaries), nor does the age gap bother me (once someone is effectively immortal, imo, it doesn't mean the other mortal adult can't meaningfully consent, but sometimes things just bother us, and I get that). However, I definitely am completely with you on how bad it feels that this relationship means Jasnah ended up with literally the only man around more powerful and smart than she is. It puts a really bad taste in my mouth. No matter how powerful and intelligent she is, and how little screentime the relationship took up, it feels like no matter how incredible woman is, she can't be the most powerful/smart/accomplished person in the relationship. Also genuinely thought she was either aromantic or sapphic as well as ace, so I'm extremely bitter and honestly, may never let this go. In addition, chapter 99 really didn't... track with my experience of being ace, I thought it was honestly kind of ... it just wasn't very good. I'm hoping this is just because it was Brandon's first go at it and further explorations will be better, but yeesh. Like Wit has never met an ace person? He's ten thousand years old. Like Jasnah wouldn't have discussed this already with Wit despite being well into having sex? Checked in with other ace friends to confirm - this is a conversation had early in romantic relationships to make sure we're all on the same page before things get to being sexual. Also Jasnah didn't feel very romantically into Wit, despite being canonically heteroromantic - ace people can have romantic feelings, and despite her public persona, Jasnah isn't actually an automaton. I wanted more for her than being so into his brain and cosmere secrets. I know part of THAT is that Brandon just can't do romance very well, but that doesn't change the fact that I had higher hopes for Jasnah. In every way, I'm just so sour on this.

Lift is now a teen; unfortunate still, but there is a level of emotional self-regulation a thirteen year-old can do that a six year-old is entirely incapable of.

It is so easy for us to look back, with our mountain of foundational knowledge of the world and how it works and think that the order of science and technology discovered and invented in our history is the only order that it could have been. This is not so. Earth's history is filled with different cultures at different times inventing things and discovering principles "out of order" with each other, according to the needs, social mores, and foundation of knowledge that each culture had at the time. The notion of "progress" being a steady upward climb is a lie. Technologies have been invented, lost, and re-invented numerous times. The Minoans had water and sewage systems, with working toilets, in 2500 BCE, 3000 years before they figured it out in England. First Nations in eastern Canada figured out technology like barometers and other weather instruments before they figured out how to work metal. The cure for scurvy was known to be citrus for ages, then due to a series of events people of the time rightly began to doubt its efficacy and they went back to thinking it wasn't citrus for quite a while before it was tested and re-confirmed to be citrus. Increasing the base of human scientific knowledge is not simple and straightforward. What we think of as obvious connections to make once took enormous imagination and willingness to test them. People take logical leaps in the wrong direction and it takes time to undo "progress" in the wrong direction. It is very easy for humans to look back and take everything the history of humanity has been able to achieve as a given; it takes a lot of work and imagination to make forward development. Even when looking back as little as 30 years - the Internet was not conceived of or expected until it came upon us. The thought of "well of COURSE we invented the internet, how could we not" is the mistake; in another world, that leap wouldn't have been made, and we would be living in a 2021 without the Internet. Then bringing it back to Stormlight Archive, the Rosharans have an incredible foundation of knowledge from bits and pieces that survived the Desolations; they are not an example of a simple medieval society fumbling around in the dirt. Even the sure knowledge they have to simply wash their hands to prevent rot is an enormous breakthrough that by itself could have lent itself to even more scientific knowledge.