aemetha

From a purely academical and superficial perspective, I can't argue this logic. The single greatest predictor of a compatible match is similarity. This is only one of many aspects in which a similarity may be ascertained though. It may be as easily said that Kaladin and Jasnah are similar because they both seek the end goal of defeating the desolation. However, I don't see Jasnah as the stay at home and make baby type that the culture of Alethkar would demand if she took a husband. It might be interesting to see her reject that dynamic after making a match, but it would be as interesting to see her reject it by not making a match to begin with. I personally see Jasnah as primarily asexual. She has not indicated any sexual preference for either gender so far in her depiction. There is nothing wrong with choosing not to engage in romantic pursuits if she is not drawn to them. There is similarly nothing wrong with her engaging in a marriage of convenience and producing an heir if she chooses it. It would only be sad for Jasnah if she chose to do it despite her own goals and desires. I feel as if in some of the depictions Jasnah would want the opportunity to raise someone from birth. She feels a sense of failure about her inability to influence her wards, and I can't help but think she would be more invested and suited to the task if she had responsibility before the wardship. In summary, I think it matters less who a person Jasnah is romantically linked to, and more the consequences of any such attachment. I see Jasnah as being more capable of genuine affection for her child than for her partner. And there is nothing wrong with that.

I know there are more important days, such as gods birthday, you know, god being the author of the the purpose of the board (No, no, get the religious debate out of here please. For one thing the Trellist's will be upset by your blasphemy!). Anyway, I would just like to wish everyone a happy humbug day, particularly the people I have humbugged. There is no greater purpose to humbug day than to make amends for ones humbugging. P.S. If you feel offended by the concept of humbug day, please feel free to mentally replace it with something more acceptable to you. The purpose of the name is only to make it meaningful to the reader. To me, as the writer, it is meaningful because it's a reminder to apologise for any offence that may have been caused during the year. In other words, if Christmas works better for you, pretend that's what I said.

Lift herself has said she is ten, and has been ten for three years. That would, by our years, make her about 14 years old. She has also hit certain developmental milestones that occur in female adolescence. Based on that, it doesn't appear that she is ageing unusually slowly. The main implication of the infusion of stormlight is likely to be on her health. She is less likely to become ill. Also, bear in mind, she isn't infused with stormlight every time she eats, or rather, she doesn't convert all of her glucose to stormlight every time she eats. If this were the case she would suffer hypoglycemia and neural damage. The brain cannot function without glucose (the body can exist on protein, but the brain requires glucose). Wyndle supports the fact that there is a level of conscious control in what she does when expresses concern that she was doing it too much.

If Lift has the ability to use sugar as a focus for stormlight, why would she need to have a spren in order to access her surge? She could just do it without a nahel bond at all since she already has a perfectly adequate way to channel the investiture. She does have and need a spren though, so she doesn't use sugar as a focus, she converts sugar into investiture instead of breathing it in, as is specifically stated in the third WoB I posted. Just in case it isn't completely debunked now though, here is another WoB (emphasis mine). So the way she gets stormlight is a consequence of her visit to the Nightwatcher. Lift could very well have a parent from Scadrial, but it wouldn't change the fact that her ability to access stormlight the way she does was bestowed on her when she visited the Nightwatcher, not as an inheritance from her parentage.

Nothing unfair about dismissing that at all. It's easily debunked as the reason she gets stormlight from eating: 1) Allomancers burn metals as a focus for their allomancy. The metal is not the fuel, it is the focus. The fuel is investiture, such as in the mists. 2) Stormlight is not the focus, it is the fuel - investiture. Stormlight and the mists are analogous. 3) Lift does not burn metal, she metabolises carbohydrates into stormlight. Metal contains no carbohydrates and so cannot be used to metabolise into stormlight. So what you have with allomancy, is someone channelling investiture (the mists) through a focus (the burning metal) to create a particular effect. What you have with surgebinding is someone channelling investiture (stormlight) into their surge (maybe spren are a focus there, as far as I know that's never been settled) to create a particular effect. What lift is doing is acquiring the investiture from a different source (carbohydrates in food instead of breathing stormlight from gems or highstorms), which is quite different from changing the focus. The focus is more about how the magic is manifested than how the magic is powered. I'm sure @Calderis could explain that better than I have.

I'm not condoning slavery in the modern context. I am saying slavery was more morally ambiguous in the historical context, in response to the suggestion of an equivalence between modern slavery and historical slavery. I'm also not saying that slavery was good for these people, I'm just saying that the alternatives weren't any better in most cases. History has to be interpreted by the standards of the time, not by our standards because there is absolutely no equivalence in terms of capacity to implement more equitable systems.

What was the difference? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave They were serf's which is a synonym of slave. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/slave

Functionally it was. It just wasn't called slavery in name. This is what I meant about medieval peasants. They weren't and still aren't called slaves. The weren't paid though, they weren't allowed to leave, they weren't allowed any say in issues of governance, and they were required to hand over their produce to their feudal overlords and keep just a portion of it. What would you call it if not slavery? And what alternative did they have? If peasants were just allowed to do what they wanted, there would be no action from the lords part of the feudal contract - protection. That was a cause of large issues with robber barons, and the peasantry suffered even more than they did in the functional slavery of the feudal contact. At the end of the day, the peasants were often better off in slavery than they were without it. It certainly was more morally ambiguous than it is in modernity. Life in those times was just not good at all. Slavery didn't make it a whole lot worse, there's not really a problem with not being allowed to move if you don't have the means to move. There isn't really a problem with not being paid if you don't have anything to spend it on. In many cases slavery imposed a measure of stability that allowed a better standard of living than would otherwise be the case. Viewing slavery in the modern context of morality ignores the fact that the effects of slavery weren't stacked so heavily in the negatives column, or rather had more stacks in the positive column than is the case today. There were of course instances where slaves were treated far more harshly than was reasonable, and the mistreatment of a human being in that way may be seen to be immoral more convincingly than the institution itself, because there was a different level of necessity for the act. Let me give an example. You are a Baron, recently granted your Barony by the king. The Barony consists of one village with 100 villagers. You have the choice to allow your peasant subjects freedom, or to functionally enslave them. If you allow them freedom, 50 will give you a portion of their food. 25 will wander off and leave your barony. 25 will keep everything they own. You won't be able to protect them properly because you have only half the income you would have through slavery, and half of them will be killed by bandits. If you enslave them, none leave, and all give you a portion of their food. You are able to protect them all and lose none to bandits. Which is the moral choice?

Unfortunately, history disagrees. Slavery has been a part of human civilisation for millennia longer than it hasn't been. Even situations that were not explicitly called slavery were functionally slavery. Peasants in the middle ages did not have freedom of movement, did not have the means to move, and were not paid for their produce. They were allowed to keep a portion of the food they produced. That's it. It is wrong by our standards, with the benefit of our technologies, and with the benefit of systematic education. People couldn't just be allowed to wander off in those times, because people didn't produce enough excess resources to allow that, they produced just enough for people to not die. People couldn't be acknowledged as all equal with a right to vote for the leader, because people lived their entire lives within 10 square miles of their homes. Entire lives of around 30 years at best. You can't just ignore all of the things that make modern civilisation work on a more equitable manner. Like it or not, slavery was an essential part of feudal systems that allowed for civilisations to exist without falling into anarchy. Not dying is a perfectly valid justification for a system of functional slavery in the absence of the technology and expertise to implement a better system. The thing that changed systems of slavery to an immoral enterprise is the lack of necessity for it anymore - the industrial revolution. Nowhere is that better illustrated than the industrial economy of the Union against the slave labour economy of the Confederates in the US civil war. If the north had not industrialised there would have been no war, because both north and south would have needed their slaves.

That could also be really toxic to a relationship. Kaladin: I love you. Jasnah: Can you pass me that book. Kaladin: Aren't you going to say it back? Jasnah: No, pass me that book.

Morally ambiguous by the standard of our society you mean. Morally the Kholins aren't particularly ambiguous by the standards of Alethkar as it relates to the caste system in Alethkar. I think the point trying to be made is that killing Elhokar would not make any difference whatsoever to the caste system of Alethkar. The suggestion that it is morally right to remove the head of state because the state employs an unjust system only has validity if removing the head of state changes the system. In this case it would not. The motivation for removing the head of state is that the person doing the removing is angry and wants to take it out on the person who most visibly represents the thing they are angry about. Nothing to do with change.

Odium was said to have been brought by the voidbringers in an account by the dawnsingers. The account is a biased account. BS has said that Odium arrived at the same time as the humans, but that didn't necessarily mean he came with them. It's really not clear what happened with the arrival of the humans and the first desolation. About all we do know is the humans were supposed to stay in the area given to them, Shin, and for some reason did not and came into conflict with the dawnsingers. We don't know the composition of what races were following the direction of what shards in that initial conflict.

Genetically I would not consider them to be siblings. They would be siblings for the purpose of measuring nurture, but not for the purpose of measuring nature. We should be clear too, a genetic child would be the child of Tanavast and Cultivation's vessel, not a child of Honor and Cultivation. It's a vessel versus shard thing. Such a child could be heavily invested by Honor and Cultivation to become a sliver. I don't think we know or can relate to the thought processes of sapient splinters enough to say whether they would ever consider a human child to be a sibling. They are embodiment of ideas and concepts, and their thinking is said to be far less flexible than that of humans. I don't think the stormfather is a very good example. Dalinar comments after all that they are something new. With the stormfather he was a radiant spren before he merged with the cognitive shadow, so the ability to form nahel bonds was already a part of him. This is what I think a cognitive shadow of a sliver child of the vessels would not have - it's mind is entirely a creation of a mortal organic being that just happened to persist as investiture after the physical body died. To properly form nahel bonds it seems likely there would have needed to be the creation of a sliver genetic child of the vessels, and a splinter child of both Honor and Cultivation as two separate entities which merged when the vessel child died and became a cognitive shadow - but if that had happened, the stormfather wouldn't be new. I don't dismiss the idea that the sibling is a combination of Honor and Cultivation's investiture, that is consistent with radiant spren in general. I just think a splinter is a far more likely scenario than the convoluted creation of a cognitive shadow with a physical origin. The stormfather is just as protective of Syl as he is of the sibling. He sees himself as the father of all spren and his duty to protect them. I think that is more the spren in him than the cognitive shadow. He was creating spren himself before he was merged with the cognitive shadow and regularly demonstrates protectiveness of all spren.

Honor blocked Odium because he is bound to sworn oaths. If he swore to stop Odium, he would have no choice but to stop Odium or die trying. Cultivation isn't hiding, but her intent is not about confrontation at all, it's about directed growth - a long game of manoeuvring and gathering strength to fend off an assault. The behaviour of the shards is explainable without the need for a child to protect. Suspending my scepticism for a moment though: Could the vessels have a child? Sure, I guess they could, BS said that they can. If they did it wouldn't be the sibling though, because it would be an organic creature with DNA and genetics, not one comprised of investiture. The could also create a splinter of their combined investitures, since that's what the Radiant spren are, but then it wouldn't have genetics because it would be comprised of investiture which is not an organic creature with DNA. They could create a sliver from an organic child I guess. A sliver though could only be the sibling if it was already dead, and became a cognitive shadow, and even that is extremely iffy since the cognitive shadows we've seen aren't capable of forming symbiotic bonds in the way spren do. The fused replace the original inhabitant of the body.

Unfounded allegations such as this are a clear violation of sub section three paragraph two of the criminal justice code in some jurisdiction somewhere. We will of course be applying for a writ of execution. We will be in touch!