Favorite Small Moments?

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

Everyone always talks about their big, epic favorite scenes from the Cosmere, but what are some of your favorite small or underappreciated moments?

For me, two scenes in Rhythm of War come to mind. First, when Dalinar relieves Kaladin of his Highmarshal post; second, when Venli first uses her Cohesion surge in Urithiru.

[Treamayne]

Interesting thread. Thank you

7 minutes ago, EdgedancerJacob said:

Everyone always talks about their big, epic favorite scenes from the Cosmere, but what are some of your favorite small or underappreciated moments?

Sel:

Spoiler

Elantris: Galladon deciding to take Raoden to his father's study.

TES: Gaotona burning Shai's book. (Not sure if this is considered small - but it's not a clmax, just a wonderful thread connecting the prologue and their earlier discussion about Lily of the Spring Pond. )

Scadrial:

Spoiler

Era 1: Elend realizing that Vin was Skaa and, therefore, proved his theory that "we aren't so different afterall" when he had Sazed followed to Clubs' shop.

Era 2: Wax learning to treat finances like a murder mystery and becoming so engrossed with Steris

Roshar:

Spoiler

Giving Rock the shaving kit (and the camaraderie that ensues)

Nalthis:

Spoiler

“That is the letter ‘shash,’  I can teach you them all, if you wish.”

Other:

Spoiler

Drominad: Sak, show her.

Tress: Teaching Fort to bake

 

[morcey2]

One of my favorite moments in WOK is when Kaladin tricks Teft into revealing that he was a Sergeant of some sort in the military.  I don't have the printed version since I listen to the audio book.  Kaladin gives Teft an order to run the bridgemen through some spear forms and Teft responds with "Aye, Aye, Sir!" giving away the secret that he has trained people in them before and that he had a rank of some sort.  Thus earning another Patented Teft-Glare, now available with 37% more irritation. 

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, morcey2 said:

One of my favorite moments in WOK is when Kaladin tricks Teft into revealing that he was a Sergeant of some sort in the military.  I don't have the printed version since I listen to the audio book.  Kaladin gives Teft an order to run the bridgemen through some spear forms and Teft responds with "Aye, Aye, Sir!" giving away the secret that he has trained people in them before and that he had a rank of some sort.  Thus earning another Patented Teft-Glare, now available with 37% more irritation. 

Here's your quote (WoK Ch 49):

Spoiler

The men nodded.

“Teft,” Kaladin ordered. “Split them into pairs by size and weight, then run them through an elementary forward spear stance.”

“Aye, sir!” Teft barked. Then he froze, realizing what he’d given away. The speed at which he’d responded made it obvious that Teft had been a soldier. Teft met Kaladin’s eyes and saw that Kaladin knew. The older man scowled, but Kaladin returned a grin.

 

[Duxredux he/him]

Hm... favorite small moments... for me it's hard to distinguish what are small moments because they're my favorites and become larger and more important in my mind. There almost certaiinly will be things I list off that others don't think are small moments.

Mistborn Era 1

• TFE: When Kelsier takes Vin to visit the Skaa not as a recruitment drive, but simply to raise hope and as a break from the more dangerous parts of his work.
• WoA: Vin's talk with Dox when she's investigating the possible Kandra in the crew, when Dox comes to the conclusion that not all nobles are monstrous, that perhaps he had been the monster.
• HoA: I have more memories from SH than HoA. Perhaps Vin and Elend actually getting a brief dance when crashing Yomen's party.
• SH: This novella is short enough that I don't know what qualifies as a small moment as the prose has to do heavier lifting. Possibly when Preservation is mourning the deaths of so many people and Kelsier learns that Leras knows each of them as close friends, as intimately as Kelsier knew Dox.

Mistborn Era 2

• AoL:
  • Knee-jerk response, Wayne telling Marasi his history while investigating the first Vanisher hideout. 
  • Ranette giving the rundown on her Hazekiller rounds.
• SoS: This took me longer, I tend to reread the other books in the series. Maybe Wayne and MeLaan discussing accents.
• BoM:
  • Checking into the hotel. That scene would make no sense if you didn't already know the characters, and that's the viewpoint we get from the hotel owner.
  • That and Wax and Steris trying to redefine their marriage contract while on the train.
• TLM:
  • Wax and Wayne sitting on the billboard to take a breather.
  • Not a small moment either, but Wayne talking down the army in the Set-occupied tower. 
  • The little moment when storming the tower when Wax asks Harmony to not make him do this again, because Harmony doesn't know what it feels like - and receives Sazed's memory of the Koloss invasion of Luthadel.

Stormlight Archive

• WoK:
  • Probably nothing leading up to the Tower is small, and this one is ironically not "small", but the brief period when Syl appears human-sized and looks on in horror at Dalinar's doomed army. Syl's innocent sorrow ripped aside all of the calluses that Kaladin had grown trying to keep Bridge Four alive from both Parshendi and Sadeas and every time he had failed to protect.
  • Also, may not be a small moment, but when Dalinar and Navani talk near the end where Dalinar describes himself as a man of extremes where he tries to explain why he dedicated himself to first Gavilar and then the Codes. 
  • That or Dalinar pondering while he uses his Shards to dig a latrine.
• WoR: Kaladin trying to reach out to and listen to Rlain back when they just called him Shen. Kaladin models some of the best people and leaders I've known.
• Oathbringer:
  • Dalinar and Navani listening to the Stormfather tell the history of the Heralds and Taln in particular.
  • I find the whole flashback chapter where Dalinar casually goes out into a highstorm to look for his belt knife during a feast to be hilarious. In the way people view him and how he casually goes about his life, you really see how Dalinar is a good match for the Highstorm that will just blow people down if they aren't prepared.
  • Lopen teaching one-handed tricks to the newly one-armed soldier after the battle of Thaylen City.
  • Also not small, but Taln's brief moments of lucidity.
• RoW:
  • Again, probably not small, but the Dog and the Dragon.
  • The tone shift when Teft wakes up during the occupation of Urithiru.
  • When Lirin goes out and tries to learn how the people of Urithiru view Kaladin - and Hesina's trust that he would see it.

Elantris:

• The bit of peace when Sarene lives in Elantris with Raoden and the other Elantrians.
• Galladon and Raoden talking about the one thing they would bring from outside Elantris if they could.

Warbreaker

• Vivenna and Vasher rescuing Nanrovah's daughter - less watching Vasher beat people up, more seeing his reaction to a caged child and what Vivenna learns about him.
• Vivenna talking to Vasher about how confused she is regarding Denth's betrayal.

Tress

• Basically every time that Tress decides to think about her actions, not jump to conclusions, and reevaluate the way she thinks of people. 
• Tress choosing to protect the crew of the Crow's Song

Yumi

• Painter realizing some of the challenges that Liyun faces as the caretaker of the yoki-hijo. It's not easy to try to understand someone you hate or clash with or why they are the way they are.
• Akane choosing to check in on Painter and his "sister" despite her rocky history with Painter.
• Coatrack.

 

That's plenty to start with.

Interesting. Now that I've written most of these out, my favorite moments often seem to fit into two categories. First, the moment when people learn something about themselves or another person that recontextualizes how they understand that person. These conversations fascinate me. Second, is seeing people taking a break from the high stakes conflicts pressed upon them directly related to the plot, basically the characters trying to balance the vitally important responsibilities with restful activities. If I had to add a third, it's just flat out hilarious moments.

[Returned he/him]

This is a more general description than specific moments, but I really enjoy when different characters have different views of the same event, expressed in real time.

A couple of examples are when Dalinar concedes to using Sadeas' bridge crews in WoK (he doesn't want to but is compelled by his desire to demonstrate working together with other highprinces), and Kaladin sees the same thing from a bridgeman's perspective and is disgusted. Also, when Kaladin's leg is wounded in the chasms Shallan's POV is described as "he [Kaladin] seemed to think he didn't need a tourniquet", along with her reasoning that he's probably seen a lot more battlefield injuries than her and so her background in anatomy and biology is less useful. Meanwhile, we know that he's actually a very skilled surgeon so it's a lot more than just battlefield experience!

Those moments did a lot to help differentiate characters even when they're experiencing the same events. It came up a lot in WoK and WoR but seems a lot less common in the later books. Most characters have all of the same information about events around them and it's rarer for them to filter any of it through their own understanding than it used to be.

Edited October 30, 2024 by Returned

[Treamayne]

4 minutes ago, Returned said:

This is a more general description than specific moments, but I really enjoy when different characters have different views of the same event, expressed in real time.

Have you read Elantris? (Slight Spoilers)
 

Spoiler

It's one of the primary construct of the whole novel, referenced directly in annotations like this one for Ch 9: 

Quote

I’m not sure if I’d ever want to use the chapter triad system again. It made all kinds of problems for writing the book. Almost everything else I’ve written has been strictly chronological–if you jump from one viewpoint, or one chapter, to the next, you’re always progressing forward in time. By jumping backward in two chapters out of three, I gave myself some challenging pacing and coordination issues. For instance, the important events in each of the three storylines had to happen on generally the same days. Also, I had to rotate the chapters strictly, and so I couldn’t just skip a character during a given time-frame. That meant I had to have important events happening in all three viewpoints all the time.

However, the benefits of this situation are moments like you see in this triad, where I could flow from one chapter to the next, having the timeframes play off of each other. You might have noticed from this triad that I had to fudge just a bit. Not all of the viewpoints happen at exactly the same time. The rule I set up for myself is that they had to all happen on the same day–preferably as close to overlapping each other as possible.

 

 

[Returned he/him]

36 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Have you read Elantris? (Slight Spoilers)

I have! I think that it can still work with jumping back in time (narratively), but there are limits to how often it can be done because the main plot stagnates when it's forced to wait for every character's individual perspective, so it's best used in small, strategic amounts. The latter books of Wheel of Time had some serious issues in this regard, and some books are very rigid about updating us on every character every moment to the point that it takes pages and pages to get through one minute of in-book time (I'm looking at you, Against All Things Ending).

I think that WoK and WoR did it perfectly, while Elantris did it well enough but struggled a bit in places for me (I didn't like Sarene's plotline enough in certain points to feel it was worth stalling out the main plot's pace). We have enough active characters in the various Cosmere settings at this point that it risks becoming unwieldy and so I'm not critiquing the lack too strongly, but I do miss it.

[Sythrin]

Probbaly a moment that I often think about, is from "ways of kings"
When Kaladin is laying on deaths bed after the highstorm and he remembers his fathers training.
When than looks around, he sees death spren. But small shining figure with a sword is fighting them off.
Just the thought that tiny Syl (at that moment she was not that much yet) is protecting him day in, day out from these monsters, always gets me.

[Arceoxys he/him]

My most favourite small (actually not that small since it's directly commenting on the character and nature of our protagonist) moment is in Well of Ascension when Tindwyl says some deeply kind words to Vin which, of course, puts Vin on high alert and her asking why Tindwyl is nice to her but mean to Elend and she explains that Vin has seen and felt enough "firm hands" so to speak in motivation and Elend has not had enough, ending with my favourite line from the book, "Oh child, when will you let yourself be loved?"

I never really get all that emotional about sad moments i.e. Kelsier's death, etc. but I do get very emotional at moments of small kindesses, especially from characters who are otherwise not that kind

[The Sneaky Kandra]

My favorite moment is in HoA. It's not exactly a small moment, but I feel like it is often overlooked or forgotten. It is right before the death of Leras, the vessel for Preservation, when he comes to visit Elend, and kind of just tries to give him hope. Additionally, I love reading the little epigraphs shortly after describing how if Elend had stayed longer or turned around, he would have seen a body fall from the sky into the ash covered hills. I often feel like Leras is often a forgotten hero within the original mistborn trilogy.

[Dalluminum he/him]

Two scenes that make me cry:

Mistborn Book 1:

Spoiler

1. Vin talking with Sazed in the gardens about how she doesn't want her life to change.

Emperor's Soul:

Spoiler

2. Gaotona burning Shai's book.

Again, not sure how "small" these moments are, but they hit me every time.

I also love the scene in Mistborn when Spook is talking in street slang and Kelsier is jokingly joining in. When Dockson does too... it just makes me laugh so hard. The bonding between the crewmembers in this scene and the happy environment Vin gets to see... it's just an awesome scene.

Edited November 5, 2024 by Dalluminum

[morcey2]

Just got to one of my favorite small moments in WoR.  When Kaladin and Shallan come out of the chasms after the highstorm and, suddenly, Navani becomes the "Mother Axehound" toward Shallan.  It reminded me a lot of my late wife. It's not a perfect analogy, but she would always take in "strays" from our kids friends.  There were a bunch of kids (and even adults) in the area that just called her "Mom". 

[Mattel]

I absolutely loved reading about Kaladin facing his demons in RoW, and the moment when the one armed man that Kaladin saves is helping his father, and says something along the lines of: "We all see that Kaladin struggles like we do. But he gets up. And if he can do it, then I can too." 

When Kaladin finds the carved horse at the end of RoW.

When Hobber is crying and thanking Kaladin for saving his life. (WoK, I think.)

I loved the banter between Shallan and Kabsal.