Poll Re Kaladin

[Michael Portz]

I am quite sure this is where Kaladin story is heading.

Are you too?

[Harbour]

Im way more excited about Kaladin's arc now than if he just continued to fight and moan.

I loved the WoK chapters where Kaladin just cared about his people, bickering with traders and trying to win better life for bridgemen.

I want to see him showing off as professional surgeon. I want him to learn some new things about helping people besides killing.

I want to see him working with Lirin. I want to see him and Edgedancers going around.

I want to see him achieving some new heights in healthcare business. 

Bring it one, Brando Sadno (surname changed intentionally). Kaladin Stormblessed Hands and his Sylpel.

[Michael Portz]

1 hour ago, Harbour said:

Im way more excited about Kaladin's arc now than if he just continued to fight and moan.

I loved the WoK chapters where Kaladin just cared about his people, bickering with traders and trying to win better life for bridgemen.

I want to see him showing off as professional surgeon. I want him to learn some new things about helping people besides killing.

I want to see him working with Lirin. I want to see him and Edgedancers going around.

I want to see him achieving some new heights in healthcare business. 

Bring it one, Brando Sadno (surname changed intentionally). Kaladin Stormblessed Hands and his Sylpel.

So your answer to the poll would be "Yes" or "YESSSSS" ???

Edited September 9, 2020 by Michael Portz
adder provocative emoji

[Harbour]

I voted "YESSSSSSSS!"

[Realmatic Shadow]

Wild theory with absolutely no backing:
During Kal's stint as a surgeon (or permanent reassignment, we don't know how it will go yet), he will cause an Cultivationspren to become interested in him, and we see some juicy interactions between his two spren as he advances his oaths in the second order!

There is no evidence for this occurring, nor an foreshadowing, but we can dream

[USS bridge four]

What does Sylpel mean?

[Black_Shoshan]

20 minutes ago, USS bridge four said:

What does Sylpel mean?

I assume Syl+scalpel (like Sylspear)

[USS bridge four]

Thanks that makes sense and yes I'm kinda excited. 

[Person]

I hope this does not happen. I do not like Lirin, I do not want Kaladin to be a surgeon again. I know that it is interesting to some people, just not to me. Please do not make Syl a scalpel, Kal.

[LuckyJim]

Would a sylpel even work? I mean, shardblades don't cut through living things, if anything it would just do more harm by killing the flesh he cut.

Anyway, I'm also interested in seeing Kaladin go back to his roots as a surgeon. He's been pretty busy keeping Bridge 4 alive and protecting Dalinar, it's nice to go back to his central conflict of whether he can protect people best as a soldier or surgeon.

[LightReader]

23 minutes ago, LuckyJim said:

Would a sylpel even work? I mean, shardblades don't cut through living things, if anything it would just do more harm by killing the flesh he cut.

I was just wondering the same thing... if he can’t actually use it to cut flesh, are there any other potential medical applications for a shardblade-scalpel? However I am excited to see Kaladin’s story going in a new direction, and I really hope he gets to learn some new ways of coping with his depression so that he can be a functional Radiant and progress to the next oath. I also want to see him spend time with his adorable baby brother. 

[Pathfinder]

11 minutes ago, LightReader said:

I was just wondering the same thing... if he can’t actually use it to cut flesh, are there any other potential medical applications for a shardblade-scalpel? However I am excited to see Kaladin’s story going in a new direction, and I really hope he gets to learn some new ways of coping with his depression so that he can be a functional Radiant and progress to the next oath. I also want to see him spend time with his adorable baby brother. 

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, cutting out foreign objects? Cutting them into smaller pieces for ease of removal.

[LightReader]

 

21 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, cutting out foreign objects? Cutting them into smaller pieces for ease of removal.

I could see that. Or maybe she could become like a hypodermic needle or something? Wouldn’t need a bandaid after getting a shot!  I’m not sure how she’d get whatever medicine in the needle in the first place though... Hmmm.... 

Wasn’t there a WoB somewhere (having to do with Szeth’s resurrection and the retcon changes in WoR I think) about shardblades having some potential for healing a person’s spirit web or something? I know most people were interpreting that as a person’s own Shardblade healing them, but I was wondering if he meant that Szeth dying by shardblade and then being brought back was somehow going to help him heal on a spiritual/emotional level. Maybe Kaladin will be moving that direction with his healing, like how Lopen helped that soldier in Oathbringer. It’d be an opportunity for him to see how his ability to protect people’s minds and hearts is just as valuable as his ability to protect them physically. 

[clockworkspider]

I vote NOOOOO, because a shardscalpel sounds dangerously impractical except for extremely specific applications.  What those might be, I leave to those more knowledgeable about medicine to determine.

[Michael Portz]

8 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, cutting out foreign objects? Cutting them into smaller pieces for ease of removal.

Or e.g. cutting up gall or kidney stones, cleaning your arteries of atherothrombosis ... lots of good to be done for a –moreover intelligent!– tool like a sylspel ... and thus the name of the 6th SA book now is obvious: "Emergency Room Roshar - The Manual"

[clockworkspider]

8 minutes ago, Michael Portz said:

Or e.g. cutting up gall or kidney stones, cleaning your arteries of atherothrombosis ... lots of good to be done for a –moreover intelligent!– tool like a sylspel ... and thus the name of the 6th SA book now is obvious: "Emergency Room Roshar - The Manual"

Soooo...what's book 10 gonna be?  I'll be kind and let you ignore the "the" here, so that gives you MRRE to finish the symmetry.

[Ailvara]

TBH, I don't see Kal as surgeon anymore. His character arc is directed towards finding ways to protect people without making him kill other people. It would be very anticlimactic if it suddenly turned out that "haha, it's been what he was doing at the beginning of the book, full circle! Lirin was right all along, there is no other decent way to protect people!" Just... please don't.

His struggles won't be resolved by this - in fact, they can even get worse. When he studied with his father, that's when his problems with responsibility and loss first emerged. If he has patients dying on his hands now, will it make it easier for him to accept the inevitable? If he couldn't come to terms with that back when he was their only hope, I can't imagine how he would suddenly do now in a world where people who can heal any wound actually exist and he's never going to be one of them.

And he seems way over that part of his life too. Among all his conversations and thoughts there is never a hint that he misses being a surgeon or has any regrets about not being one whatsoever. He isn't sure who he wants to be, but he knows who he doesn't want to be. When he talks to his father, he is so confident when he says (paraphrasing): "no, you are the surgeon, I am something else". He isn't sure what this else is yet, but he knows that's what he needs to be - something else. I just reread a part of WoR where he wonders how he could probably ask Dalinar to make him a surgeon, but only in the context that his father would be disappointed, not in any way that he would want that.

Edited September 10, 2020 by Ailvara

[+Oltux72]

On 10/09/2020 at 1:59 PM, Ailvara said:

TBH, I don't see Kal as surgeon anymore. His character arc is directed towards finding ways to protect people without making him kill other people. It would be very anticlimactic if it suddenly turned out that "haha, it's been what he was doing at the beginning of the book, full circle! Lirin was right all along, there is no other decent way to protect people!" Just... please don't.

If you take this to the logical conclusion he would need to separate people willing to kill each other. Hence he would need to emulate Taln and let himself be tortured to uphold a new oathpact keeping the Fused on Braize.

In the short run he may very well train Windrunners in field surgery. But frankly that way indeed lies stagnation. That observation seems correct and unavoidable to me.

[+Branadar]

I want Kaladin to learn to lead properly. He cares, yes. He has good ideas, yes. But leading does not mean constantly putting yourself at risk to protect those following you. It's about trusting those who follow you to do their best and reap the benefits/suffer the consequences. He needs to learn to trust, and he just doesn't. I think that going the surgeon route now will be a step back, but it might also help consolidate who he was and who he is. As we learned in OB, there's a new version of each of us every day. Kal was a surgeon's son, he was a field medic, he was a solider. I don't want him to go backward, I want him to move forwards.

[go_go_gragdet]

On 9/10/2020 at 11:59 AM, Ailvara said:

TBH, I don't see Kal as surgeon anymore. His character arc is directed towards finding ways to protect people without making him kill other people.

I agree.

As an aside, I thought it was interesting that Dalinar suggested he could be an ambassador. I think Kaladin would find a lot of fulfilment in diplomacy. Not saying he'd never fight again; but it seems deep down, at the moment, he does not see singers, and even some Fused as enemies; or at least not completely.

It was most obvious during the fight between the wall guards and the singers in Kholinar, where Kaladin recognized Sah and Khen; you could see he has gone to respect Leshwi and see honor in her.

I don't know exatly how this will happen, but you can tell Kaladin has a unique experience that allows him to connect all of these people; to unite them, so to speak. I think he can build bridges (wink wink) between groups where Dalinar couldn't.

It seems interesting, too, that Kaladin wanted to help the singers gain independence by teaching them things, while he was their "prisoner". He seemed to have a lot of the same goals as Venli does now. Just one more argument for the Kaladin X Venli shippers, I guess. I can see this bridging happening in this way.

I don't know how flexible his "role" as a Windrunner is, as the role of ambassador seems more Willshaper-y or Bondsmith-y to me. But who knows what can be done in that regard. With Renarin bonding a "corrupted" spren, Venli seemingly having bonded a spren and a voidspren, Nale being both a Herald and a Knight Radiant, I have to be open to some weird combinations.

Edited September 17, 2020 by go_go_gragdet

[delphinousy]

i've had a theory that somewhat blends with this sylpel idea. We know that syl wants desperately to understand kaladin more to help him, to teh point that she isasing to be changed to be more like him. if she was to approach nightmother/cultivation witht hsi request, she might well end up becoming a human, or something similar, enough to for a more deep relationship, but also breaking their nahel bond, so that kaladin isn't a windrunner anymore. then kaladin could very well bond a cultivationspren instead and shift hsi focus more to healing than protecting

[Halyo_Alex]

3 hours ago, delphinousy said:

i've had a theory that somewhat blends with this sylpel idea. We know that syl wants desperately to understand kaladin more to help him, to teh point that she isasing to be changed to be more like him. if she was to approach nightmother/cultivation witht hsi request, she might well end up becoming a human, or something similar, enough to for a more deep relationship, but also breaking their nahel bond, so that kaladin isn't a windrunner anymore. then kaladin could very well bond a cultivationspren instead and shift hsi focus more to healing than protecting

I ship it, I think.

It'd be a heck of a boon, what on earth might the curse be? Being mortal, I suppose?

[ftl]

If Cultivation is involved, there really doesn't have to be an explicit curse.

The boon/curse is how the Nightwatcher operates, and some of the examples we see of it are pretty boring - boon granted is "enough cloth to keep a family from starving", curse "see the world upside-down".

On the other hand, when Cultivation is involved, the whole boon/curse pairing is intertwined and you can't tell what's what. Dalinar got his memories pruned, and eventually they came back just in time... ...was the memories coming back his curse? Or was the memories being pruned both the boon and the curse? Hard to tell. Lift got the ability to metabolize food into investiture and to see/exist partly into the cognitive realm - I can't see anything in there I'd even call a curse. And for Taravangian, the boon/curse are tied together - intelligence and compassion, but not at the same time. You could call the "not at the same time" part the curse, I suppose.

So I think if she wanted to, Cultivation would just do things for/to Syl, and then leave us readers to figure out how exactly to categorize that as part-boon and part-curse.

[delphinousy]

i would think that the boon and curse would be one and the same. for all that she would gain with becoming more human, she would lose by being less spren, and the final gain/loss would be her getting a full actualization to become human (or some sort of near human like how herdazians and horneaters are) and the final loss might be her Connection/Nahel bond through kaladin, that by becoming fully human to be with him, he, and she , would lose the bond, and kaladin would no longer have powers. it might even be that as she went through the progress of this change, that kaladins powers would weaken, even as he may have been completing more oaths, and at the end all kaladin would have would be plates (however that actually works out), because syl wouldn't be a sword. However, if that happened, i thin that Syl and Kaladin would still ahve a Connection unique to them, and that instead of syl granting kaladin martial mastery, isntead it would reverse and syl would be gaining knowledge form Kaladin, both her wished for understanding, but also his medical knowledge/skills, and she would become his assistant surgeon as he became a master surgeon, to spend the rest of his life healing instead of killing

and there were hints in the books that cultivation and honor worked together to create the sentient spren, and we know that ruin and preservation made the scadrians, so it is 100% possible that she could turn syl from a creatue that it basically 90+% cognitive into a full human(ish) being. i honestly think fi ti happened, she wouldn't be fully human, there would be remnants of her honorspren form, but she would be able to have children with kaladin. an example of a remnant might be that her hair would glow with/like stormlight, or that she could control it directly into whatever shapes she wants jsut by her will, or her body being more maleable or something.

however, i do admit that this ending is a little bit to happy fo us to likely see it come from brandon sanderson, but i like it all the same

[Shardsplinter]

What if Siah Aimians are actually the descendants of sprens that were granted this Boon/Curse from Cultivation?

Kind of tin-hat, but was the first thing I thought of when I read that theory that Syl might ask Cultivation to become human to better understand and help Kal( in wich chase I'm shipping them soooo hard)