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Showing most liked content on 05/13/22 in Article Comments

  1. I will preface that the existence of female Heralds is not only realistic but expected, in my opinion. From Tanavast's point of view, it makes sense that he also raised female Heralds as he knew first-hand what women can be capable of. There are female Vessels, especially Koravellium Avast who is his partner and settled on Roshar with him, who was as perfectly capable of shattering Adonalsium as the other Vessels. Most importantly, he did not have your proposed Ashynite misogynistic cultural bias, if that even existed, because he was not an Ashynite. He wanted a well-rounded team and if the best human in a particular field is a woman, who was he to deny her Heraldhood? From the Ashynite point of view, I do not think that Ashyn has a medieval sense of chivalry and, even if it had one, that it would survive the destruction of the planet. After all, Chana was a soldier and Jezrien let his potentially really young daughter be a Herald alongside him. I would like to emphasize the latter point as I believe Jezrien as the Herald of Kings, as opposed to Taln as the patron of soldiers and who was a commoner, would be the pinnacle of masculinity just like how kings were supposed to be a paragon of masculinity in the medieval era. If the traditional pinnacle of masculinity is down to not only having women suffer through warfare and later Damnation with him but also having his own daughter be counted among their numbers, what does that say about the culture if said culture is patterned after medieval Europe? What is more likely is that the Ashynite refugees have a shared appreciation for self-sacrifice and personal courage from having to survive an apocalypse. Moreover, we know that the Heralds underestimate how much suffering being a Herald would bring to them and as such, I think the immortality aspect of being a Herald was more of a selling point to them. This was a culture that must have lost a lot of knowledge from the destruction of Ashyn and knows that they will probably lose some more knowledge because of the early Desolations and that would make immortalizing their foremost scholars and healer an appealing choice. Plus, said scholars and healer now have access to Surges which included Progression and Transformation. They might not be warriors but neither was Ishar and they can significantly bolster the support system of the more martial Heralds and the soldiers. A pretty good deal for the society, a little less so for the Heralds. Who are they to stop Pailiah, Vedel, and Battar from becoming Heralds and allow inferior colleagues who happen to be male to take their place? For Taln in particular, I don't think his sacrifice came from a culturally ingrained sense of chivalry. It was just him being the best guy ever and having a very substantial self-sacrificial streak. If the Heralds came from a culture of medieval European chivalry, why would Ishar, who I will note is a male Herald, venture out and mess around with the Oathpact Connections to sever himself and the other Heralds from it and why would the other male Heralds except for Taln be down with it? That does not sound particularly chivalrous of them. All in all, I do not think female Heralds is a stretch of the imagination for multiple in-world and unmentioned Doylist reasons. N.B. I think Battar could have a Nale-style murder nascent Radiants as her madness or be his partner-in-(not) crime because her attributes are wise and careful which can lend itself to paranoia and utilitarianism.
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  2. Because Mainframe's website doesn't describe it as an audiobook company It's just semantics.
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