Evi Posted June 15, 2024 Posted June 15, 2024 I found some of their darkest thoughts hit close to home with me. Did anyone else relate or relate to other characters? 5
Treamayne Posted June 15, 2024 Posted June 15, 2024 Welcome to the Shard. If possible, please consider letting us know in an Intro post, or your profile, what you have or have-not read (whichever list is shorter). Also, don't forget to check out the Sharder FAQ. 29 minutes ago, Evi said: I found some of their darkest thoughts hit close to home with me. Did anyone else relate or relate to other characters? Absolutely. As you read around and through old post, you will likely find many people openly discussing these things (such as one poster discussing how they cannot read Kaladin section when they themselves are in a depressed state). Personally (which I have mentioned in other places Spoiler I also grew up with a Father that mentally and emotionally abusive, like Lirin (on a different scale though), and have seen a huge range of effects from that all my life. I was depressed in school, and was a cutter for a number of years (though I did not know/realize any of this at the time) and my brother's first attempt at self harm came when he was 13 and I was 9 (I talked him out of swallowing handfuls of pills that time). My mother is still dealing with the effects of abuse 25 years after he died (though, full disclosure, she also had abusive-bullying siblings, and her first husband was physically abusive - so I don't know if she recognized what my father was doing. I certainly didn't realize it until I had been in the military a few years and had the benefits of both escaping the environment and hindsight when evaluating that environment. There is a great anthology that I often recommend called Altered Perceptions (Brandon was a contributer as well). From other posts on this topic: Spoiler On 12/6/2023 at 2:33 PM, Treamayne said: Are you familiar with Altered Perceptions? It was a for-charity release in support of Mental Illness Awareness and allowed contributing authors to submit both essays on how Mental Illness affects their lives (and lives of family, friends, etc.) along with content either original to the Anthology or showing drafts/versions of work where known characters made difference choices from the published material. Sanderson's Website: Spoiler Brandon Sanderson’s contribution to the anthology is six chapters from the original 2002 version of The Way of Kings, where Kaladin made a choice opposite the one he makes in the completely rewritten published novel. Excerpts from the Forward, ToC Spoiler Forward Excerpt: Quote Foreword - Ally Condie When I was younger, in a misguided attempt to determine whether I had a fight or flight response to danger, my father hid in my bedroom closet and jumped out to startle me. (He was a judge and had seen too many bad things happen to people who didn’t have a quick response to danger.) To his frustration, my gut instinct was neither to run nor to stand my ground. Instead, I collapsed on the floor. “That’s not going to do you any good when something dangerous comes along, Ally,” he said, and even though his method of teaching me this lesson was dubious—and, frankly, stupid—I agreed with the principle. <snip> But when I came to the greatest danger of my life so far, that of a loved one struggling with a mental illness, I learned that neither of these were viable options for that person. There is no flight from yourself. There is no fighting yourself, not without disastrous and painful consequences. You cannot run, and you cannot hide, and it is a supremely painful place to exist. Where, then, can you escape? As writers and readers, we believe in the power of story. We believe in the line that William Nicholson wrote for the movie Shadowlands: “We read to know that we are not alone.” Stories heal. Stories entertain. Stories keep us sane. Through them, we unlearn everything we thought we knew and find it coming back different and true. Of course, sometimes a story is just a story. It cannot take away the pain. You cannot escape into it. I have spent many nights sitting by the side of someone’s bed, wishing that my stories could do something for this person that I love so much, and at the same time I knew with certainty that in that moment my stories did not help. And still, of all the tenets of my personal belief, my belief in the power of story is one of the deepest held. If I had the power to tell exactly the right story to the person I love, it might sound something like this: I knew you before. I knew you after. I want to know you now. I have a story for you. Here it is. Do you see? It is exactly what you need it to be. <snip> ToC: Spoiler Table of Contents Shannon Hale--------------- Ravenous Seanan McGuire------------Cybernetic Space Princess from Mars Mary Robinette Kowa------The Nature of Masks Jessica Day George--------Playing Cards with the Corley Howard Tayler----------------“No. I’m Fine.” Sandra Tayler-----------------Married to Depression Bree Despain-----------------The Author and the A-Word Lauren Oliver-----------------Sections from the first draft of Pandemonium Jacqueline Novak------------Notes from a Depressed Humor Writer as She Works on Her Humorous Book about Depression Larry Correia------------------Deleted scene from Swords of Exodus Shawn Speakman-----------Unused chapter from The Dark Thorn Annette Lyon------------------Excerpt from Song for Anna SJ Kincaid---------------------Original chapter one from Vortex J Scott Savage---------------Early chapters from Farworld Robison Wells----------------Epilogue to Feedback: Supernova Dan Wells---------------------Free-write prologue to I Am Not a Serial Killer Luisa Perkins-----------------Seeing Red Nancy Campbell Allen------Bonus chapter from Beauty and the Clockwork Beast: Marie Sara Zarr-----------------------Family Portrait at the Kensington Manor Hotel Aprilynne Pike----------------Three stories from the world of Wings Kiersten White----------------Womb Brodi Ashton------------------The first three chapters of The Echo Lives in Blackfoot Josi Kilpack--------------------Book 8, which became Tres Leches Cupcake Brandon Mull------------------Bonus excerpts from Beyonders book 2: Oracular Interviews Jennifer Moore---------------Deleted scene from Becoming Lady Lockwood Sarah M. Eden---------------From Longing for Home and Hope Springs: Farewells Erin Bowman-----------------Prewriting from the Taken Trilogy John C. Wright----------------Lunar Sacrament of Conciliation Claudia Gray------------------Deleted chapter from A Thousand Pieces of You: Station 47 Brandon Sanderson---------Deleted scenes from the 2002 version of The Way of Kings Excerpt from Sanderson's Essay on Kaladin in Altered Perceptions: Spoiler I owe a lot of my understanding of this—and indeed, my understanding of life itself—to some very good friends in college who struggled with mental illness. They opened my eyes to the issues people deal with by giving me as close to a firsthand experience as you can get without suffering from these issues yourself. The chapters I’m including in this book are particularly poignant along these lines. For years after writing The Way of Kings in 2002, I knew that something major was wrong with Kaladin’s character. (Then named Merin.) He was a generic fantasy protagonist in a vibrant, well-built world full of amazing wonders. He felt bland, like a streak of grey on a gorgeous canvas. I would spend nearly ten years reworking Kaladin, drilling down to who he was and who he needed to be. At the same time, I met my wife and fell in love. I began to see how people with depression are treated in the media and books, and I started to wonder. Where are our fantasy heroes with depression? This disease affects a huge percentage of the population. Does every character with depression need to be relegated to being in a story only about their illness? Couldn’t we have a character who was heroic, dynamic, interesting—and, oh, by the way, he has depression. Not something for the story to be about, just something that—like exists in so many of our lives—is another aspect of who he is, that reflects his worldview. The person Kaladin became was shaped by two major changes, his psychology being one of them. Hope that helps
JohnnyKaizen he/him Posted June 25, 2024 Posted June 25, 2024 On 6/14/2024 at 9:12 PM, Evi said: I found some of their darkest thoughts hit close to home with me. Did anyone else relate or relate to other characters? I certainly have related to these, and other dark thoughts as I've read through the SA. The first couple of readthroughs, I deeply connected with Kaladin, and felt almost no connection with Shallan. She annoyed me, and felt disingenuous and shallow (which is sort of true, the more we learn about her, but I was mostly just hating her character at the time). In more recent years, I came to understand my own mental health problems/challanges much much better, and in that understanding, reading Shallan again, felt like reading a different person, as if all the words had changed and I suddenly felt a dear kinship with her that was deep, real, empathetic, and intense. I've actually been going through some fairly intensive therapy the last several months, and your post reminded me that I had wanted to start re-reading the SA at a point that I felt I was on a better mental footing, because I'm really interested in how the story with change (again) for me as my mental state has evolved. Thanks for that. I don't know if Sanderson has had the same level of dark thoughts as the characters he writes, or if he's just an extremely good listener (Listener?) but he writes bang on the money. With some of the worst things written in these books, more than once, it has felt like a gremlin stole the thoughts out of my head and gave them to Sanderson to put on a page. There are certainly many thousands of readers who feel similarly. 1
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