Jump to content

[OB] Adolin-Shallan-Kaladin Discussion


Harbour

Recommended Posts

I know that your post is basically a heartfelt opinion-piece, which is fine and good, @Ookla the Feathered.

I have been more leaning on the analyzing side of this thread, but I want to say one thing regarding Shallan's and Kaladin's "incompatibility" real quick.

It is funny really, how you see two characters as so incompatible, when they are actually written as having many compatibilities (scientific thought processes, actually being able to laugh about each others jokes, whether you like them or not, and being very passionate all around (though this is still quite hidden in Shallan's character - it shows at times). It is just a bit astonishing to me how one could come to the conclusion, that Kaladin and Shallan are incompatible, when they form a real bond in a situation, where, even though they were forced to work together, they didn't actually have to. If they were so incompatible, this wouldn't have happened.

I don't want to personally attack you, but when I see you citing certain scenes from WoR, I don't see you pointing out incompatibilities, but rather you saying why you don't like them, which is fine, but not really something, that will convince me, I'm afraid.

I get the argument, regarding Kaladin not really understanding Shallan's coping mechanisms though, which can be seen as one big incompatibility, but I just see it as one big misunderstanding. Plus, to be fair, Adolin doesn't understand anything about this either, since this is Shallan's justification for choosing Adolin.

Basically, your point is that Adolin is good for Shallan, because he is supportive. I agree... to an extent. He is too much so. He is happy with what he has now and just lets it go with the flow. In short, by being like that he enables Shallan to keep being like this. I don't think, that this is healthy. In fact, he is encouraging Shallan, by being drinking buddies with Veil, as seen in the last Shallan scene before the wedding.

Also, I'd argue, that Kaladin would be just as supportive, but not being enabling by challenging her on the situation - if only he knew. Saying he wouldn't be is a gross misrepresentation of the character we've seen so far.

Then again, maybe we both have our own pair of rose-tinted glasses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello @Ookla the Feathered, welcome!

I´ll keep it short, mostly because @Dreamstorm already said everything I was thinking and I could´t agree more.

I think you are indeed oversimplifying. I don´t blame you, given the dimensions of this thread, but I felt a little underestimated. The Shalladin Ship may be passionate, but it´s definitely quiet. In fact, many of us are reluctant shippers or mild shippers. No one wanted them to end up together at the end of OB (I personally am really happy with Kaladin being single right now) and we all acknowledge the issues that relationship may have. Besides, Adolin is universally liked and we are not the exception. 

I wholeheartedly agree with your interpretation of the two scenes you mentioned, specially with the boots episode. I also think your take on the triangle is fun and makes sense, though I don´t think it´s Brandon´s style.

We are still on the 3rd book of an and of 5, and we´ll have 5 more after that. We can´t consider any plotline closed right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, SLNC said:

I know that your post is basically a heartfelt opinion-piece, which is fine and good, @Ookla the Feathered.

I have been more leaning on the analyzing side of this thread, but I want to say one thing regarding Shallan's and Kaladin's "incompatibility" real quick.

It is funny really, how you see two characters as so incompatible, when they are actually written as having many compatibilities (scientific thought processes, actually being able to laugh about each others jokes, whether you like them or not, and being very passionate all around (though this is still quite hidden in Shallan's character - it shows at times). It is just a bit astonishing to me how one could come to the conclusion, that Kaladin and Shallan are incompatible, when they form a real bond in a situation, where, even though they were forced to work together, they didn't actually have to. If they were so incompatible, this wouldn't have happened.

I don't want to personally attack you, but when I see you citing certain scenes from WoR, I don't see you pointing out incompatibilities, but rather you saying why you don't like them, which is fine, but not really something, that will convince me, I'm afraid.

I get the argument, regarding Kaladin not really understanding Shallan's coping mechanisms though, which can be seen as one big incompatibility, but I just see it as one big misunderstanding. Plus, to be fair, Adolin doesn't understand anything about this either, since this is Shallan's justification for choosing Adolin.

Basically, your point is that Adolin is good for Shallan, because he is supportive. I agree... to an extent. He is too much so. He is happy with what he has now and just lets it go with the flow. In short, by being like that he enables Shallan to keep being like this. I don't think, that this is healthy. In fact, he is encouraging Shallan, by being drinking buddies with Veil, as seen in the last Shallan scene before the wedding.

Also, I'd argue, that Kaladin would be just as supportive, but not being enabling by challenging her on the situation - if only he knew. Saying he wouldn't be is a gross misrepresentation of the character we've seen so far.

Then again, maybe we both have our own pair of rose-tinted glasses.

I personally think Shallan doesn't understand Kaladin's mental issues, and Kaladin doesn't understand Shallan's mental issues. I'm someone with depression, and I've been in a relationship where neither people really can help each other and can't understand each other's mental issues. It's massively destructive for a relationship and both member's mental states. 

I think Kaladin and Shallan could connect for a time but they don't have the groundwork for a longterm relationship. Them working together is not the same as them being in a deep committed relationship. Kaladin isn't ready for something like that. I dunno. I can only speak my own experience with depression, but I know depression is quite damaging on a relationship. 

Adolin, on the other hand, actually has the emotional capacity to support Shallan this way. I don't agree with the notion that it's "enabling". I think Adolin will immediately want to work to try and bring Shallan's personas back into herself. That feels like the logical progression. But first Adolin needs to get Shallan to open up about such things. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just want to say that I am greatly appreciative that folks who are satisfied with the state of the romantic arc at the end of OB are coming back to engage in this topic. I gave upvotes to each of you in gratitude. If I weren't passing my evening being ill, I would take some time to give some rebuttals, and ask some questions. But alas, I will save those for later in the week.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

I think Adolin will immediately want to work to try and bring Shallan's personas back into herself. That feels like the logical progression. But first Adolin needs to get Shallan to open up about such things. 

I agree both of those things would be important and healthy, but just want to point out that with the small amount of data we have of their relationship post-TC, we are told (i) Adolin won’t be intimate with Veil (which doesn’t support that he’s trying to reintegrate the personas but instead keeping them seperate by treating them differently - he knows about her personas btw as she explained them to him on Honor’s Path) and (ii) Shallan still needed to explain some things to Adolin, most notably the Ghostbloods (which doesn’t support that she’s opening up to him.) Again as part of why I interpret the romantic arc the way I do, I find it telling that the author is specifically pointing this stuff out to us, as though there’s a blinking sign on the page saying “this isn’t healthy”.

Edited by Dreamstorm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, aemetha said:

I read those scenes quite differently. What I saw was Dalinar trying to find a legal way to deal with Sadeas, and Adolin (barely) doing what Dalinar told him to do. Adolin himself had to be constrained on several occasions to prevent him from murdering Sadeas very publicly. 

I disagree with your interpretation of those scenes: Adolin never had to constrained himself from publicly murdering Sadeas. He had to be constrained to either punch him in the face or challenge him in a duel which he can't because he doesn't have the right rank. The only time Adolin thinks of murdering Sadeas is during the Stormcellar and, again, he does not need to be constrained: he constrains himself quite well considering Sadeas had just told him he would kill both his father and the king within the next three months. He also had the audacity to claim, after warring against him for a few years, Adolin would come to agree with Sadeas he was right to murder his father. Under the circumstances, I found his behavior extraordinarily mild.

I thus do not get where in the textual you find Adolin had barely done what Dalinar asked of him when he has done the opposite. Sure, in the end he kills him, but this after all other ways to deal with him had extinguished.

8 hours ago, aemetha said:

Except this thought process never happened. The scene where Adolin kills Sadeas is one of the few POV scenes we have of him, and it is clearly described as a moment of rage in which the future consequences, good and bad, are not considered. He killed him because he was angry, and he enjoyed inflicting pain on him at the time.

Are you therefore going to hang over Adolin the fact he isn't Jasnah? Because he did not cold-headily reflect on the why he ought to murder Sadeas, because he did not rationalize it within fifty layers of depth, then his actions are immoral? Sure, he snapped in a moment of rage, but this rage didn't happen out of nothing. Adolin was more than willing to walk pass Sadeas and to ignore him, but the man wouldn't leave him alone. Sadeas taunted Adolin and Adolin ended up asking a very genuine question: "What is wrong with you and why are you doing this?", a question to which Sadeas provided a very genuine answer: "Because I can and I will keep on doing it until I win.". Adolin needs not going into more mental thinking: Sadeas tells him right here and there there are no ways to deal with him but to kill him. 

Of course, once it is done, Adolin thinks some more on it and finds his initial reaction was the right one and, as such, moves on. I never read Adolin as loving to inflict pain to Sadeas, he was just glad he was dead and, afterwards, he seemed more in shock than gleefully happy.

8 hours ago, aemetha said:

Those other characters reacted to an immediate threat (Shallan), or were conducting the business of war in which killing is a requirement (Kaladin), or were similarly vilified (Dalinar). Adolin is held to the standard he is being held to because intent matters. It matters not just that he killed a person, but why he killed a person. All of those things you said about Sadeas threatening his family, and never stopping are all completely accurate. The thing is though, those things didn't result in him making a calm analysis and rationally weighing the options and coming to the conclusion that he had to kill him because there were no other options. Instead what happened is Adolin hated Sadeas from the beginning of the series, and those things inflamed his hatred, and we see in the text that he acted out of hatred, not out of self-defence. Adolin is not held to a different standard here, any character that kills out of hatred will be (by me at least) held to that same standard. It's well established in the moral standards of our world and implied if not outright stated in the world described that hatred is not a mitigating factor in a case of murder, it is an aggravating factor. Taking a life because the person is a dangerous threat (a thought process not described) is a relatively selfless act, while taking a life because the person is deeply hated by you (a thought process that is described) is a selfish act.

Those characters also had other means to react to the events, but they choose murder. Shallan needed not to strangulate her father after poisoning him. She wanted him gone too. She doesn't get to be excused because the individual she killed was her father, Sadeas was just as terrible. The difference is more people died at Sadeas's hand: Adolin doesn't get to be call out while Shallan is glorified. What they did was both equivalent, a last resort mean they felt was required, but both could have tried other avenues, though they would have likely failed had they attempt it.

So again, Adolin is called out because he isn't Jasnah... Shallan didn't had a lengthy rational argument made up when she killed her father: she saw Balat being threatened and she acted. 

Adolin hated Sadeas because Sadeas had worked against his father for a long time. Adolin sees his father was someone he needs to protect, thoughts likely issuing from the years he spent witnessing his father descend into alcoholism. As a result, Adolin cannot stand anyone trying to harm his father, because when Dalinar is harmed, the drunkard is what he becomes. Those protective feelings are very strong into Adolin and, as such, he does hate a man having tried to undermine his fathers a months of not years before the events of WoK. Also, anger is not evil, anger is a natural reaction when faced with injustice: Adolin thinks Sadeas is not fair to his father by falling to respect the great man Dalinar is. Of course, Adolin has an embellished vision of his father one filled with unicorns and rainbow pissing angels, but it does not change the fact he cannot stand people trying to hurt his daddy. It is one of the argument I have often made in the past, how the Adolin/Dalinar relationship was reversed in having the son care for the father as the father should be caring for the son.

5 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

What I think we see over and over in SA is that there are two kinds of consequences to a character doing a "bad" action - external consequences vs. internal consequences.  I think you create a reasonable argument that there will be no further external consequences for Adolin.  (Though I would argue that in our last Dalinar viewpoint, we see Dalinar muse "Adolin was not the man Dalinar had thought he was - but then, couldn't he forgive someone for that?" which indicates that Dalinar isn't set on the fact he "forgives" Adolin and that this change in how Dalinar see Adolin will reverberate throughout future books - we are told time and time and time again how Dalinar thinks Adolin is a much better person than Dalinar himself is, so this is a huge perspective shift for Dalinar.)  But, for the sake of argument, let's say there are no more external consequences for Adolin murdering Sadeas like you say.  However, that says nothing for Adolin's internal consequences; how him committing this murder shapes the way he views himself and the world around him.  This is a constant theme in SA - Kaladin with Elhokar is a good example; there were no external consequences for Elhokar for Kaladin, but he suffered massively because the fact he was doing nothing about it was crippling him internally.  So much of SA is about how one deals with one's actions have far-reaching effects (to pull from our non-main three, Amaram and Moash's stories are very focused on how they justify their actions internally), that I can't see this driving force throughout the books just being dropped when it comes to Adolin.  It wouldn't be that Adolin was boring; it would be that he would be existing under fundamentally different rules than our other characters by not having internal consequences for his actions.  One thing about Adolin is that the strongest emotions he displays in the entire series is over his hate for Sadeas (contrast this with the way he deals with Shallan mooning over Kaladin - there's just resignation and slight annoyance where most reasonable people would be angry), so for me that hints that we will see the most internal development in Adolin surrounding these emotions.  Adolin's hatred for Sadeas is a defining part of Adolin's character, so I can't imagine that Adolin will be literally the only character who won't have internal consequences for those emotions, even if the external consequences are not severe.

I am disagreeing this has been a constant theme within the series which is why I never thought Brandon would skip it before, but he did. As such, I have come to think Adolin is held to different standard then the other characters. The murder, while being written in a very climatic way, is not yielding any internal consequences nor do I think the author will make the character, one year after the events, suddenly having a living crisis over it. Oathbringer was the opportunity for Adolin to have this crisis as many elements seemed in line to make him topple over: it didn't happen.

It didn't happen because the event was not important to Adolin. Having his entire family being Radiant, but him is also not important. I wish Brandon had written a better more cohesive Adolin, but to state, at this point in time, more will come out of it is too much wishful thinking to me.

I sincerely do not believe the justified hate Adolin had towards Sadeas will open a never ending flow of hatred towards humanity. It is just as it is. There were no emotions written into his character because he has none which really matters. As such, I definitely consider this arc to be done and gone. I couldn't imagine, before reading Oathbringer, Brandon would have Adolin be the only character without an internal dilemma, the only character not struggling with something, but he did. This is exactly what the author has written and if, in the case of other characters, I can rationalize more will come due to them being very important to the narrative, I can't say the same for Adolin.

Adolin is just not a protagonist nor a very important character and, as such, he needs no internal consequences nor dilemma nor struggles nor hardships. Brandon has definitely made it very clear with OB what his intentions were with his character and they were to have him been the "reliable steady normal dumb dummy everyone can rely on whenever needed".

5 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

Can you share these WoB's which say Brandon doesn't have plans for Adolin to have character growth and development? The ones I've read don't jive with that, and that would make Adolin unique as the only character treated as thus.

Brandon will never directly say he has no plans for Adolin nor will he ever directly say he plans not to give him character development. He has however stated how Adolin wasn't a protagonist nor a character around whom the story was orchestrated and, as such, wasn't on par with the other characters. He did state on numerous occasions being pleased with Adolin in Oathbringer and genuinely thinking his fans will like the arc he designed for him (he was likely thinking of Maya) which tells me any single critic I may have is not shared by the author. As such, if the author is satisfied with what he had to offer, and if I am not, then the fault isn't his, it is mine. Brandon will not change his book structure nor his narrative because Maxal didn't like how he dealt with Adolin providing he is even aware of my existence. Hence if Oathbringer is what Brandon considers is good character development for Adolin, then him and I have very different opinions: future books also are unlikely to fix it because to fix it, the author would need to agree there is something to fix within the first place.

5 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

So, I pruned this down a bit (partially because I think you can't tell that much about Adolin's internal thoughts from other PoVs), but what I see here is a consistent pattern of not thinking about the Sadeas murder and overworking himself to distraction.  Can you really say that is healthy?  Do you really think if Brandon wanted to show that the murder was justified and shouldn't effect Adolin that in the few viewpoints we get of Adolin he's pushing away his feelings and throwing himself in work/the fight instead?  I just don't think it's reasonable to say, based even on the few viewpoints we have, that Adolin has actually dealt with his feelings (this is even separate from the fact he hasn't suffered any true internal consequences for the action.)

 Oh yes, I noticed this. This is a constant theme with Adolin and it had been highlighted quite often within the book. When Adolin is riled, has an issue or a problem, he works harder. I have no issue with this narrative so to speak: I have made theories Adolin would react this way, by working himself hard. My issues are it seems he has an infinite capacity of adaptation: more work is never too much. He never reaches the point where, most people dealing with hardship using the same tactics usually meet, he just can't work enough to make it go away or he just doesn't have the capacity to work so hard for so long. In shorts, Adolin has no limits, no threshold. This is what bothered me, this infinite ability to just cope. I didn't find it realistic.

5 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

So, I can understand why a Dark Adolin plot line would be unsatisfying for you individually, but from a literary craftsmanship perspective, why do you think this would be a unsatisfying plotline?  (Or if it's just your individual opinion, that's fine too.)  Dark Adolin doesn't have to stay Dark Adolin; he could emerge from it a stronger person.

I also just want to point out that on one hand you say that everyone likes Adolin because he's not secretive and introspective and then on the other hand you think it's wishful thinking of fans that Adolin will go dark... those two don't really jive because it seems like you can't decide if everyone loves Adolin or everyone hates Adolin.  At least from what I've been pointed to (and I'm a very reluctant Dark Adolin quasi-believer because I actually quite like having Adolin around the way he is), there are some definite hints that something might happen to turn Adolin to the Dark Side (Anakin - Adolin, totally the same right?), not to mention Brandon's clear writing philosophy is that actions have definite consequences (which getting Adolin out of a job as king he didn't want doesn't count - in some ways that makes it worse because he uses the murder as an excuse to avoid responsibility.)  I think it all hinges on the Sadeas hatred and whether or not Adolin will truly face that.

Btw, just as an aside, it's a funny position to be in to try and convince you that your favorite character isn't/will not always be boring!

I think it would be unsatisfying because Adolin is not the right character to turn evil. He is presented as a genuinely good, empathetic individual who jumps into the fray on others behalf. He will not let his soldiers run first thinking it is his task to take the first hits. He will not let Kaladin rot in prison. He wouldn't let the boy being crushed by the thunderclast. He's just a nice person and to make him evil would imply removing all of those qualities. It would require Adolin suddenly not being empathetic, suddenly not caring about others or his family. I just can't see this happening with the character we have without being either OOC or breaking the immersion. Dark Adolin is just not a possibility, not to me.

We already have dark characters come back to the light. I argue we need not another one.

I am just saying there are a lot of reasons to like Adolin and one which comes across often is how he is very outward, not secretive and basically is what you say. No secrets. Readers have come forth and say they like it. Mind, a lot of readers also like Renarin, but it seemed to me Brandon's comments were a tad diminishing towards the numerous readers who love Adolin: he basically said Renarin was the best character which could be interpreted as readers liking Adolin got it wrong. I may be reading too much into it, but I have always found this WoB hurtful. Also, I relate a lot to Adolin, so for the author to say Adolin is not interesting, I felt he was saying: "You are not interesting" which isn't what he meant, but it was hard not to read it this way.

To be fair, I started to read Adolin as boring sometimes in Oathbringer when all he was doing was trying in silly clothing and when it became obvious he'd be the Highprince. I always found Highprince Adolin was the most boring of the boringly boring development.

3 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Now, I haven't really gone into a depth of why I think Shallan and Adolin are good together, but I can hit the high points. Adolin is a great person, and he is especially a great match for Shallan. He is deeply empathetic and is supportive of her. We've seen with Renarin that Adolin doesn't need to fully understand what is happening to be supportive. He may not always know what's going on with Renarin or what Renarin's thinking, but he's still powerfully supportive and positive. I think we'll see this in his relationship with Shallan as well. Does Adolin know, totally, what's happening with Shallan's personas? Probably not. He might not ever fully understand, but as with his brother, he's supportive of her and is ready to help in whatever way he can.

This was a great post. Thank you for writing it. I have on commentary to make which is more to fish for additional comments more then to counter-argue. In shorts, while I do agree with you on why Adolin is good for Shallan, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how she is good for him. This relationship has been way too centered on Shallan, her problems, her needs, her person, very little of it have focused on Adolin, including the book itself. 

So how is Shallan a good match for Adolin, apart from being the only girl who could pull up with him long enough to tie the knot?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

I personally think Shallan doesn't understand Kaladin's mental issues, and Kaladin doesn't understand Shallan's mental issues. I'm someone with depression, and I've been in a relationship where neither people really can help each other and can't understand each other's mental issues. It's massively destructive for a relationship and both member's mental states. 

I think Kaladin and Shallan could connect for a time but they don't have the groundwork for a longterm relationship. Them working together is not the same as them being in a deep committed relationship. Kaladin isn't ready for something like that. I dunno. I can only speak my own experience with depression, but I know depression is quite damaging on a relationship. 

Adolin, on the other hand, actually has the emotional capacity to support Shallan this way. I don't agree with the notion that it's "enabling". I think Adolin will immediately want to work to try and bring Shallan's personas back into herself. That feels like the logical progression. But first Adolin needs to get Shallan to open up about such things. 

First of all, I don't want to diminish your past troubles, but without communication between our characters, they can't understand anything. I personally don't think, that they wouldn't understand each others troubles and would be able to help each other, but I understand why you don't. I don't think, we can't make this statement by evidence in the book. Shallan wasn't clear and Kaladin wasn't clear, so no one understands no one.

To Adolin: Shallan opened up to him... And Adolin takes the harmful approach of seeing the personas as different persons, which they aren't. This further alieniates the Shallan persona from Veil and Radiant, which in turn makes reintegration more difficult. I don't see reintegration following logically. Adolin works against that and Shallan is more than happy to follow.

It is true, that we don't have much on their relationship post-TC, but like @Dreamstorm said, why would the author explicitly point that out before the wedding? And why before a supposed 1 year timeskip is supposed to happen? I think to show us how their next year will be... Stagnation for Shallan.

Edited by SLNC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, maxal said:

I disagree with your interpretation of those scenes: Adolin never had to constrained himself from publicly murdering Sadeas. He had to be constrained to either punch him in the face or challenge him in a duel which he can't because he doesn't have the right rank. The only time Adolin thinks of murdering Sadeas is during the Stormcellar and, again, he does not need to be constrained: he constrains himself quite well considering Sadeas had just told him he would kill both his father and the king within the next three months. He also had the audacity to claim, after warring against him for a few years, Adolin would come to agree with Sadeas he was right to murder his father. Under the circumstances, I found his behavior extraordinarily mild.

I interpreted it much the same way, up until he snapped. After he snapped I revised my opinion. I could previously have seen him punching him, because, well, Sadeas deserved it, and it wasn't particularly world changing, though perhaps politically inconvenient. After he snapped and murdered Sadeas though, I can't help but wonder, had there not been others there to stop him, would he have stopped at a punch?

5 minutes ago, maxal said:

Are you therefore going to hang over Adolin the fact he isn't Jasnah? Because he did not cold-headily reflect on the why he ought to murder Sadeas, because he did not rationalize it within fifty layers of depth, then his actions are immoral?

Not at all. Jasnah's act was similarly immoral, though it was legal by a technicality. It comes down to selfishness versus selflessness. If he had rationally thought it through and selflessly killed Sadeas for the purpose of the safety and well being of those he cared about, I would be okay with that being considered a moral act, if an illegal one. What was described in the book however was a selfish act of killing him in order to satisfy his hatred for the man, and therefore an immoral act. Immorality being the harm of another in order for personal gain.

It's not a case for me of not being able to assign the justifications you have given to the act, they are perfectly valid justifications. I would even be okay with him feeling okay on-balance with the act. What I have difficulty accepting in terms of contrition is his not considering that the circumstances of the act were not benevolent. Perhaps he shouldn't regret the killing of Sadeas, but he should regret the way he killed Sadeas and its immediate motivations.

I wouldn't hang him for it in any case. I don't hate Adolin, but I do dislike that I personally don't believe he has been honest with himself about it. I think he has unaddressed impulse control problems, because he often makes snap judgements without considering the implications. I dislike the suggestion that he is portrayed as perfect, I don't think his background or disposition justifies that.

I've never glorified what Shallan did with her father. I will however state that Shallan's father was a more clear and present danger to her and her brothers than Sadeas was to Adolin, at those specific times. Sadeas by all evidence would have gone off and plotted for some time, Shallan's father would have tried to murder someone as soon as he was physically capable of doing so, based on what we've seen of both of them. even so, what Shallan did was still wrong. I don't see this as a scale with right on one side and wrong on the other. If anything, a killing begins with wrong on one side and neither wrong nor right on the other. There is no "good and moral" killing, it's always a tragedy. I just want to see the character reflect on the incident and regret the killing of Sadeas, if not the death of Sadeas?

Does that make sense? I'm sorry if I am coming across as argumentative, I don't intend to be. It's just that you've engaged in the debate with me for quite some time, and I'm happy to debate these issues until the seas dry up. I doubt we will arrive at a conclusion we both agree on, and that's fine, we've both had people agree with our interpretations, and we agreed with theirs. I don't want you to think any of it is antagonistic though, it genuinely is a fun debate, and the only time I became even a little frustrated was when I felt I was being misrepresented.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, SLNC said:

First of all, I don't want to diminish your past troubles, but without communication between our characters, they can't understand anything. I personally don't think, that they wouldn't understand each others troubles and would be able to help each other, but I understand why you don't. I don't think, we can't make this statement by evidence in the book. Shallan wasn't clear and Kaladin wasn't clear, so no one understands no one.

To Adolin: Shallan opened up to him... And Adolin takes the harmful approach of seeing the personas as different persons, which they aren't. This further alieniates the Shallan persona from Veil and Radiant, which in turn makes reintegration more difficult. I don't see reintegration following logically. Adolin works against that and Shallan is more than happy to follow.

It is true, that we don't have much on their relationship post-TC, but like @Dreamstorm said, why would the author explicitly point that out before the wedding? And why before a supposed 1 year timeskip is supposed to happen? I think to show us how their next year will be... Stagnation for Shallan.

We'll see, I guess! I don't find this type of conversation very engaging, so I'll take my leave. We'll see how it goes in three years. It's not like anyone will be persuaded by anything. We both have opinions and perspectives and that's about it. 

I do think dealing with her personas will be a central thing in book four.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see a big problem with Andolin's handling of the murder of Sadeas after the fact. Hides, distracts, lies, and wastes manpower and resources to find the truth about what he already knows.  That sounds as dark to me. 

Edited by Prelude
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Chaos said:

I think Kaladin and Shallan could connect for a time but they don't have the groundwork for a longterm relationship. Them working together is not the same as them being in a deep committed relationship. Kaladin isn't ready for something like that. I dunno. I can only speak my own experience with depression, but I know depression is quite damaging on a relationship.

I'm sorry for the ping, because you already said, that you're not interested in this kind of conversation, but I want to use this passage as a general statement, because it pointed out one of the big problems I currently have.

On one hand, I agree. Depression is quite damaging on a relationship and working together is not the same as being in a deep committed relationship. On the other hand, I don't see Adolin and Shallan in a deep and committed relationship either. Yes, they are married now, which is commitment - but only on paper and it was arranged and, even though it started only as a causal, they kind of got pressured into it (e.g. Navani telling Shallan about stability). I do think Adolin is committed, but I'm not so sure about Shallan. What bugs me extremely is, that I don't really get any feeling of depth in their relationship. It is all about feeling silly and giddy and whispering sweet nothings, while everybody around them is getting annoyed. It is a superficial as it gets. So much so, that I'd expect it to see in a teen movie. I mean, what is Shallan's thought about the wedding? She is just thinking about finally having sex with Adolin, which is understandable, but not really a show of deep feelings. Adolin is a bit better in that regard, but I don't see much in the depth department in his PoVs either, but I'll blame that on the lack of them in general.

 

Edited by SLNC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

*cracks knuckles* First up @Vissy

26 minutes ago, Vissy said:

 I don't know if you read the previous posts, but I think it was said several times. So I guess that's... misrepresentation number one? :D

Anyway, onto the point. Could you elaborate on the "characterization of Adolin that I simply don't find tenable"? What in this thread exactly don't you find tenable, because it seems like nothing in the thread matches your idea of the characterization Adolin has received here. 

Admittedly, I've skimmed. In my defense, there's well over a thousand posts here. But from following, it seemed like general gist was Shalladin shippers trying to explain why they don't like Adolin, but starting to lean into it a little too far and drawing the ire of Adolin defenders. Threads like the one below seem to be an offshoot of some of this discussion, and it's a reading of Adolin that I think is exaggerated, both those who are arguing that he's morally depraved and those arguing that he's too perfect.

All in all, I probably phrased the introduction on that section badly, it was more I wanted to outline the key points of how I interpret Adolin and let them stand as their own contrast. If someone disagrees with that interpretation, then that's a good contrast to have. If we agree, then that's cool. If I've misinterpreted some of the stances and we're actually all pretty much on the same page, double bonus points.

5 hours ago, Vissy said:

So you start your post by disparaging Kaladin/Shallan shippers and then admit that you can't stand Kaladin / Shallan scenes? Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

I agree that they're clichés, but clichés are what they are because they work - most of the time. I would point out, though, that bringing up clichés might not be the best way to argue here. Adolin and Shallan's relationship is also very clichéd, and by Sanderson's standards, it's actually even more clichéd than the Shalladin relationship. How many times has Sanderson carried out the "arranged marriage surprisingly working out" - cliché before? Practically half of his Cosmere books have romance subplots like that.

Well, I don't just dislike Shallan and Kaladin for nothing. There's reasons why I didn't like those scenes at the time, because I was afraid they were leading to a conclusion that Shallan and Kaladin were meant to be together and that felt like a disservice to both of them from my point of view. I always want to be upfront about my biases, which is why I said that I've been against Shallan/Kaladin for a while, and then went on to offer reasons why.

I don't think that's hypocritical and I didn't write the post to disparage Kaladin/Shallan shippers, but simply to offer my perspective on why I felt the ending was both satisfactory and conclusive. I love when people ship other things, but this just happens to be one that I personally don't like for myself. And I think by the end of Oathbringer, the text has ruled against it. If you want to keep writing Kaladin and Shallan AUs and shipping them and exploring all their potential as a couple, go for it. Death of the author. Forget canon. All that good stuff.

As for the arranged marriages "cliche," while I do admit that it's now a solid trend in Brandon's works, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a cliche. It's a trope that Brandon's fond of that he might do well to try avoiding in the future, but a cliche is something systemic within literature as a whole. They're the stories that have been told a million times, a routine that an audience is going to lose interest in if it doesn't bring something new to the table because they've seen it all before and it's predictable. 

If Kaladin/Shallan wasn't a subversion, it'd have been that for me. But I believe it is a subversion, which makes it new and interesting and a cool new take on an old formula. Brandon falling into literary cliches is something that I would have found much more annoying than Brandon showing some of his own old habits. 

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

What are these deeper issues that you're talking about? I'd genuinely like to hear you elaborate on them. I'll also mention again that your criticism of Shalladin, cookie-cutter plan and puzzle-piece perfect relationship, could just as well, if not even more, apply to Shadolin. We can't yet tell if the scenes between Shallan and Kaladin are subversion, though. So I'll have to disagree there.

I think Chaos brought up some good points about Kaladin's depression, but that's one of the hearts of the issue. Kaladin and Shallan are both traumatized in very different ways and they're both dealing with their trauma in different ways. From where I stand, both of them need a partner who can be supportive and who naturally helps them with their issues. Relationships aren't a cure for trauma or mental illness, but a healthy relationship helps strengthen a person rather than causing added stress. I don't think Kaladin and Shallan are ready to be that for each other yet.

The scene on the ship is extremely telling. Kaladin feels too much, he remembers his failures and he takes each of them on as his personal responsibility. After the scene in the palace, he almost shuts down and goes catatonic because he can't reconcile seeing two groups of his friends slaughter each other and his closest friend betray him and murder the man that Kaladin was supposed to protect. Kaladin doesn't function well when faced with those things and though he's gotten good at forcing himself through it, it's an immense source of pain for him. He's also got depression and seasonal affective disorder, neither of which Shallan seems ready to help with.

Mostly because she's got her own issues, which are on full display through Oathbringer and Words of Radiance so I won't go into the detail there. However, the last thing she needs is someone like Kaladin coming along and telling her how good it is that she's able to repress all of that and that she should keep smiling and laughing and not facing it, just because that's what he wishes he was able to do. 

We've also got the classism, Shallan's lack of empathy for Kaladin's suffering, Kaladin's pain and past betrayals making him defensively hateful towards lighteyes. Their conversations in the chasms reveal that rather than actually listening to what Kaladin is telling her about the systematic abuse within the nahn and dahn systems, she talks circles around him wittily until Kaladin gets frustrated with her and just gives up. He'll snipe back at her, but at that point he's mad that she's not listening and just keeps taking pot shots at him. Not a great way to work through all of that.

Adolin isn't broken the way the other two are, and I think that's why he's good for both of them. He keeps Kaladin talking when Kaladin starts to succumb to despair, and he helps keep Shallan grounded when she's losing track of herself. Not to say that Adolin is perfect and doesn't have his own issues that he needs help with, but overall he's more stable than Kaladin is right now. Nothing wrong with that, but in my opinion, it makes him a better fit.

And, as for the cliche set up of their relationship, I can run it through if you like.

1. Premise: main dude character and main girl character plus compulsive heterosexuality means they must be the two who get together, right?
2. Hilarious meet-cute gone wrong where they both get off on the wrong foot. She lies to him and humiliates him and it's good fun but, ahaha, it's going to come back to bite her, how quaint!
3. Bickering when they meet up again, which obviously means flirting and sexual tension. Look how much they hate each other... but doesn't that mean they're meant to be?? Opposites attract, right? And he's that forbidden romance option just when she thought she'd found a dream guy.
4. Trapped together in a bad situation and now they are -gasp- forced to learn to work together despite how much they loathe each other. Except... maybe... they're more alike than they thought... maybe there is a... connection that they've both been denying.
5. Bonding through danger and cuddling to keep warm and confessing their deepest darkest secrets to one another in the cold, wet depths of the storm. 
6. Return to live as normal, and though they try to pretend that nothing happened, they just can't stop thinking of each other and how attracted they are, of course at the most dramatically amusing times.

I mean... I'm sorry but that's just so by the book. And not only is it mind-numbingly rote, there was also all those unhealthy trauma issues that seemed to be getting painted over by this beige romcom nightmare. I swear I can list a dozen romcoms where one or multiple of those plot points happen. I just watched a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode in which the main character got trapped in an elevator with her sexy boss and ended up kissing him, then feeling horribly guilty because she was already engaged to the man of her dreams that she'd chased after for years. The whole meeting could be the start of some plucky chick flick where the snappy and sarcastic intern wittily gets the upperhand on some stranger who gets on her bad side on the subway only to show up to her first day of work and realize he's actually her boss! How embarrassing and funny, right?

Sure. Except we've seen it a million times. And if you can't spin it, it's just bad writing. I got worried that there was no spin, but there was. They weren't meant to be together, they never were, and those scenes only pretended to paint in beige, when there was really secret ultraviolet designs beneath all along that came to light when we got to the end.

Alright, moving on.

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

At that time, Shallan hadn't developed any feelings for Kaladin yet. By OB, she clearly has (as represented by Veil).

Ah, she had though. Shallan gets all aflutter over Kaladin after he rescues her in the chasms, just as he gets all twitterpated over her. It's especially egregious because they do it right after each other too.

Quote

Kaladin found himself standing up amid the bridgemen, despite the pain of his leg, as he noticed Adolin and Shallan riding past. He followed the pair with his eyes. Adolin, astride his thick-hooved Ryshadium, and Shallan on a more modestly sized brown animal.

She looked gorgeous. Kaladin was willing to admit it, if only to himself. Brilliant red hair, ready smile. She said something clever; Kaladin could almost hear the words. He waited, hoping that she’d look toward him, meet his eyes across the short distance.

She didn’t. She rode on, and Kaladin felt like an utter fool. A part of him wanted to hate Adolin for holding her attention, but he found that he couldn’t. The truth was, he liked Adolin. And those two were good for one another. They fit.

Perhaps Kaladin could hate that.

--WoR 76

Quote

[Adolin] laughed. “As long as you don’t hurt my face, I suppose.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I like your face.”

He grinned, Shardplate helm hanging from his saddle so as to not mess up his hair. She waited for him to add a quip to hers, but he didn’t.

That was all right. She liked Adolin as he was. He was kind, noble, and genuine. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t brilliant or . . . or whatever else Kaladin was. She couldn’t even define it. So there.

Passionate, with an intense, smoldering resolve. A leashed anger that he used, because he had dominated it. And a certain tempting arrogance. Not the haughty pride of a highlord. Instead, the secure, stable sense of determination that whispered that no matter who you were—or what you did—you could not hurt him. Could not change him.

He was. Like the wind and rocks were.

Shallan completely missed what Adolin said next. She blushed. “What was that?”

--WoR 77

Ugh, I'm sorry but those two quotes, one chapter after another? After slogging through all of the contrived set up and being sick of this plot, I was rolling my eyes at this point. Shallan even does the thing where she starts distractedly daydreaming about how sexy Kaladin is while she's trying to convince herself that she doesn't think he's sexy, all the while missing what Adolin said. Definitely never seen a character do that before ever.

My one solace was that Kaladin and Adolin didn't hate each other, but by the end of WoR this whole love triangle nonsense was just budding and I was terribly worried that there was going to be a stupid rivalry over Shallan between the two of them. Again, I shouldn't doubt Brandon, and he dodged that pot hole. He couldn't break up my boys like that.

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

It's too early to make that call, honestly. Shallan, parts of her, still have feelings for Kaladin. They are currently being suppressed. If anything, this romance subplot won't be resolved until Shallan manages to heal her psyche, perhaps by swearing the Fifth Ideal. 

Shallan's feelings for Kaladin are "whoa that's hot" which... relatable. She shoved that off into Veil because it was inconvenient and she didn't want to deal with it, but at the end of the day, Shallan feels a physical attraction to Kaladin, but not much more. I particularly liked the comment about appreciating a nice piece of art without wanting to pull it off the hook and get intimate with it. Veil certainly didn't seem to be interested in anything resembling commitment with Kaladin, and neither did Shallan.

Shallan acknowledges that her feelings toward Kaladin weren't actually romantic when she's reassuring Adolin at the end. And Kaladin admits that he too, was not in love with her, though he was confused about that for a while. That seems to me pretty well wrapped up in a nice plot bow.

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

Could you go more in-depth on that? Perhaps address the point about Adolin "identifying" one of Shallan's many personalities, and telling her that it is the "real" her - at the cost of suppressing other parts of her personality?

The one that Adolin claims is the "real" her is the real her. Shallan might believe that the only version of herself that's real is the broken waif who can't even cry anymore, but this too, is a lie that she tells herself. Default Shallan is Shallan. She's how she imagines herself if she hadn't been through trauma, if she hadn't been broken. AKA, that version is what Shallan needs to be working toward to be healthy. She needs to work to become okay with herself to the point where she can be the optimistic, bubbly scholar with a ready quip and a knack for espionage without having to deny the things that she endured. She can accept what happened to her without letting it define and overwhelm her.

Veil and Radiant do carry aspects of Shallan but they're also very much an escape. They're who Shallan becomes when she doesn't want to deal with being herself. She isn't actually Veil and she isn't actually Radiant. In a healthy state, I think we'll see Shallan able to shift to those mindsets when she needs to be able to look at a situation in a different way, but not fleeing into them as a mode of escape. 

Adolin's able to focus on the Shallan that's Shallan, and that's the one he wants to encourage and bring out. I don't think that means he's suppressing other parts of her personality. But he doesn't think it's good for them to control her. (Which, he's right, it's not good.)

Okay, on to @Dreamstorm

 

24 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

Where we differ, is whether or not a "long-con" is a good thing to give your readers.  It's clear it worked for you, but I wonder if it would have worked had it been twisted around.  If you liked the romantic set-up "stock scenes" and found a bunch of literary devices which seemed to indicate that was the author's intent but disliked the set-up for the other romance, would you still be happy at the bait and switch?  I think you're a writer (right?), so it could be that you're happy with the subversion element as a literary device regardless, but of course there are many readers who aren't happy being taken on a long-con.  (I would also argue our "con" didn't get cut off when Shallan chose Adolin so we're still being conned, but you can read all those points in the thread.)

I'll admit, I usually find subversions more interesting than playing a trope straight pretty much 100% of the time. I think I maybe implied something I didn't mean to with the phrase "long-con." I mostly meant it in terms of a long scope, but I think you're right to bring up the "con" aspect of that kind of thing, in that there were readers who believed the setup was legitimate and felt robbed of a payoff they felt was promised and not delivered upon.

That said, I'm no stranger to ship heartbreak. Mine was less a con and more of me not having all the facts, but way back when I was invested in the Shallan/Renarin ship before WoR came out. I thought I had a handle on who they both were as people and I was so certain that they could be a good pair for each other. I'd never felt as strongly for a ship before those two.

One problem: Shallan's trauma. It's not on display in the first book. Though she talks about her father being bad and we see Nan Balat, there's nothing that really hints at the deeper repression and empathy problems that Shallan deals with in Words of Radiance. Probably because it wasn't necessary to show all of that for Shallan's plotline in WoK and WoK had enough going on with Shallan without introducing all of that. She hides it well and is good at pretending! That's the whole point.

But regardless, I was blindsided and devastated that I could have misinterpreted her so badly. When she and Renarin had their first real interaction at the end of WoR I was psyched up for a cute scene of bonding and teamwork and instead I got whatever hot mess that was. It sucked and it hurt and I was really messed up about it for probably a good few months until some friends helped me work through my emotions regarding it. It still aches a little bit, even though I've moved on from that ship now. There'll always be a little bit of nostalgia in it for me, a remembrance of all the good, fond, warm memories I had with it.

7 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

Now aside from the fact I don't like being conned (see above), my main issue with Shallan choosing Adolin is not that she chose him, but how she did it.  I find the idea of any woman sitting down, a man holding her hand and staring into her eyes and seeing the "real" her (or the "best" persona, or however you're interpreting what Adolin did - not going down that path about what he selects and what that could mean), to be offensive.  This is obviously a personal preference; I want my female heroines to be able to stand on their own feet and recognize for themselves their real self/best persona, and then they can run into their man's waiting arms and do their romance thing.  People (Shadolin supporters actually!) have redesigned that scene so it could have worked that way, so it could have totally been possible to make it a self-actualizing moment for Shallan, instead of one that, to me, makes her look weak.  This is of course my personal opinion, just like it's your personal opinion that Adolin is a great match for Shallan.  I think we both realize that the author can make choices for characters which we wouldn't want the characters to make, and I'm very disappointed with how Shallan makes her choice (again not who, but how), because I think it flies in the face of the strength I've seen in Brandon's other female characters.  Even if the Adolin romance sticks, I'm hoping this aspect can be turned around in the next few books.

Okay so I'm actually going to pull a John Green quote about this because he is an author who's been accused of writing characters and plots that are codependent and weak and romanticizing those kinds of relationships, to which he says:

Quote

The other attack going viral on tumblr at the moment is that I write novels about broken people who need saving, and that this encourages the romanticization of brokenness. Well, maybe there are wholly self-sufficient unbroken people who are able to thrive in complete isolation, succeeding solely by the sweat of their own Randian brows, but those are not the people I know or am interested in writing about. So yeah. I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken. We all depend on each other for support and compassion. That web of interconnected yearning and need is essential to my understanding of human experience, and I don't find celebrating it problematic.

I think it's a good point. Yes, we want "strong female characters" but I don't think that means characters who never get support. Adolin helps her in the end, but I don't think that undermines who Shallan is or her own narrative arc. She has many aspects of her life that don't revolve around Adolin or her love life or any part of that. I don't have an issue with her getting support from her love interest at a low point in her life. When you're worn out and don't have energy left, that's when you need someone to help get you on your feet again.

7 hours ago, SLNC said:

It is funny really, how you see two characters as so incompatible, when they are actually written as having many compatibilities (scientific thought processes, actually being able to laugh about each others jokes, whether you like them or not, and being very passionate all around (though this is still quite hidden in Shallan's character - it shows at times). It is just a bit astonishing to me how one could come to the conclusion, that Kaladin and Shallan are incompatible, when they form a real bond in a situation, where, even though they were forced to work together, they didn't actually have to. If they were so incompatible, this wouldn't have happened.

You're right that we're on different sides of the debate, but I explained some of why I find them incompatible above. I think that though they did have a connection, it wasn't something that was going to be sustainable through the difficulty in spanning the gap in their unique problems. Though they bond, I have always preferred them as supportive, snarky friends, rather than getting tied up in the tangles of what a romance would be between them. And I'm pleased that they seem to be heading in this direction.

4 hours ago, maxal said:

This was a great post. Thank you for writing it. I have on commentary to make which is more to fish for additional comments more then to counter-argue. In shorts, while I do agree with you on why Adolin is good for Shallan, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how she is good for him. This relationship has been way too centered on Shallan, her problems, her needs, her person, very little of it have focused on Adolin, including the book itself. 

So how is Shallan a good match for Adolin, apart from being the only girl who could pull up with him long enough to tie the knot?

And I've specifically saved this point for last, because you're right, it's something that hasn't been talked about enough. It's also important! Adolin's not working through trauma in the way that Shallan and Kaladin are, but a good relationship is reciprocal, which means we need Shallan to be contributing to Adolin.

To me, we see this in the way that Shallan bolsters Adolin's insecurities. He confesses the issue that he's been struggling with, the murder, to her, and she's supportive and helps him come to terms with it. We also see Adolin trying to find his place in the new world and struggling with his relative unimportance within it. He was the top of the top all his life, the expert duelist, the one who got all the girls, the Highprince's son, and now he's surrounded by people with superpowers who are fighting the apocalypse and he feels... inadequate.

He's sure that Shallan will pick Kaladin because Kaladin has magic flight and does all those dang dramatic hero moments, but Shallan doesn't want superpowers and the dramatic hero moments. She wants Adolin, the kind, goofy, supportive guy that brings her food when he hears she's not feeling well. What Adolin needed was to hear someone say "Yes, you. You're the one I want. You don't need all the bells and whistles. You're enough."

And I think Shallan's also good for him because even before everyone starts dealing with the apocalypse, she's not dazzled. She thinks Adolin is very handsome, but she's not intimidated by his status or the fact that he's Alethkar's most eligible bachelor. She cracks jokes with him and treats him like a person.

Despite having many "friends," Adolin didn't seem to be great at making really true connections with people. His girlfriends all leave because he doesn't support the relationships well, his supposed best friend says he doesn't want to hang out anymore because the Kholins are "not fashionable" at the moment, and then enters a rigged duel to the potential death against him. Adolin needs someone that he can just cut loose with and be a person. He and Renarin have a great relationship, but he also needs people who aren't his brother.

Shallan is good for him because she cracks poop jokes and teases him. She treads the line of not letting him think too much of himself when he's all special and important and also helping lift his spirits when he's worried that he's not enough. Her simple, stark affection for him is really something that keeps him grounded and helps him keep on the right track. 

And I'm gonna cut myself off there. If someone responded with a point that I missed, I'm sorry, I was trying to hit the big ones. Goodness this a thread and a half, isn't it?

I will say over the course of these conversations, I've gone from "yeah, it's cute I guess" on Shallan/Adolin to maybe actually shipping it for real. So thanks for that, guys? I'm starting to really feel the heat here, finally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Though they bond, I have always preferred them as supportive, snarky friends, rather than getting tied up in the tangles of what a romance would be between them. And I'm pleased that they seem to be heading in this direction.

I didn't, but that is just where I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

What I don't get is that last sentence... I see no evidence, that they are heading in that direction. Not as long as she is still fractured. Veil might, but "Shallan" is acting like a downright cremhole (pardon my french) towards Kaladin during Oathbringer, because she pushed off her feelings for him to Veil. Yes, she laughs about the boots as a gift, but I think, that is more a semblance of the real Shallan coming through at times. "Shallan" is still just a mask, that resents Kaladin, because she thinks she must do that to love Adolin. It is a skewed thought, but I did interpret it like that, because she is always acting like that when Adolin is in the scene and well... they are now married. I don't think that will make it easier.

38 minutes ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Veil and Radiant do carry aspects of Shallan but they're also very much an escape. They're who Shallan becomes when she doesn't want to deal with being herself. She isn't actually Veil and she isn't actually Radiant. In a healthy state, I think we'll see Shallan able to shift to those mindsets when she needs to be able to look at a situation in a different way, but not fleeing into them as a mode of escape. 

Nope and yes. You are partly right, that they are an escape, but Shallan flat-out lost those aspects of herself.

Quote

It sounded reasonable. Well, except for the fact that the honorspren were watching them. And the fact that the Fused knew where they were now, and were probably gathering forces to give chase. And the fact that they had to somehow escape from a ship in the middle of a sea of beads, reach the shore, then hike two hundred miles to reach Thaylen City.

All of that could fade before Kaladin’s passion. All but the worry that topped them all—could she even make the Oathgate work? She couldn’t help feeling that too much of this plan depended on her.

Yet those eyes . . .

“We could try a mutiny,” Veil said. “Maybe those mistspren who do all the work will listen. They can’t be happy, always hopping about, following honorspren orders.”

“I don’t know,” Kaladin said, voice hushing as one of these spren—made entirely of mist, save for the hands and face—walked past. “Could be reckless. I can’t fight them all.”

“What if you had Stormlight?” Veil asked. “If I could pinch it back for you? What then?”

He rubbed at his chin again. Storms, he looked good with a beard. All ragged and untamed through the face, contrasted by his sharp blue uniform. Like a wild spren of passion, trapped by the oaths and codes . . .

Wait.

Wait, had that been Veil?

Shallan shook free of the momentary drifting of personality. Kaladin didn’t seem to notice.

Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer: The Stormlight Archive Book Three (Kindle Locations 19724-19736). Orion.

And directly after that, look how she turns unconfident again. All her confidence lies by Veil.

Quote

“Maybe,” he said. “You really think you can steal the gemstones back for us? I’d feel a lot more comfortable with some Stormlight in my pocket.”

“I . . .” Shallan swallowed. “Kaladin, I don’t know if . . . Maybe it would be best not to fight them. They’re honorspren.”

“They’re jailers,” he said, but then calmed. “But they are taking us the right direction, if only inadvertently. What if we stole back our Stormlight, then simply jumped off the ship? Can you find a bead to make us a passage toward land, like you did at Kholinar?”

“I . . . guess I could try. But wouldn’t the honorspren simply swing around and pick us up again?”

Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer: The Stormlight Archive Book Three (Kindle Locations 19736-19742). Orion.

Just focusing on her current "real" personality won't do the trick. Veil and Radiant are manifestations of her personality facets, but she needs to reintegrate them back into herself not just control them. Otherwise she won't be the real Shallan again. The current Shallan is Shallan minus confidence, boldness, strength and pragmatism.

Edited by SLNC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Shallan's feelings for Kaladin are "whoa that's hot" which... relatable. She shoved that off into Veil because it was inconvenient and she didn't want to deal with it, but at the end of the day, Shallan feels a physical attraction to Kaladin, but not much more. I particularly liked the comment about appreciating a nice piece of art without wanting to pull it off the hook and get intimate with it. Veil certainly didn't seem to be interested in anything resembling commitment with Kaladin, and neither did Shallan.

Shallan acknowledges that her feelings toward Kaladin weren't actually romantic when she's reassuring Adolin at the end. And Kaladin admits that he too, was not in love with her, though he was confused about that for a while. That seems to me pretty well wrapped up in a nice plot bow.

It's really interesting how much opinons can difer. You think those lines wrapped up the plot nicely while I think those are some of the most contrived excuses I have ever read. The "artwork" line especially, if it is indeed to be taken as a final rejection of attraction to Kaladin and in the context of everything that preceded it, may in fact be in the running for the worst line ever penned.

Edited by analyticaposteriori
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, analyticaposteriori said:

The "artwork" line especially, if it is indeed to be taken as a final rejection of attraction to Kaladin and in the context of everything that preceded it, may in fact be in the running for the worst sentence ever penned.

What makes it even more contrived is that she has been comparing Adolin to a "nice sculpture" as in artwork in the chasm two months (in-book time) before.

Edited by SLNC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Admittedly, I've skimmed. In my defense, there's well over a thousand posts here. But from following, it seemed like general gist was Shalladin shippers trying to explain why they don't like Adolin, but starting to lean into it a little too far and drawing the ire of Adolin defenders. Threads like the one below seem to be an offshoot of some of this discussion, and it's a reading of Adolin that I think is exaggerated, both those who are arguing that he's morally depraved and those arguing that he's too perfect.

I find it highly dishonorable that just because I made another post on attempting to discuss Adolin's morality (BTW I hardly got any logical feedback in there, but was thoroughly bashed for even entertaining the possibility of interpreting Adolin as immoral) is being used as a counter argument for the whole Shalladin approach. That was my personal post on the matter and it does not correlate with the rest of the people arguing on this thread. On the contrary, I think most people think Adolin as the perfect good guy on either side of the spectrum.

Regarding the other post, the whole experience was extremely disturbing to me and I've been feeling very apprehensive in posting anything since that thread was closed down. I may appear as a logical person but that doesn't mean that I didn't feel harassed and bullied and quite frankly very unwelcome in the forums (especially by a moderator's PM the next day, after the whole thing was done and closed). Yes, I was emotionally charged when I used 'ph' on that specific post, but other than that, I certainly wasn't trolling when I made the original post and I was completely sincere in creating a logical and respectful discussion.

Anyway, I've had a lot of things to say relating to the last few pages of this thread (especially where someone was comparing Adolin killing unarmed Sadeas to under-aged Shallan killing her father for causing harm to his own family)but as I said above I will take my leave before I start an avalanche all over again. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Morning all :) I am so glad to have some deep thoughts that counter mine - makes the thread seem less bubble like :) So thanks especially to @maxal and @Ookla the Feathered for their posts.

That said, I am going to counter them!

13 hours ago, maxal said:

I disagree with this statement: the larger part of WoR had Dalinar and Adolin trying to find a legal way to deal with Sadeas.

I disagree. Dalinar is looking for legal ways to handle Sadeas. Adolin stews. Shallan finds the dueling way by reminding them of the King's Boon. Adolin even acknowledges that he'd forgotten about Yenev's duel with Sadeas - which suggests that he had some idea about how it went down but wasn't thinking about it as an option (nb doesn't fit with an Edgedancer motif but anyway) . I would argue that because Adolin has multiple encounters with Sadeas where he struggles to contain his rage that he is not capable of thinking of a legal way of handling it. I don't blame him for being angry, but it is blinding him. Indeed, this seems to be your argument for his act being moral.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Early OB showed us how Dalinar had zero intentions to deal with Sadeas, he mourned the loss of his military capacity, he thought finding Urithiru was enough to cement Alethkar and would have Sadeas fall in-line.

I disagree. Dalinar isn't thinking of Sadeas at all until he is found dead. He has to deal with the situation as is -Dalinar is not the sort of person to spend long wishing for what cannot be - he is better at "doing" than "thinking". He is also the only one to think that it is a pity that Sadeas is dead. I think it is clear he is the only one at the scene of the crime (besides Sadeas' men) who actually mourns the loss of what could have been. I am not suggesting that Dalinar was right that Sadeas could have been redeemed - but the man's death means he definitely can't be.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

We have never seen Adolin acknowledge he made a mistake. Sadeas, it seems to me, is just another example. Adolin genuinely does not think he made a mistake, he genuinely thinks he did something good

Yes. But this is a problem in my mind. I feel like Adolin worries a bit about the fact of the murder - because he doesn't want to be caught (understandably) but not the why or the how. I also want to point out that he acknowledges that Dalinar was right about the visions (in tWoK - he stews for 5 days in text and finally realises he is glad he was wrong). So he does admit mistakes. Actually not admitting a mistake is  narcissistic - Adolin isn't a narcissist because he can admit mistake. He just isn't doing so here. And whilst the murder possibly could be justified (I personally don't think it was - but I acknowledge that others might - including Adolin) I don't believe Adolin actually ever feels it was unjustified. That is concerning - most people would at least worry about what if they had made a mistake. They then rationalise it. Adolin, in contrast is worried about what others will think of him but not the actual fact that he is a murderer.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

As for altruist intentions, you forgot to quote why Adolin snaps in the first place: he snaps because Sadeas told him there was NOTHING he could ever do to stop him. He promised there was NOTHING Adolin could do to protect his father. Except killing Sadeas.

Except that this is wrong. Killing Sadeas not only doesn't protect Dalinar (the whole TC thing happened because of this murder) but won't do so in the future. How far is Adolin prepared to go to protect his father? Adolin's snap decisions show a remarkable lack of foresight here, and he never admits that by killing Sadeas in the way he did, he caused the rift between Houses Kholin and Sadeas to widen to a point where they cannot ever be reconciled. That goes directly against what Dalinar is trying to do (Unite them) but the greater plan never enters Adolin's head.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Well, yes, I agree theoretically Ialai could want personal revenge. I am however going to agree SA has become way bigger then Ialai's petty wishes for vengeance and, as such, it won't be a plot point.

Wait, so Ialai's "petty" revenge (for the death of her husband, the loss of her position, the loss of her troops, the likely associated loss of her princedom) can't be used as a plotpoint to drive a greater narrative? That makes no sense - any tiny piece can be used to drive a narrative. I wouldn't have expected Shallan practicing Shardblade poses to cause her to splinter her identity, but it did. It was a relatively small moment in a much larger part of the story. There are plenty such moments. Tefts addiction is alluded to in WoR suggesting he might be broken enough for a nahel bond, Lopen holding the spheres in WoR long before he starts "drinking" in the stormlight. These can be used to propel all kinds of things. 

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Adolin is healed. Apart from Shallan, now one thinks to ask how he is doing, everyone basically ignores him including his own father. He then goes about to fight whatever he can fight. He muses over how he never killed Alethi and he doesn't like it. He then corrects himself thinking he did kill Sadeas, but once again, those thoughts aren't causing any reaction into him whatsoever.

Firstly, clearly Renarin asks - because he heals Adolin. You acknowledge that then contradict yourself. We see it happen from Dalinar's perspective - which means he is watching and that he cares. He trusts the people who he sees as best able to manage to do their jobs. The Radiants job is to protect people and fight the voidbrngers - Adolin isn't one. His role of stepping up beside Dalinar as an equal has been usurped by the Radiants around him. This is something that likely bothers Adolin. Adolin sets great store by Dalinar's opinion (as you;ve noted) so this is likely a very difficult moment for him - he isn't used to being ignored - indeed Renarin, perhaps more than any of the other Radiants, gets his place as the first person to get commands. I would be interested to see how Adolin handles that. We get a tiny moment when he is less than pleased about Renarin when we see a rather uncharitable thought about Renarin arriving at the Thunderclast : "Took you long enough". He doesn't say it - he thinks it. That's not fair - it isn't Renarin's fault that Adolin got there first - they took different routes - and what is the betting that Renarin was healing people on the way? He also doesn't have any real experience fighting and moving through a battlefield yet so is it surprising that he would take longer? I don't think so. This thought is unworthy of Adolin - Renarin has never (until recently) held any kind of position above Adolin - and this is how he handles it? I personally suspect that it isn't Adolin thinking it - or perhaps it is something that it being egged on - but if I'm wrong and it is Adolin then he is definitely not as good a brother to Renarin as Renarin is to him. 

With regards to remembering Sadeas, look at it in text. It mirrors very well what happened during the murder:

"That's it." in WoR and "Sadeas. Don't forget Sadeas."

The emphasis is in book. This reads (a) very like Ruin and Vin and (b) even if it isn't Odium speaking, trying to drive thoughts in, it suggests that Adolin has not completely dealt with the situation yet - indeed he may be doing what Shallan did by suppressing his memories - he just isn't as good at it as she is - he suppressed his thoughts by getting into combat.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Later Adolin uses the fact he murdered Sadeas as an excuse to refuse to being king: this is the only consequence Brandon wrote and I believe it will be the only one.

Well fair enough. I don't believe this. Mainly because given other books, BS tends to write with foreshadowing in mind and that all actions have consequences that ripple across several books. 

13 hours ago, maxal said:

I have always read trust and love as two different things: Brandon trusts Adolin, he sees him as the great man he himself failed to be, but love is something else entirely. My reasons for saying I never thought Dalinar loved Adolin very much (we saw in the flashbacks he did love him as a boy, but he hated him as a teenager, I feel he later has issues with both feelings, he can't love Adolin as he once did) were he never really cared about his physical safety nor integrity

I think you mean Dalinar here? I am going to assume so while making my point: 

Dalinar didn't hate Adolin and Renarin. He hated himself and was projecting that feeling onto his boys. We see the way Renarin and he hug at the end of one of the flashbacks that he doesn't hate them. He just can't handle the self-loathing and guilt. Once those emotions are removed, I suspect that the relationships normalised. We get no indication of a strained relationship between either son and Dalinar. I also think that Dalinar put Adolin's safety very highly - but he also understood that Adolin couldn't be a successful Highprince if he didn't get the necessary training and authority. To a warrior culture like the Alethi, that means battle. I would say that Dalinar is thus protecting Adolin the best way he knows how. They fight together until Dalinar can no longer go into battle - and Dalinar is literally the best there is and he considers Adolin an equal. He also values Adolin's opinion over everyone else's. We see him think of Adolin more than any other single person - especially in tWoK, but it is also true, albeit to a lesser extent in WoR. 

Anyway, I would suggest that the fact that Dalinar thinking he "hated" his sons being the impetus for him seeking the Old Magic, is the best indicator that he did'nt hate them - he was prepared to risk a lot to seek the Nightwatcher - including getting vengeance for Gavilar, blasphemy, physical harm, and failure just to try and fix things.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

My point in saying he doesn't behave like a sociopath is link to Adolin having dealt with it, having wondered about guilt.

The thing is, he doesn't wonder about guilt. He isn't sure whether to feel pride or shame. Shame and guilt are not the same thing. You can feel guilt for something but not shame. They are often simultaneous, but are not necesserily so. Shame is about how you will be perceived, guilt is how you perceive yourself. I would argue that shame fits with Adolin's desire to appear "good" and "proper" and "attractive" to those around him (eg why he is fashionable) but guilt is something that people feel because they judge themselves. 

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Do I think Amaram was weak? Yes. He was too weak to accept responsibility for his actions. He refused to take the blame and to admit his own guilt. He had the opposite reaction to Adolin whom takes full responsibility of his actions and isn't trying to find a way to exonerate himself. He killed Sadeas because he felt he had too. He doens't feel bad about it which is why Odium has nothing to hook onto Adolin

Firstly - Adolin doesn't "take responsibility" for the murder because he essentially argues it wasn't murder it was justice. I would argue that it was vengeance, not justice, and thus he should take responsibility for it. Instead he says he would do it again. I predict we will see him kill again in a similar fashion as a result of that line - Adolin is quite good at predicting his own actions. He predicted that he would kill Sadeas after all when he threatened the man in WoR.

Secondly, I would (and have) argued that Amaram was falling the way of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and that this is what Adolin might be doing. Potentially any negative thought that you have might be a hook into Odium - he is extraordinarily dangerous - more so because he initially seems benign. It is no accident that he appears as a kindly old grandfatherly figure. If he looked dangerous, fewer people would be ensnared. The Listeners weren't inherently evil, and they've gone with Odium because they were desperate and afraid. Neither of those are "negatve" in the truest sense of the word, but they are unpleasant emotions. People want to be rid of them, and given long enough in fear - most people will take the "easier" way out. It isn't "weakness" it is human nature - we are inherently flawed.

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Adolin just isn't within the same situation. Adolin is pleased with how events turned out. He feels no pain, no guilt, no negative emotions for Odium to fester on. Also, we do have a WoB which states Adolin murdering Sadeas had nothing to do with Odium.

A) As I said, the fact that he isn't feeling them is what worries me - where are the emotions that we would expect? (b) If I am judging your comment rightly, this is the WoB you are referencing:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/44-minicon-2015/#e659

 

Quote

 

Blightsong (paraphrased)

Was Adolin's murder of Sadeas him falling under the influence of Odium, or was that all him?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That was all Adolin.

 

I personally see this as it being Adolin's choice - he wasn't influenced - but that doesn't mean he hasnt opened a door to more problems down the road. Indeed I would argue that Amaram was in the same place to begin with - I think he had already started on that path long before he killed Kaladin's men (he knew of Gavilar's plan for example) but he still had to be convinced to kill Kaladin's men - and he felt guilty about it. I suspect that Odium doesn't influence people the way Ruin did - it is far easier to manipulate people into making their own choices and live to rue the day. That way they can't actually live with themselves. Dalinar only managed to get through it because he'd had time to confront his past, and understand that he wasn't the same person as he had been on the day of Evi's death. 

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Sadeas had been attacking Dalinar's reputation for a long time before the events of WoK. He had bad-mouthed him and discredited him on numerous occasions which is why Adolin is angry at him from the start. Alethi take verbal threats as a serious offense and it is implied Sadeas has not been kind to what he perceived as Dalinar's growing weakness

And? Neither Dalinar nor Renarin react as extremely as Adolin does. Indeed, it appears that most of the warcamps are saying this kind of thing, but Adolin only really hates Sadeas for it. He never hates Aladar or Ruthar in the same way. What about the others who lambast Dalinar in Adolin's presence in tWoK when they are out drinking wine. He just brushed it off - even from the woman (Danlan at the time) he was courting who says he probably didn't need to step down but he did need to relax the codes. The others are pretty rue to Adolin and Dalinar but he doesn't get violent with them. Again, it comes down to Adolin's need to be perceived in a certain way, and this is extended to his House. I just don't see why this hated is justified when we see no other character hate Sadeas the way Adolin does. Not even Kaladin hates him in the same way - and he (in my opinion) had a great deal more reason to hate him. If Adolin had stormlight the way Kaladin has it when Kal considers killing Amaram, do we honestly think Adolin would have even thought twice about it?

13 hours ago, maxal said:

Assassination is never discussed because it isn't within the Alethi ways to assassinate an opponent. We have a WoB which confirms Alethi would not try to assassinate a rival, but would instead try to get him to duel you so you could kill him.

I need to see this WoB because honestly, it makes no sense - Sadeas attempts assassination on Dalinar (the bridge/carpenter) and when there is an assassination attempt on Elhokar (the cut balcony) Sadeas and Ialai debate which of the highprinces likely made the attempt. On top of that, when Elhokar is worried about how Dalinar is handling the highprinces, he says "they will send assassins" - and no-one corrects it. Indeed they investgate an assassination attempt in tWoK - even tho they worry Elhokar is paranoid. In WoR prologue we see Jasnah hire an assassin to deal with the future Queen and she explicitly says that she has hired many more to protect her family. When Gavilar is dying he asks Szeth who sends him and wonders, amongst other things, whether Sadeas and Restares (likely Altethi court member but unclear) are the peole who hire Szeth to kill him......

Assassination not a part of the Alethi court? If WoB is genuinely that then frankly I have to wonder if he has read his books.....

The only WoB I could find on this subject is this one:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/35-arcanum-unbounded-hoboken-signing/#e5015

 

Quote

 

Questioner

What's the penalty for killing a highprince, like Adolin did to Sadeas?

Brandon Sanderson

Official law is kind of confusing, because before the unification of Alethkar back into a kingdom, killing a highprince was like killing the monarch of another country. So if you did it on the field of battle it's fine. If you assassinate them it's considered a bad-- a mark of dishonor. But, what's gonna happen? I mean, your own people are gonna probably be like, "Okay, you killed the other highprince. You shouldn't have done that." But, you know... the enemy... *laughing* But now that there's a kingdom, those sort of laws are different. So it's going to cause a legal conundrum. Does that make sense?

 

Which to me suggests that it was done but you kept your involvement quiet to avoid dishonour. 

12 hours ago, aemetha said:

I read those scenes quite differently. What I saw was Dalinar trying to find a legal way to deal with Sadeas, and Adolin (barely) doing what Dalinar told him to do. Adolin himself had to be constrained on several occasions to prevent him from murdering Sadeas very publicly. 

Yes I agree. He nearly hits Sadeas in a major meeting and Amaram stops him. He also threatens Sadeas in this scene:

Quote

"I'll have your throat in my hands, Sadeas," Adolin hissed. "I'll squeeze and squeeze then I'll sink my dagger into your gut and twist. A quick death is too good for you."

I am of the opinion that he wouldn't have been able to stop himself at a single punch - even at this point - he is too deeply angry at Sadeas.

12 hours ago, aemetha said:
13 hours ago, maxal said:

Sure, he didn't have deepened thoughts on the matter, but I honestly do not see why he should: every single character within this story has killed without much additional thoughts. I don't know why Adolin is held to a different standard because he killed Sadeas: of all the people whom were killed, Sadeas deserved it the best.

Those other characters reacted to an immediate threat (Shallan), or were conducting the business of war in which killing is a requirement (Kaladin), or were similarly vilified (Dalinar). Adolin is held to the standard he is being held to because intent matters.

Let's have a look at the different murders/deaths we've seen.

1) Kaladin - let's be clear - a) Kaladin did not kill Szeth (after the retcon) so we have never seen Kaladin kill outside the field of battle and even then he actually feels bad doing it. Indeed in OB he freezes as a direct consequence of being unable to reconcile protecting and killing. Obviously this will be something dealt with in book 4 and he will swear his 4th ideal as a consequence.

2) Dalinar - was a monster as a younger man. It is clearly written and he pays a huge price for it. He feels guilt which he hides in the Thrill or in the alcholol until he can no longer do either which is then when he seeks the NW. Then he loses a huge chunk of himself so that he can grow into a better man. And Dalinar still pays every day for those murders - he lives by the codes so strictly because he cannot trust himself to behave well without a rigid code enforced upon him

3) Shallan - I'll take these 3 (Tyn, Lin, her mother) in reverse order

a) Tyn - this was self defence, pure and simple. Tyn was planning on killing Shallan as soon as she found out Shallan was Jasnah's ward. It was literally kill or be killed - especially as the only weapon Shallan had was a shardblade which is difficult to wield without killing someone. She feels some "depression" at killing Tyn, but she does it during a moment of dissociation (she goes cold/numb) and there really was no other way out. She regrets the necessity of killing Tyn - because she liked her - despite the fact of her being an assassin. This doesn't compare to Adolin/Sadeas which was not in anyway like immediate self defence because Adolin attacks first. Indeed, if Sadeas had killed Adolin in this fight, his defence would have been the same as Shallan's. Adolin's however, isn't.

(b) Lin Davar - this, from what we have seen, is the closest to "true" murder of the three killings we see from Shallan. She finds Melise dead and then goes to prepare her father's wine with poison because she (rightly) predicts that he has finally lost control and is a risk to everyone in the household. They are in the middle of a highstorm so she cannot go for help. Her brothers are too undermined to act in her stead or to prevent Lin's actions without bloodshed. There is literally only one outcome that can happen to prevent a likely massacre at the Davar home, and that is to kill Lin. Shallan does plan it, and she continues to act (ie by strangling after the poison fails) until the desired outcome is achieved. She however does feel guilt about it. She cries as she kills her father, she apologises, and she thanks him for what he did for her. She feels terrible about it, but has to act for the good of the rest of the family. On top of that we have a very long history of abuse in this household. It is unclear how much happened prior to Shallan's mother's death, but it is clear that Lin has done a great deal of damage to his children by this point - indeed, I suspect that none of them really understand non-violent resolutions to situations as a result of his parenting.

(c) Shallan's mother (do we actually know her name?) - this is also self defence - and most importantly, we have the least evidence about it. We also know that Shallan is so devastated by her actions that she doesn't speak for months and spends much of her time in a dissociative trance. She may not express herself as "guilty" although she describes her self as a monster, both in the moments afterwards, and much later to Wit so I think she feels guilty. Certainly, the acknowledgement of this event is partly to blame for her shattering her identity. 

As a result, I don't think I am holding Adolin to a different standard. Kaladin's situation never parallels his, and Shallan and Dalinar are literally broken by the murders they have committed. Adolin on the other hand just seems to brush it off. 

12 hours ago, aemetha said:

It's well established in the moral standards of our world and implied if not outright stated in the world described that hatred is not a mitigating factor in a case of murder, it is an aggravating factor. Taking a life because the person is a dangerous threat (a thought process not described) is a relatively selfless act, while taking a life because the person is deeply hated by you (a thought process that is described) is a selfish act.

Indeed. And on top of that, taking a life of someone for selfish reasons should inspire some reflections of guilt, and yet we don't see it - indeed Adolin says he;d do it again. So we need to warn anyone he "hates" because apparently he thinks it is sufficient justification.

9 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

This is a constant theme in SA - Kaladin with Elhokar is a good example; there were no external consequences for Elhokar for Kaladin, but he suffered massively because the fact he was doing nothing about it was crippling him internally.  So much of SA is about how one deals with one's actions have far-reaching effects (to pull from our non-main three, Amaram and Moash's stories are very focused on how they justify their actions internally), that I can't see this driving force throughout the books just being dropped when it comes to Adolin. 

I agree to an extent. Resposnibility is certainly important for KR - so if Adolin is to not become one, it is much less important for his arc in theory. On the other had, avoiding responsibility is important for those we have seen "go dark". Indeed, Szeth is followed by Odium when he attempts to kill Dalinar (the first time in WoR) because he isn't taking responsibility. I don't believe Szeth was influenced by Odium directly, but that doesn't mean he wasn't being used as a tool for Odium in some way.  I suspect that Szeth's rebirth has helped him cut whatever links he had to Odium, and he is slowly taking responisbility now - though he still has a way to go in my opinion.

9 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

what I see here is a consistent pattern of not thinking about the Sadeas murder and overworking himself to distraction.  Can you really say that is healthy?  Do you really think if Brandon wanted to show that the murder was justified and shouldn't effect Adolin that in the few viewpoints we get of Adolin he's pushing away his feelings and throwing himself in work/the fight instead?

Yes I agree, it isn't healthy. I also think that he could have written the actual murder in such a way to make it feel more like justice than vengeance. I can sympathise with Shallan's killings for example, but Adolin and Dalinar's are alike and thus need more ramifications for the societal structure to remain intact. I would argue that Adolin has "broken his social contract" twice here - once by killing Sadeas, and second by failing to feel guilt for the action.

9 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

which getting Adolin out of a job as king he didn't want doesn't count - in some ways that makes it worse because he uses the murder as an excuse to avoid responsibility.)  I think it all hinges on the Sadeas hatred and whether or not Adolin will truly face that.

Yes I agree with this. Adolin has got too much out of this transaction - it feels unbalanced.

8 hours ago, Greywatch said:

Personally, though I like Szeth and find him very compelling as of OB, I think what he did was way less moral than Adolin killing Sadeas. Szeth knew it was wrong and evil, he felt bad, but he still kept doing it. To me, this is a much less defensible position than Adolin acting in anger, thinking about it, and though his emotions were in the wrong place at the time, coming to the conclusion that he doesn't regret it. For my part, I'm just so relieved that Sadeas is dead. Adolin snapped in anger, but he still prevented a great deal of pain and trouble for his family, and was proud to have defended his father. That I can get behind.

Hmm. I sort of disagree with this, though I understand your position. I would say that Adolin's actions are more understandable than Szeth's, but not more defensible.

Szeth has a contract, one that according to his own codes (and those of his people) he cannot break. He must do what he is told. To him, the highest law is the person who held his oathstone - and to break that is worse than any "lesser law" (to his perception anyway). Szeth is neither good nor evil - from a DnD (yes its back) perspective, he is lawful neutral. He will obey the laws he holds highest no matter their intents or consequences. Under Shin law I would expect him to be exonerated. Indeed, his punishment for being Truthless is that he is no longer allowed to self-determine in any way and thus has no agency. Yes he could break his own code, but in his mind, that is worse than what he already doing. Therefore he does the least bad thing possible in a world where he only has bad options. 

Adolin, on the other hand, has complete agency. He could choose to try and have Sadeas dealt with in a legal matter. Dalinar currently holds all the real political power in Urithiru - so sorting a legal trial or whatever would likely be possible. On top of that, Sadeas has just threatened House Kholin whose reputation has just proven to be that of honour and honesty - even when it isn't convenient. Adolin's word as a result would hold a lot of weight. Dalinar also is a KR and that plus Kaladin plus Shallan puts the Kholin house in a very powerful position. They probably could have manipulated the situation to get justice in a more formal way.

And lastly, unless the plot is dropped entirely, then who is to say that killing Sadeas has prevented pain and trouble for the Kholins? Sadeas' death caused trouble at TC and certainly opened the door for Odium to take control of people (through the Thrill if I understood the situation properly) and if the plot continues then it could easily cause more. Dalinar suggests that Adoline needs to go through some sort of "atonement" - and that in itself may cause problems for more than just Adolin. Until the books are finished, we cannot be absolutely sure that there are not going to be rippling effects from now on.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

That said, I feel like a lot of the reason that this thread has shifted here is that there's a majority of Kaladin/Shallan shippers who are trying to elucidate why they feel Adolin is the wrong pick for Shallan, but from my perspective, this discussion ended up shifting in an echo chamber sort of way to a characterization of Adolin that I simply don't find tenable. Adolin as a sadist or a sociopath? I'm almost amused that a thread that could accuse him of being too much of a picture-perfect Prince Charming is also saying that he's a barely restrained rage monster who loves killing and seeing his victims suffer

I know some others have commented on this, and have done so in a much more measured way, but honestly, this just annoys me. You clearly haven't read the thread properly at all so let me summarise the actual points made on this thread:

  • Most people here don't like how Shallan picked Adolin - it does no credit to either of them and could have been done much better to make them seem more real and less insubstantial
  • Adolin has acted once in a way that is described as sociopathic (that is an action that is seen as being "antisocia"l and thus against the cultural, moral and legal norms of a society). He is not a sociopath, but his murder of Sadeas was a sociopathic action. 
  • Adolin is portrayed in the books by other PoV characters and they tend to represent him as a perfect prince charming. Whether or not he is one is not the issue - we get most of his story from other people.
  • He is not a "rage monster" - he acted in rage and has shown impulsiveness which is worsened when he is angry. 

I know it is a long thread, but that is 4 mischaracterisations in one paragraph. I get you don't agree with many of the people in the thread, but it's just insulting to be dismissed with these kind of incorrect statements. Your further points have merit, and I hope to do them justice - but I would like the favour to be returned in kind.. 

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

His killing of Sadeas was not the first act of a potential serial killer or anything so macabre, it was a frustrated sense of vigilante justice. Sadeas was unquestionably a monster who tried, on multiple occasions, to not only kill Dalinar and Adolin, but also successfully murdered over half of the Kholin soldiers, innocent men who had absolutely nothing to do with the feud. And the Alethi justice system did nothing. Sadeas was untouchable, save for some very weird loopholes in a dueling match with a boon. Sadeas gloated in this and made it clear to Adolin that he wasn't ever going to stop, so... Adolin stopped him.

(a) I agree that Adolin is likely not a serial killer in waiting. He shows no potential hallmarks of it, except his lack of guilt. That is concerning, but on its own is not enough to put him on someone's radar - his actions do not imply that his lack of guilt is causing him to reevaluate the moral code he normally lives by. That doesn't have to remain true, of course so there are some things I would watch out for in future books, but I don't necessarily expect him to go dark. 

(b) Online dictionary: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/vigilante?s=t for vigilante - note that vigilante justice is described thus:  "done violently  and  summarily,  without  recourse  to lawful procedures: vigilante justice."

This is obviously therefore the opposite of actual justice. I would be very surprised therefore if the Skybreakers would actually have any truck with it. They would have needed legal permission for the execution, although the fact of Sadeas' death wouldn't likely be a problem except in that it was an illegal act.

(c) Sadeas didn't "murder" half the Kholin soldiers. Well, at least, under English law, the clear defence would be a lack of causation. The Parshendi killed the Kholin men. Sadeas' action certainly increased the odds of the mission failure - but they didn't actually guarantee it.  From the wiki:

Quote

 

Causation and foreseeability[edit]

Main article: Causation in English law

For a killing to amount to murder by a defendant, at the time of death the defendant's acts or omissions must be the operating and most substantial cause of death with no novus actus interveniens (Latin for "new act breaking in") to break the chain of causation. Thus, the defendant cannot choose how the victim is to act, nor what personality to have. No matter whether brave or foolish, the defendant must expect the victim to:

  • try to escape and if he or she dies in that attempt, the chain of causation is not broken; or
  • try to fight back and so escalate the extent of the violence between them; or
  • seek medical treatment for the injuries sustained and, even if mistakes are made by the medical staff, this will not break the chain of causation unless the mistakes become the more substantial cause of death.

There are conflicting authorities on the above point, R v Jordan[3] and R v Smith.[4] In short, any contingency that is foreseeable will maintain the chain. Put the other way, only some unexpected act by a third party which places the original attack as a merely a background context, or some unpredictable natural phenomenon will break the chain.

 

In this case, the main action is the war with the Parshendi - Sadeas' actions are reprehensible and should have been dealt with (it would likely be considered some kind of military crime - eg desertion of some form) by the legal system. But it isn't murder because it happens in the context of a situation where Kholin troops are already in harms way. Under civilian rather than military law, Sadeas is under no legal obligation to help them even with a prior agreement. 

I would be happy to hear some military legal advice on this because I suspect there is something different there, but even then I would argue that these are two allied militray forces, rather than a single army. As such, the laws would likely not be applied anyway - do we prosecute allied forces for failing to rescue our soldiers despite alliances?

 

 

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

It's not something I would have realized going into Oathbringer, but in hindsight, I don't think Sadeas' murder could have been the big crisis of conscience that some were expecting, because even though Adolin might have had the "am I a cold-blooded killer?" question kicking around, at some point someone would have said "okay yeah bud, you might have killed him, but he didn't really leave you any other choice.

And this is where I personally expect most consequences to come from. Because I deeply believe that there were other options, but that Adolin chose to ignore them.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Perhaps that's the Skybreaker in me who feels that the legal system failed in Sadeas' case and Adolin killing him was a restoration of justice in this case, but that's just me. Brandon did say that Skybreakers would not find Adolin's actions objectionable, so that makes sense.

I can't find this WoB - can you link me please? The only one I could find is this one:

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/223-words-of-radiance-seattle-signing/#e6055

 

Quote

 

Jerich

After what Adolin does at the end [of Words of Radiance] are there still Radiant orders that would take him?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there would be. In fact, yes. Definitely that's possible. I'm not going to say that he becomes one, but year.

Jerich

So like the Skybreakers or Dustbringers or...?

Brandon Sanderson

The Skybreakers might have trouble because it wasn't legal. But there are others who would be like "oh that was totally the right thing to do."

 

Which directly contradicts it - and maybe suggests you'd be more WR than SB ;) If you can justify Sadeas' death with the WR ideals anyway.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Perhaps Words of Radiance was a bit on-the-nose with the Kaladin and Shallan set up, but in hindsight, the point of those scenes was to take two incompatible characters and run them through the steps of the romantic relationships, so that later, we could see why that setup was doomed to fail. The infamous "storms she smiled anyway" scene reads on the surface as a beautiful character moment (which drove me nuts because it was super unhealthy, right?). And yet, when we revisit that philosophy of Kaladin idolizing Shallan's dangerous coping mechanisms on the ship in Oathbringer, we see that as they tread that path once more, the conversation collapses as Shallan hears Kaladin tell her that he wishes he had what she considers to be her greatest flaw, and we see that Kaladin doesn't understand the true depths of how this has damaged her and how insidious her repression is. He buys the lie, he sees the smiles and the laughter and thinks its genuine. And of course he would. Kaladin wishes he could smile and laugh and thinks anything that allows Shallan to do that is a good thing, when both Shallan and the audience know it is exactly the opposite.

So here is how I personally read that scene: Neither Shallan nor Kaladin are ready for a serious relationship - with each other or with anyone else. They are both looking for ways to heal and hope to find someone to heal them rather than heal themselves. I think this misunderstanding is necessary for their relationship to proceed because they need to be well as individuals before they can be part of healthy relationships - again either with each other or other people. I also think Kaladin sees something he needs to see here a bit - he is still struggling from the effects of the fight at the palace where his own ability to lie to himself has been stripped from him. Of course he envies that ability in Shallan. He doesn't know the damage she has done to herself because she has never explained the extent of her self-deception to him. It isn't really fair for her to blame him. But equally, it wouldn't be fair for him to expect her to understand his perspective. This personally strikes me as the classic "misunderstanding" that occurs about 2/3rd of the way through a standard romantic arc - it is just that in the trope that misunderstanding causes anger and resentment rather than the more benign emotions we see from Kaladin and Shallan - but once the misunderstanding is over, there is still opportunity.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

We've seen with Renarin that Adolin doesn't need to fully understand what is happening to be supportive. He may not always know what's going on with Renarin or what Renarin's thinking, but he's still powerfully supportive and positive. I think we'll see this in his relationship with Shallan as well. Does Adolin know, totally, what's happening with Shallan's personas? Probably not. He might not ever fully understand, but as with his brother, he's supportive of her and is ready to help in whatever way he can.

No-one here has said Adolin isn't or won't be supportive. The problem is how he is being supportive. By treating Shallan's identities as separate rather than facets of the whole he is likely to reinforce her separation rather than help her reintegrate. It isn't his fault if that is the case, but that doesn't mean that those actions aren't responsible for her not reintegrating. Given the timeskip, I anticiptae that Shallan will be in no better a place (from an identity perspective) at the beginning of SA4 than she is at the end of WoR and I firmly believe that she is not in a good place. She is a mess, and whilst she my have taken the first step, I don't think she'll take the next during the time-skip. That means Adolin isn't actually helping - no matter his intentions. On top of that, how is she good for Adolin? It isn't fair that he is the one that has to do all the work in the relationship and currently I think that is the direction they are heading in.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Sidenote that this theme of true understanding not being necessary for true love is one that Brandon has touched on before, but I think we'll see it in a greater depth. I'll avoid spoilers, but Vin falls into a similar crux of worrying that the person she loves doesn't understand her and therefore thinks that another person who does understand her better is a better match, yet in the end, that's not the case. I think this is a really mature view of relationships, because, deep down, no one will ever truly 100% understand anyone else, even if you're a perfect match. There will always be aspects of even the healthiest romantic couples in that they don't have a perfect understanding of one another, hence why relationships take work and need open communication to be successful, because this is a difficulty that all people must confront, the deep and incomprehensible uniqueness of all. 

I think Vin and Elend are going to be a good parallel for Shallan and Adolin. They might be endgame, but even after Vin and Elend entered a true committed relationship, they still had personal difficulties that they had to work through. It didn't mean that they were wrong for one another, but they still had those conflicts as plot points. I think the "love triangle" side of this relationship is done for. Kaladin accepts that he never really loved Shallan. Shallan chooses Adolin and marries him. Everyone is satisfied on that front and the entanglement of that subplot is resolved and concluded.

Interestingly I think Vin and Elend are a better reflection of Shallan/Kaladin than Adolin/Shallan. Spoliers Mistborn Era 1:

Spoiler
  • Vin and Elend start with initial conflict - she lies to him about her name and position
  • They are from very different social circles
  • The "3rd" person (Zane) is never given the amount of page time or foreshadowing as Elend is 
  • Elend is not a ladies man, he seems to have only had one serious relationship (Shan) 
  • Elend despises court politics
  • Elend looks for a way to make the lives of lower classes better
  • He becomes King because it was necessary, even though he would prefer to stay as a scholar.
  • Elend is learned and keen to learn. He is curious about a number of subjects.

Anyway, my point is that we can see what we want to see - there will be parallels between any completed romantic arc written by the same author. I just don't think Shallan is done with her romantic plot yet. Indeed, she may still choose Adolin, but I hope she does so for some better reasons than those she gives - they are so generic, yet Adolin has some wonderful traits that ought to be acknowledged by her.

7 hours ago, aemetha said:

On the romance angle. I'm really not sold on any of the romances of the story. In many cases they come across to me as superficial, lacking the nuance of real relationships. As far as having an expectation of where Shallan would go, well, frankly I would have expected her to sleep with both of them, and then get upset that neither called her back. She's a teenage girl with even greater self-identity and self-worth problems than the norm. Sorry if that seems like a generalisation to anyone, I'm not saying it flippantly, but that particular generalisation of teen behaviour is based on reality.

Ha, if she were given half a chance I think she would be! She is protected by both Adolin's and Kaladin's sense of propriety - neither of them push for more physicality, which is perhaps the least realistic thing in the whole fiasco ;) They are superficial relationships - because they are all so young and they all haven't known each other that long. Real relationships take time, and ideally that time shouldn't be spent in almost constant stress.  

7 hours ago, aemetha said:

I can't really say I would want any of the pairings so much as all of the pairings. I don't think marrying at this age is helpful to them. I think having failed relationships is a prerequisite to having a stable relationship that isn't maintained solely by obligation. Adolin is probably reasonably well adjusted (probably a step too far actually) in this regard, but Shallan has only had one failed relationship, and one party was never committed to that relationship to begin with. In other words, I'd be okay with them hooking up with each other interchangeably, not because I voyeuristic-ally enjoy the idea of casual relationships, but because that's how people learn to have committed relationships - by learning from mistakes made in casual relationships.

I agree. I am not sure that BS shares the opinion, but he got married in his 30s so presumably he doesn't feel that teenagers are always the best at relationships. Indeed, he says so when analysing Romeo and Juliet - he states (rightly in y opinion) that the greatest tragedy of that play is that they just needed time to get over the extremity of their emotions and then get on with life but they ended up doing stupid things because they couldn't see the wood for the trees. Pretty sure someone posted that video in this thread, but can't find it  - someone help please?

6 hours ago, Ailvara said:

Just give cents from me. If we assume, that Shallan is relatively herself at the end of OB, she seems well paired with Adolin. But if we assume, that 2/3 of her are not completely on board with all this, it's only Shallan persona who is happy and it doesn't look very well for post-reintegration future. So I don't know, if that's the key deal-breaker here, is anyone here who doesn't fall into these lines of thinking?

Indeed, I think you are right, although to be honest if the Shallan persona is enough of the "real" Shallan then it is Adolin I feel sorry for because she is actually not a very nice person - she comes off as incredibly selfish at times. I wouldn't want Shallan as she is to be with Kaladin (as I said in my very first post on this forum) because of this. 

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

Adolin and Shallan's relationship is also very clichéd, and by Sanderson's standards, it's actually even more clichéd than the Shalladin relationship. How many times has Sanderson carried out the "arranged marriage surprisingly working out" - cliché before? Practically half of his Cosmere books have romance subplots like that.

I wouldn't necessarily say more cliched - there are so many romantic plots out there it would likely be impossible to write the story without some cliche. The issue is that the Shadolin cliche's speak to the Disney happy ending of the fairytale prince and princess - and we have 2 more books to the arc. So he could subvert the trope without breaking them up by adding appropriate conflicts, but it still loses all the foreshadowing for Shalladin. 

5 hours ago, Awesomness said:

No one wanted them to end up together at the end of OB (I personally am really happy with Kaladin being single right now) and we all acknowledge the issues that relationship may have. Besides, Adolin is universally liked and we are not the exception. 

So I'm largely meh about Adolin - but mainly because I find the magic using characters more interesting. I don't dislike him per se, but I don't get why so many people think he's amazing. He's alright. I'd probably like him in real life but I don't read fantasy books to read "normal". 

Quote

From Chaos - who I won't ping as he said he didn't want to stay on the thread:

I personally think Shallan doesn't understand Kaladin's mental issues, and Kaladin doesn't understand Shallan's mental issues. I'm someone with depression, and I've been in a relationship where neither people really can help each other and can't understand each other's mental issues. It's massively destructive for a relationship and both member's mental states.

Adolin, on the other hand, actually has the emotional capacity to support Shallan this way. I don't agree with the notion that it's "enabling". I think Adolin will immediately want to work to try and bring Shallan's personas back into herself. That feels like the logical progression. But first Adolin needs to get Shallan to open up about such things

 

I also have depression, but I am lucky enough to have a very supportive SO. I am very sorry you had a bad experience in a relationship as a result of your depression. My own experience is quite different however. I got depression about 3 years after meeting/starting dating my SO. We had lived together for about 6months  before I moved to another country for school and then we lived apart - even in different timezones. About a year after that I got depressed (unrelated to our separation) and he moved over to support me. 

I don't think he understands my problem. He is a very level person, very much a type B personality who handles stress exceptionally well, and he doesn't get extremes of emotion. I am very much the opposite and more type A - to the extent of being aggressive in response to stress/confrontation. That being said, he is still able to support me just by being there. He has read around the subject so knows the right things to do and say, but more importantly, he knows not to assume that my bad days are anything to do with him - they aren't. That takes the pressure off him in a way because he doesn't feel at fault when I am low. He also therefore never makes me feel guilty for my bad days. 

As I said, I know I am very lucky. My point here was not to say that my relationship is the norm, but more to explain that whilst a serious problem can cause rifts in relationships, it doesn't have to - it depends on how much you put on the other person to help you. I don't expect my SO to help me directly - I have to fight my own mental health on my own. He can just do things like make sure I eat and sleep at decent times, and remember to pay the bills and things so I don't have quite so many stresses on bad days. I think that Shallan is expecting Adolin to help her heal. That isn't fair - he doesn't know what he's doing for one thing, and secondly, he shouldn't have to be her therapist and her husband. He also shouldn't expect it of himself - what happens when he is doing everything he can as well as he can do it? Does that mean she isn't trying hard enough or that he has failed? Of course it doesn't - but it is how most people would perceive the situation. 

With regards to enabling - the logical progression of someone with a problem who continues to do the thing that caused the problem is for that problem to get worse, not better. Adolin is allowing Shallan to hide within her alts. It isn't helpful. He needs to help her handle her fears in more helpful ways. If he does this, I am happy for them to grow and continue together (well aside from the foreshadowing bits, but thats another issue). The problem is that the evidence is that he is helping her solidify her alts.

4 hours ago, DeployParachute said:

If I weren't passing my evening being ill, I would take some time to give some rebuttals, and ask some questions. But alas, I will save those for later in the week.

Awww - get well soon! Looking forward to your points :) 

3 hours ago, maxal said:

I disagree with your interpretation of those scenes: Adolin never had to constrained himself from publicly murdering Sadeas. He had to be constrained to either punch him in the face or challenge him in a duel which he can't because he doesn't have the right rank.

I think that if you have to restrain yourself from punching someone it is possible that you would go too far in the heat of the moment. I don't think Adolin had planned to kill Sadeas in the moments before he snapped, but he wouldn't have snapped had there been witnesses as there had been previously. It was the lack of witnesses that freed him to act.

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Are you therefore going to hang over Adolin the fact he isn't Jasnah? Because he did not cold-headily reflect on the why he ought to murder Sadeas, because he did not rationalize it within fifty layers of depth, then his actions are immoral?

*sigh* I would also argue that Jasnah's actions in Kharbranth were immoral personally. She went out of her way to put herself in danger in order to kill those thieves. She even acted before a crime had been committed against her. I doubt she knew for certain that those particular men were definitely the people who had robbed and murdered in the same place before. Sure, they probably were. but what if they weren't? 

There is a reason that we have the judge and jury separated in the legal system. The jury has limited say over the sentencing, and the judge has limited say over the verdict. That means they can balance their power out. In both Jasnah and Adolin's cases I would argue that they both acted as judge, jury and executioner. This is illegal because the law should not be held by one single person (you cn probably guess my opinions on Nale) because one person can make a mistake too easily - we can be blinded by our own prejudices. It is also immoral because if you make a mistake then you have condemned, sentenced and executed an innocent person. Whether or not Sadeas is a terrible human being is irrelevant - by ignoring the normal legal recourse, Adolin has undermined the very laws he is supposed to be upholding - and worse, not only would he do it again, but by hiding those actions (which seems the likely outcome by SA4) he brings Dalinar down with him by breaking those laws. Thus Sadeas' death could still have huge ramifications for the Kholin Princedom, and thus Alethkar and Roshar as a whole. 

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Of course, once it is done, Adolin thinks some more on it and finds his initial reaction was the right one and, as such, moves on. I never read Adolin as loving to inflict pain to Sadeas, he was just glad he was dead and, afterwards, he seemed more in shock than gleefully happy.

 

He was amused - it's right there in the text. That is sadistic - definition:

 
Quote

 

adjective
1. pertaining to or characterized by sadism; deriving pleasure or sexual gratification from extreme cruelty:

 

 
 
Pretty sure choking someone to death is extreme cruelty. 
3 hours ago, maxal said:

Those characters also had other means to react to the events, but they choose murder. Shallan needed not to strangulate her father after poisoning him. She wanted him gone too. She doesn't get to be excused because the individual she killed was her father, Sadeas was just as terrible.

I did an analysis above on these- I would agree that Shallan did commit murder on her father but that she displayed more guilt in that scene than Adolin has done since Sadeas' death. Remember by the time we first see Shallan in tWoK her father has been dead some time and she has had time to reconcile herself to it and yet she is still burying her guilt - indeed it is the 1st truth we see her speak (I am a murderer is not the same as I killed my father).

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Also, anger is not evil, anger is a natural reaction when faced with injustice: Adolin thinks Sadeas is not fair to his father by falling to respect the great man Dalinar is. Of course, Adolin has an embellished vision of his father one filled with unicorns and rainbow pissing angels, but it does not change the fact he cannot stand people trying to hurt his daddy. It is one of the argument I have often made in the past, how the Adolin/Dalinar relationship was reversed in having the son care for the father as the father should be caring for the son.

I am not sure I agree with this. Remember it is Renarin that hugs Dalinar when he hits rock bottom in the flashback, not Adolin. Dalinar takes the lead when fighting Szeth ih the first attempt Szeth makes on his life. Dalinar doesn't put Adolin in the way of things when there is a better option (eg end of OB). But he does trust Adolin to manage when there isn't a better option. I think Adolin wants to feel useful and so acts like he is caring for Dalinar, but he doesn't need to and Dalinar in current events never suggests to Adolin that he needs or wants Adolin to take that role with him. 

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Brandon will never directly say he has no plans for Adolin nor will he ever directly say he plans not to give him character development. He has however stated how Adolin wasn't a protagonist nor a character around whom the story was orchestrated and, as such, wasn't on par with the other characters.

Um there is this WoB which directly says he does have development

Quote

Adolin is a happy surprise and works exactly because he doesn't need to be at the forefront, even after I boosted his role. With Adolin, what you see is really what you get, which is refreshing in the books--but it also means I don't need huge numbers of pages to characterize him, delve into his backstory, etc. He works as a side character who gives more to the story than he demands pages to fullfill that giving, if that makes sense. Renarin is more like a pandora's box. Open him up, and we're committed to a LOT of pages. (Good pages, but that was the problem with TWOK Prime--everyone was demanding so many pages, from Renarn, to Jasnah, to Kaladin, to Taln, that none of their stories could progress.)

Adolin has basically always had the same personality, from TWOK Prime, through the original draft of the published TWOK, to the revision. The changes to making him more strong a viewpoint character were very natural, and he has remained basically the same person all along--just with an increased role in the story, and more development because of it.

I do discovery write character, usually, as a method of keeping the books from becoming slaves to their outlines. This means that Adolin has gone some new directions, but it's been a growth from the person he was in TWOK Prime. (Which you'll be able to see when I release it, sometime in the hopefully not distant future.)

That means that there is potential for growth throughout Adolin's time in the books. He has added a bigger role for Adolin and it is likely that as a result Adolin will get more development because he will be useful as a side character in multiple ways (discovery writing of a charcter allows this even more).

3 hours ago, maxal said:

I am disagreeing this has been a constant theme within the series which is why I never thought Brandon would skip it before, but he did. As such, I have come to think Adolin is held to different standard then the other characters. The murder, while being written in a very climatic way, is not yielding any internal consequences nor do I think the author will make the character, one year after the events, suddenly having a living crisis over it.

I just don't see your evidence (sorry) - I mean the evidence is that BS picks up a theme (no matter the book) and runs with it. To a greater or lesser extent (depending on the amount of page time per character) all characters follow the themes that their story is written around. Why, in all the books, would Adolin be the exception to this? It doesn't have to come from within. It can come from an external source and there are good in world reasons to expect that to happen, but you aren't willing to entertain that thought.

3 hours ago, maxal said:

I sincerely do not believe the justified hate Adolin had towards Sadeas will open a never ending flow of hatred towards humanity. It is just as it is. There were no emotions written into his character because he has none which really matters.

I personally don't think that is how Odium works. I think he nudges events at most. Amaram was responsible for his actions. Moash is responisble for his. All Odium does is allow a void to form in place of the emotions that should be present. Then humans are quite capable of filling that void with hate on their own. I suspect he inspires hate in place of other emotions, but I think he first takes those emotions. And I don't think it has to be done consciously. We know Lin Davar was acting under Odium's influence, but it is unclear how much, how long, and indeed how it started. 

As I've said, I worry that Adolin will go dark on us, because of the murder, but I don't think he has to. I think he still has a choice. Hopefully he'll choose well.

3 hours ago, maxal said:

We already have dark characters come back to the light. I argue we need not another one.

I agree. I actually don't mind Adolin not going dark. I just worry that he could. I believe if he goes dark, then he may not be redeemed.

3 hours ago, maxal said:

Mind, a lot of readers also like Renarin, but it seemed to me Brandon's comments were a tad diminishing towards the numerous readers who love Adolin: he basically said Renarin was the best character which could be interpreted as readers liking Adolin got it wrong. I may be reading too much into it, but I have always found this WoB hurtful. Also, I relate a lot to Adolin, so for the author to say Adolin is not interesting, I felt he was saying: "You are not interesting" which isn't what he meant, but it was hard not to read it this way

Not sure which WoB you mean? The one I quoted above calls Renarin a Pandora's Box which is a bit of a kick in the teeth to Renarin imo. I mean, I expect Renarin is more interesting to write because he has more of the main arc attached to him. I mean Odium can't see him. Which is pretty amazing. So that means Renarin has all kinds of cool stuff to write about - including his future sight. Adolin, being more ordinary is more ordinary to write. That doesn't make him a lesser person, but BS is a fantasy writer so he wants to write about magic etc. I suspect if the Maya arc goes the way that is hinted at, then he will enjoy writing Adolin more.

3 hours ago, SLNC said:

To Adolin: Shallan opened up to him... And Adolin takes the harmful approach of seeing the personas as different persons, which they aren't. This further alieniates the Shallan persona from Veil and Radiant, which in turn makes reintegration more difficult. I don't see reintegration following logically. Adolin works against that and Shallan is more than happy to follow.

Agreed. Indeed they both look to each other to hide from things they don't want to confront (Adolin looks to Shallan when he is resisting being king and she nods, and he is allowing her to keep her alts)

3 hours ago, aemetha said:

I interpreted it much the same way, up until he snapped. After he snapped I revised my opinion. I could previously have seen him punching him, because, well, Sadeas deserved it, and it wasn't particularly world changing, though perhaps politically inconvenient. After he snapped and murdered Sadeas though, I can't help but wonder, had there not been others there to stop him, would he have stopped at a punch?

I very much agree. It happens surprisngly frequently that people kill others accidentally because they lost control. Note that control is the most important thing for Dalinar - indeed Sadeas comments that Adolin and Dalinar are alike but that Adolin controls himself less securely. Adolin has the definite possibility of going a bit Dalinar. I just hope there is enough Evi in there to stop it going full Blackthorn

3 hours ago, aemetha said:

Not at all. Jasnah's act was similarly immoral, though it was legal by a technicality. It comes down to selfishness versus selflessness. If he had rationally thought it through and selflessly killed Sadeas for the purpose of the safety and well being of those he cared about, I would be okay with that being considered a moral act, if an illegal one. What was described in the book however was a selfish act of killing him in order to satisfy his hatred for the man, and therefore an immoral act. Immorality being the harm of another in order for personal gain.

It's not a case for me of not being able to assign the justifications you have given to the act, they are perfectly valid justifications. I would even be okay with him feeling okay on-balance with the act. What I have difficulty accepting in terms of contrition is his not considering that the circumstances of the act were not benevolent. Perhaps he shouldn't regret the killing of Sadeas, but he should regret the way he killed Sadeas and its immediate motivations.

So I take a slightly different view (see above) but I take your final point and agree that Adolin has either not chosen to explore his motivations thoroughly, or has already decided they were good and that is why he says he would do it again. 

3 hours ago, aemetha said:

I wouldn't hang him for it in any case. I don't hate Adolin, but I do dislike that I personally don't believe he has been honest with himself about it. I think he has unaddressed impulse control problems, because he often makes snap judgements without considering the implications. I dislike the suggestion that he is portrayed as perfect, I don't think his background or disposition justifies that.

So I think him being portrayed as perfect is a feature (not a bug) of us getting views of him from other people who are inclined to think well of him. He feels more real in his own PoVs. 

3 hours ago, aemetha said:

There is no "good and moral" killing, it's always a tragedy. I just want to see the character reflect on the incident and regret the killing of Sadeas, if not the death of Sadeas?

This. So much this.

17 minutes ago, SLNC said:

On one hand, I agree. Depression is quite damaging on a relationship and working together is not the same as being in a deep committed relationship. On the other hand, I don't see Adolin and Shallan in a deep and committed relationship either. Yes, they are married now, which is commitment - but only on paper. I do think Adolin is committed, but I'm not so sure about Shallan. What bugs me extremely is, that I don't really get any feeling of depth in their relationship. It is all about feeling silly and giddy and whispering sweet nothings, while everybody around them is getting annoyed. It is a superficial as it gets. So much so, that I'd expect it to see in a teen movie. I mean, what is Shallan's thought about the wedding? She is just thinking about finally having sex with Adolin, which is understandable, but not really a show of deep feelings. Adolin is a bit better in that regard, but I don't see much in the depth department in his PoVs either, but I'll blame that on the lack of them in general

I'd also blame it on the fact that Adolin's PoVs are written in the moment largely. If he does spend hours in self-reflection we never see it.  I agree though, that I don't see depth. 

I don't see depth between Kaladin and Shallan either, though I see more potential for depth in their case. Adolin has had a tendency to prefer "vapid" young women (according to Dalinar) and I am not sure we've seen enough of him value Shallan's more intellectual side. He seems largely uninterested in the scholarship - more interested in the art itself.

 

OK, several long posts have come in since I started this and rather than try to catch up like I normally would, I think I need to post this and take a break. I'll comment again later if I have the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

I don't see depth between Kaladin and Shallan either, though I see more potential for depth in their case.

Oh, I agree, but Shallan/Adolin seems to be the canon now, so I was focusing on that.

That said, I already see more depth between Shallan and Kaladin, not much, but a bit more, just by the connections they have.

Edited by SLNC
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My idea on how the ships will be reconciled:

One of the key arguments against Shalladin is that they are too broken for each other. While this is true, what are the chances, that this will remain the case until the end of the story? And what will remain to stand in the way of this relationship once they figure out their issues? Except for Adolin - but if he's not going dark, I can't help but see him as a natural choice to kill off, as it would both be heartbreaking and not impede the story. I've said it before and I'll repeat again: somebody has to die before this is all over, and there are few more likely candidates than Adolin. 

Another thing is, that the triangle got loads of space with a relatively debatable resolution - compare it to Wax and Marasi, or Vin and Zane, the reasoning was clearer, quicker and more definite. Just the existence of this topic is a proof, that it wasn't cut clearly enough, and we've seen, that Brandon is capable of doing that when he wants to. 

Brandon also said, that he wanted to show how Shallan could love two men. This is almost a deal-breaker for me. Shallan doesn't love Kaladin in OB. So, what I think this leads us to, is that it's something we are yet to see, and she will love them both, but not necessarily at the same time.

Putting it all together, what I think is happening here, is that the person Shallan is now is rightly paired with Adolin and will remain so for a time. We can argue if they'll destroy each other, or help each other grow, but both cases would probably be good for the story. And the person that Shallan may, and will eventually become, would be well matched with a similarly progressed Kaladin later in the story. Once they are both more capable of sustaining a relationship and once the literary potential between her and Adolin burns out, I think we'll see a story of a woman who was in two meaningful relationships in her life, each of them being what she needed at a particular stage of her development. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

*cracks knuckles* First up @Vissy

Eek, don't hurt me. I'm no fighter.

Admittedly, I've skimmed. In my defense, there's well over a thousand posts here. But from following, it seemed like general gist was Shalladin shippers trying to explain why they don't like Adolin, but starting to lean into it a little too far and drawing the ire of Adolin defenders. Threads like the one below seem to be an offshoot of some of this discussion, and it's a reading of Adolin that I think is exaggerated, both those who are arguing that he's morally depraved and those arguing that he's too perfect.

Reading the last three pages alone probably would've saved you the annoyance, and I encourage you to do so! 

All in all, I probably phrased the introduction on that section badly, it was more I wanted to outline the key points of how I interpret Adolin and let them stand as their own contrast. If someone disagrees with that interpretation, then that's a good contrast to have. If we agree, then that's cool. If I've misinterpreted some of the stances and we're actually all pretty much on the same page, double bonus points.

Well, I don't just dislike Shallan and Kaladin for nothing. There's reasons why I didn't like those scenes at the time, because I was afraid they were leading to a conclusion that Shallan and Kaladin were meant to be together and that felt like a disservice to both of them from my point of view. I always want to be upfront about my biases, which is why I said that I've been against Shallan/Kaladin for a while, and then went on to offer reasons why.

I don't think that's hypocritical and I didn't write the post to disparage Kaladin/Shallan shippers, but simply to offer my perspective on why I felt the ending was both satisfactory and conclusive. I love when people ship other things, but this just happens to be one that I personally don't like for myself. And I think by the end of Oathbringer, the text has ruled against it. If you want to keep writing Kaladin and Shallan AUs and shipping them and exploring all their potential as a couple, go for it. Death of the author. Forget canon. All that good stuff.

Well, you're free to believe that. As I (think I) said before, I like the Shallan / Adolin pairing. I don't like how Shallan chose Adolin, however, and I don't think that she's ready for a stable relationship yet. Personally, I've read a lot of great analysis on this thread that seems to indicate the opposite of what you're saying. The romance subplot isn't even close to being over yet, I think.

As for the arranged marriages "cliche," while I do admit that it's now a solid trend in Brandon's works, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a cliche. It's a trope that Brandon's fond of that he might do well to try avoiding in the future, but a cliche is something systemic within literature as a whole. They're the stories that have been told a million times, a routine that an audience is going to lose interest in if it doesn't bring something new to the table because they've seen it all before and it's predictable. 

Yes, I agree. There's also the entire Disney prince/princess cliché between Shallan and Adolin, if you want more examples of how talking about clichés doesn't help your case here. Then again, I'm not really against clichés in general if they're executed well.

If Kaladin/Shallan wasn't a subversion, it'd have been that for me. But I believe it is a subversion, which makes it new and interesting and a cool new take on an old formula. Brandon falling into literary cliches is something that I would have found much more annoying than Brandon showing some of his own old habits. 

It's an interesting take on the scenes in question, though I disagree entirely. I also don't really see the issue with using literary clichés. The only part that matters is the execution, and - to repeat myself - there's a reason why they're clichés. It's because they work.

I think Chaos brought up some good points about Kaladin's depression, but that's one of the hearts of the issue. Kaladin and Shallan are both traumatized in very different ways and they're both dealing with their trauma in different ways. From where I stand, both of them need a partner who can be supportive and who naturally helps them with their issues. Relationships aren't a cure for trauma or mental illness, but a healthy relationship helps strengthen a person rather than causing added stress. I don't think Kaladin and Shallan are ready to be that for each other yet.

Yes, we're agreed. Kaladin / Shallan is not going to happen soon, if it will happen. I think everyone here is on board with that - we're talking Book 5 material, with some set-up in Book 4 perhaps.

The scene on the ship is extremely telling. Kaladin feels too much, he remembers his failures and he takes each of them on as his personal responsibility. After the scene in the palace, he almost shuts down and goes catatonic because he can't reconcile seeing two groups of his friends slaughter each other and his closest friend betray him and murder the man that Kaladin was supposed to protect. Kaladin doesn't function well when faced with those things and though he's gotten good at forcing himself through it, it's an immense source of pain for him. He's also got depression and seasonal affective disorder, neither of which Shallan seems ready to help with.

Of course he doesn't understand her - unlike Adolin, Kaladin hasn't had it explained to him just how splintered her psyche is. On the contrary, though, Shallan's mere presence lifts Kaladin's moods. She clearly helps.

Mostly because she's got her own issues, which are on full display through Oathbringer and Words of Radiance so I won't go into the detail there. However, the last thing she needs is someone like Kaladin coming along and telling her how good it is that she's able to repress all of that and that she should keep smiling and laughing and not facing it, just because that's what he wishes he was able to do. 

This would apply to Adolin as well. Shallan needs to work through her issues before she's ready for a stable relationship.

We've also got the classism, Shallan's lack of empathy for Kaladin's suffering, Kaladin's pain and past betrayals making him defensively hateful towards lighteyes. Their conversations in the chasms reveal that rather than actually listening to what Kaladin is telling her about the systematic abuse within the nahn and dahn systems, she talks circles around him wittily until Kaladin gets frustrated with her and just gives up. He'll snipe back at her, but at that point he's mad that she's not listening and just keeps taking pot shots at him. Not a great way to work through all of that.

All the more material for future conversations between them, isn't it? ;) The classism angle is interesting. I'd like to ask that question from Sanderson at some point. 

Adolin isn't broken the way the other two are, and I think that's why he's good for both of them. He keeps Kaladin talking when Kaladin starts to succumb to despair, and he helps keep Shallan grounded when she's losing track of herself. Not to say that Adolin is perfect and doesn't have his own issues that he needs help with, but overall he's more stable than Kaladin is right now. Nothing wrong with that, but in my opinion, it makes him a better fit.

Grounded, or makes her suppress parts of herself that he doesn't like?

And, as for the cliche set up of their relationship, I can run it through if you like.

1. Premise: main dude character and main girl character plus compulsive heterosexuality means they must be the two who get together, right?
2. Hilarious meet-cute gone wrong where they both get off on the wrong foot. She lies to him and humiliates him and it's good fun but, ahaha, it's going to come back to bite her, how quaint!
3. Bickering when they meet up again, which obviously means flirting and sexual tension. Look how much they hate each other... but doesn't that mean they're meant to be?? Opposites attract, right? And he's that forbidden romance option just when she thought she'd found a dream guy.
4. Trapped together in a bad situation and now they are -gasp- forced to learn to work together despite how much they loathe each other. Except... maybe... they're more alike than they thought... maybe there is a... connection that they've both been denying.
5. Bonding through danger and cuddling to keep warm and confessing their deepest darkest secrets to one another in the cold, wet depths of the storm. 
6. Return to live as normal, and though they try to pretend that nothing happened, they just can't stop thinking of each other and how attracted they are, of course at the most dramatically amusing times.

I admit I laughed. But I didn't see their relationship like that at all. I guess you just hate Shalladin that much, then. Are you saying that the setup between Shallan and Adolin isn't extremely clichéd as well, though? 

I mean... I'm sorry but that's just so by the book. And not only is it mind-numbingly rote, there was also all those unhealthy trauma issues that seemed to be getting painted over by this beige romcom nightmare. I swear I can list a dozen romcoms where one or multiple of those plot points happen. I just watched a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode in which the main character got trapped in an elevator with her sexy boss and ended up kissing him, then feeling horribly guilty because she was already engaged to the man of her dreams that she'd chased after for years. The whole meeting could be the start of some plucky chick flick where the snappy and sarcastic intern wittily gets the upperhand on some stranger who gets on her bad side on the subway only to show up to her first day of work and realize he's actually her boss! How embarrassing and funny, right?

I actually find a set-up like that quite charming. Once again, it's all about the execution. I think it's a rather trite amusement to focus on the amount of clichés in a book and judge its quality based on how low that number is. 

Sure. Except we've seen it a million times. And if you can't spin it, it's just bad writing. I got worried that there was no spin, but there was. They weren't meant to be together, they never were, and those scenes only pretended to paint in beige, when there was really secret ultraviolet designs beneath all along that came to light when we got to the end.

No, it certainly isn't. You seem to be working under the illusion that clichés are just bad writing, period. That is simply untrue. 

Alright, moving on.

Ah, she had though. Shallan gets all aflutter over Kaladin after he rescues her in the chasms, just as he gets all twitterpated over her. It's especially egregious because they do it right after each other too.

You're moving the goalposts. As I recall, you were talking about the boot-taking scene, not the chasm scene, in the quote that I replied to.

Ugh, I'm sorry but those two quotes, one chapter after another? After slogging through all of the contrived set up and being sick of this plot, I was rolling my eyes at this point. Shallan even does the thing where she starts distractedly daydreaming about how sexy Kaladin is while she's trying to convince herself that she doesn't think he's sexy, all the while missing what Adolin said. Definitely never seen a character do that before ever.

Aside from noting that you seem awfully aggressive towards that particular subplot, I don't have anything to add to this tirade.

My one solace was that Kaladin and Adolin didn't hate each other, but by the end of WoR this whole love triangle nonsense was just budding and I was terribly worried that there was going to be a stupid rivalry over Shallan between the two of them. Again, I shouldn't doubt Brandon, and he dodged that pot hole. He couldn't break up my boys like that.

Shallan's feelings for Kaladin are "whoa that's hot" which... relatable. She shoved that off into Veil because it was inconvenient and she didn't want to deal with it, but at the end of the day, Shallan feels a physical attraction to Kaladin, but not much more. I particularly liked the comment about appreciating a nice piece of art without wanting to pull it off the hook and get intimate with it. Veil certainly didn't seem to be interested in anything resembling commitment with Kaladin, and neither did Shallan.

"whoa that's hot" is exactly how I'd describe Shallan's feelings for Adolin, honestly. It's quite shallow both ways. It's almost as if she doesn't really have deep feelings for either just yet and needs to resolve her inner issues before finishing the romantic subplot becomes a thing...

Shallan acknowledges that her feelings toward Kaladin weren't actually romantic when she's reassuring Adolin at the end. And Kaladin admits that he too, was not in love with her, though he was confused about that for a while. That seems to me pretty well wrapped up in a nice plot bow.

We read that scene very differently. To me, it sounded like she was trying to convince herself. Kaladin's scene, on the other hand, read more like resignation to me. 

The one that Adolin claims is the "real" her is the real her. Shallan might believe that the only version of herself that's real is the broken waif who can't even cry anymore, but this too, is a lie that she tells herself. Default Shallan is Shallan. She's how she imagines herself if she hadn't been through trauma, if she hadn't been broken. AKA, that version is what Shallan needs to be working toward to be healthy. She needs to work to become okay with herself to the point where she can be the optimistic, bubbly scholar with a ready quip and a knack for espionage without having to deny the things that she endured. She can accept what happened to her without letting it define and overwhelm her.

How could it be the "real" her when parts of her personality are completely taken away by her two other personas? Is the "real" Shallan an unconfident, weak husk that just draws strange shapes in the grips of artistic mania? Veil personifies her confidence. Radiant personifies her inner strength and poise. Shallan is her core, perhaps, but none of them is the "real" Shallan. They are all real, together.

Veil and Radiant do carry aspects of Shallan but they're also very much an escape. They're who Shallan becomes when she doesn't want to deal with being herself. She isn't actually Veil and she isn't actually Radiant. In a healthy state, I think we'll see Shallan able to shift to those mindsets when she needs to be able to look at a situation in a different way, but not fleeing into them as a mode of escape. 

If that were the case, she would already have a "healthy" mindset during OB. She can switch between them at will when she needs a change in character, after all. No, I think that the only way forward for her is reintegration of her different personas. I mean, it is so obviously lined up as a plot point for her, the shattering of her psyche into different parts, and it's constantly emphasized how that is a big problem for her. 

Adolin's able to focus on the Shallan that's Shallan, and that's the one he wants to encourage and bring out. I don't think that means he's suppressing other parts of her personality. But he doesn't think it's good for them to control her. (Which, he's right, it's not good.)

I think that's a mistake. As previously stated, I don't think there is a "real" Shallan out of the three personas - they're all real. To suppress others for the sake of the one that Adolin knows and prefers is short-sighted and ultimately destructive for her personality, in my opinion. I mean, staying splintered like that means forever struggling with different personas, who prefer different people, etc etc etc... it's not a resolution to Shallan's character arc at all to have her personas stay as they are. Reintegration seems like the only viable path.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ookla the Feathered thank you for continuing to respond to this thread!  I know it can be not pleasant posting on a thread where you know most posters are going to disagree with your arguments, so I'm glad you decided to brave it and step into the fray!

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

I'll admit, I usually find subversions more interesting than playing a trope straight pretty much 100% of the time. I think I maybe implied something I didn't mean to with the phrase "long-con." I mostly meant it in terms of a long scope, but I think you're right to bring up the "con" aspect of that kind of thing, in that there were readers who believed the setup was legitimate and felt robbed of a payoff they felt was promised and not delivered upon.

I'm going to go into a bit what I see as a "good con" and a "bad con", as that's something I don't think I expressed too well in my first post.  To illustrate this, I'm going to spoiler something from Mistborn Era 1 which I think is a real-book example of where I'm going with this: it is good for a writer to misdirect his reader, but it is not good for a writer to mislead his reader.  So, back to that point after the Mistborn example:

Spoiler

I'm going to take Vin's earring being a hemalurgic spike as the example.  We are introduced to this as Vin's only heirloom from her family which is very special to her; it is "good".  (I'm simplifying this to "good" vs "bad" for the sake of length.)  As the trilogy progresses, we get hints that the earring is "bad" and the earring itself keeps coming up.  Neither Vin nor anyone else ever tells us the earring is "bad", in fact it's the opposite - Vin continues to have a positive association with the earring.  In the end, of course it's "bad" and tied to Ruin and a huge part of how Vin can even beat Ruin (by taking it out and taking up the mists.)  Anyway, the fact Vin is telling us (through actions, thoughts and sometimes even things she says to others) that the earring is "good" is what I call misdirection; the author is telling us one thing explicitly while the opposite is actually the truth.  Now, let's imagine the a scenario where at the end of HoA (with the same build-up throughout the book) the earring means nothing - it's never been anything but a family heirloom, it's still "good".  I call this misleading the reader, because the author kept emphasizing this earring and leaving hints and in the end it was.... nothing.

So to summarize, misdirection is when an author is telling you one thing explicitly - be it that a person is good, or a relationship is happy and loving, or that humans are defending Roshar against the Parshendi invaders - but that the opposite (or some form of the opposite) is actually true.  This is how you get a plot twist; you flip what you're explicitly telling your readers as true upon its head.  Now, how do you lead a reader to that plot twist?  Ideally it shouldn't come out of nowhere; the author leads the reader to the "twist" by laying subtle literary clues, often in the form of foreshadowing, or symbolism, or drawing metaphors, such that when the "twist" happens, the reader can look back and say, ohhhhh, those clues were there all along.  What I find difficult to accept about your argument is that while I think Brandon constantly misdirects his reader (it's how he does his signature plot twists after all), I so far haven't seen him as an author who misleads his readers, i.e. I don't see him plugging a ton of literary devices into a story and then having the actual conclusion subvert what those literary devices were pointing to.  I'm assuming you're wrapping all the Shalladin foreshadowing (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm happy to set forth a couple pointed examples of this) into part of the "con" which Brandon laid before us.  And for me, this is what would make it a "bad con"; if we can't trust the literary devices and the foreshadowing, then we have nothing with which to even analyze the book's events.  Contrast this with a "good con" where we are given something which "looks" right on the page, but when you look closer and read into it more closely, it seems more and more off.  Shallan's romantic end with Adolin seems to be to be a "good con"; we are explicitly told they are happy, but there are tons of little elements there which hint otherwise if you look closely.  You could very well be right that Brandon means to throw out all these literary elements to prove his point that Shalladin was trite and tropey, but to me that is the hallmark of a "bad con", because that means there is no point of looking more in depth into the literary hints in his books, because in the end, they may not mean anything.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

Yes, we want "strong female characters" but I don't think that means characters who never get support. Adolin helps her in the end, but I don't think that undermines who Shallan is or her own narrative arc. She has many aspects of her life that don't revolve around Adolin or her love life or any part of that. I don't have an issue with her getting support from her love interest at a low point in her life. When you're worn out and don't have energy left, that's when you need someone to help get you on your feet again.

You're definitely correct, and before I stumbled on some elements which made me convinced Brandon had a "good con" going here, this was part of how I rationalized Shallan; it's not what I want to read or where I personally want the character to go, but in the end, it is realistic because, as you say, people rely on others for support at low points in their life.  What I'm interested about is how this pertains to your perspective on the love triangle - you don't seem to be arguing that what we see of Shalladin isn't a solid set-up for a romance (in fact you lay it out so perfectly that I might use it, minus the personal disgust elements, to convince Shadolin supporters that Brandon did write a romantic foundation for Shalladin :P), but your argument hinges on the fact that you, personally, don't like the set-up; you find it trite and annoying and dependent on cliches.  But I hope you acknowledge that just like it's my opinion that the way Shallan chose Adolin in OB is offensive, it is also just your opinion that the Shalladin set-up was awful.  Opinions can make us dig deeper for reasons (my disgust over how Shallan made her choice sent me searching for ways to prove the author didn't really think a good choice; your disgust over the Shalladin set-up led you to searching to prove that the author meant it as a con), but hopefully when it comes down to it, any of our conclusions should be divorced from those opinions and instead based on the textual evidence at hand.

7 hours ago, Ookla the Feathered said:

She isn't actually Veil and she isn't actually Radiant.

ETA: I'm not really digging into this point (I know others have, but I'm more focused on the literary argument you are making), but I wanted to point out this WoB on Shallan and her personas.  Given Shallan is one in the spiritual realm, I don't think Brandon is trying to say Veil and Radiant aren't actually part of Shallan, as this indicates the exact opposite.  It doesn't undermine your overall love triangle argument that the Shalladin plotline was meant to undermine an overused romantic trope, but I think it might cause you to reevaluate what Brandon sees as Shallan's mental health endgame (i.e. reintegration not suppressing or just using Veil and Radiant.)

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Shallan's personas. How would they be viewed in the Spiritual Realm? Would they be an individual? Or would they be seen as being slightly separate?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

They would be seen as an individual.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/262-oathbringer-glasgow-signing/#e8785

Edited by Dreamstorm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m not sure how much my opinion contributes, but I thought it’s only fair to give you my two spheres on the subject after occasionally coming to see where the discussion is going. So here it is:

I consider the love triangle resolved, just in an unsatisfying manner (particularly for Shalladin shippers in the meaning of how it was handled, not that they can’t handle their ship sinking). I think it’s either because it was a red herring all along or it’s just one of the middle book issues OB has, and not a sign there will be more on this.

Tarah was mentioned in all three books and in OB we even got a flashback, verification Kaladin had feelings and considers the way they ended a mistake (even if you read it as how he handled it without anything else). All Syl’s remarks about relationships and Kaladin kind of sort of not really (see the paragraph above) entertaining the idea of Shallan as a partner plus his fears he’ll always be alone for me point in the direction Tarah will be reintroduced and the old fire ignited with Kaladin potentially fixing what he saw as a past mistake.

Of course this is just my take on the matter. It’s a pleasure reading the well-thought posts all of you have written.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Aleksiel said:

Tarah was mentioned in all three books and in OB we even got a flashback, verification Kaladin had feelings and considers the way they ended a mistake (even if you read it as how he handled it without anything else). All Syl’s remarks about relationships and Kaladin kind of sort of not really (see the paragraph above) entertaining the idea of Shallan as a partner plus his fears he’ll always be alone for me point in the direction Tarah will be reintroduced and the old fire ignited with Kaladin potentially fixing what he saw as a past mistake.

While that is a possibility, I'd like to refer to a certain post by @DeployParachute, who sadly is sick atm (get well soon!), which gives another perspective on why the Tarah flashback was thrown in. It has something to do with a certain stone.

Just to throw in another perspective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, SLNC said:

While that is a possibility, I'd like to refer to a certain post by @DeployParachute, who sadly is sick atm (get well soon!), which gives another perspective on why the Tarah flashback was thrown in. It has something to do with a certain stone.

Just to throw in another perspective.

It's an interesting take, I agree. My personal is somewhat different: multicolored rocks first appear in one of Kal's flashback in Tien and they remain a symbol of him ever since. In the scene where Kal is looking at the kissing Adolin and Shallan he has a rock and alludes how she reminded him of Tien, which can be found as far back as WoR. The colored rock is there to strengthen the connection between Shallan and Tien. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...