If not Kaladin who

[bdoble97]

I have read alot of epic fansty in the past 25 years and some scif mixed in there also. Kaladin Stormblessed has become my favorite character. It had been Perrin for the longest time. But right off the bat in Way of kings I liked Kaladin in many ways I saw my self in him. I have never been in the military but played hockey from the age of 7or8 up till my mid 20s and the love I had and still have for some of my old team mates reminds me of bridge 4. I also have been in law enforcement for 19 years and have felt first hand what it's like to go into scary situations but to have the trust and belief that the guy or woman next to you has got your back no matter what also reminds me of bridge 4. 

Reading stormlight archive and Kaladin's character arc has made me want to better understand mental health it has also helped guide my carrier into helping people in mental health crisis. I truly believe reading Mr. Sanderson work and other experience in my life have opened my eyes to mental health to look at it in a totally different light.  That being said for me Kaladin and Syl are Stormlight archive they are the main characters for me I love Shallan and Adolin but to think that Kaladin and Syl won't be front and center in the back book really makes me sad.  Does anyone else feet this way .  Sorry for the spelling and grammar I can't type to save my life unless I have Microsoft word haha have a great day every one

 

[Ninth of the Night]

Many of us feel the same, although for slightly different reasons. I, along with a good portion of the fanbase, have suffered from depression or depressive episodes. It's been a lifelong battle for me, and reading the Stormlight Archive was a version of therapy that I needed. Seeing someone as strong and heroic as Kaladin going through similar struggles as I have faced, with some scenes hitting way too close to home, it opened my eyes to some of my own personal pitfalls. To the point where I'm much better at handling my depression than I was before starting my trek into the cosmere.

Not just Kaladin though, while I do consider him my favorite character on most days, several of the others have faced struggles that I could also heavily relate to. Shallan being the next prime example, a few of her chapters have brought me to tears because of how deeply they spoke to me. The Girl Who Stood Up is still one of my all time favorite chapters in any piece of media.

"Accept the pain, but don't accept that you deserve it."

Edited February 14, 2025 by Ninth of the Night

[bdoble97]

Her 

12 minutes ago, Ninth of the Night said:

Many of us feel the same, although for slightly different reasons. I, along with a good portion of the fanbase, have suffered from depression or depressive episodes. It's been a lifelong battle for me, and reading the Stormlight Archive was a version of therapy that I needed. Seeing someone as strong and heroic as Kaladin going through similar struggles as I have faced, with some scenes hitting way too close to home, it opened my eyes to some of my own personal pitfalls. To the point where I'm much better at handling my depression than I was before starting my trek into the cosmere.

Not just Kaladin though, while I do consider him my favorite character on most days, several of the others have faced struggles that I could also heavily relate to. Shallan being the next prime example, a few of her chapters have brought me to tears because of how deeply they spoke to me. The Girl Who Stood Up is still one of my all time favorite chapters in any piece of media.

"Accept the pain, but don't accept that you deserve it."

Her character is also amazing and parts of her arc are beautiful and have helped me as well. Reading these characters can help brake down the walls we have built up to hide behind and left your self be true to yourself in the safety of your own home. It helped me to understand who I want to be and helped me see what I really want to do with myself in helping others who can't help themselves. 

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, bdoble97 said:

Reading stormlight archive and Kaladin's character arc has made me want to better understand mental health it has also helped guide my carrier into helping people in mental health crisis. I truly believe reading Mr. Sanderson work and other experience in my life have opened my eyes to mental health to look at it in a totally different light. 

May I recommend Altered Perceptions? Discussed In this thread (and other places on the forum).
Sanderson's Web Link for the book.

It's an anthology to raise funds for Mental Health Awareness charities. Copied from my summaries about the anthology in other posts:

Spoiler

  It was a for-charity release in support of Mental Illness 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.

So, while Way of Kings Prime has had a release after this anthology was released - it's still worth the time to read because the essays are the best parts of Altered Perceptions. Excerpts from the Forward, Introduction and ToC:

Spoiler

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>

Quote

Introduction - Dan Wells

When my brother Rob and I were little, I used to play a game I called “See How Easy It Is to Bug Him?” This is the kind of thing that older brothers do. The game was simpler than you probably think: just go into a public place and attract attention. That’s literally all it took.

<snip>

And then a few decades later he was diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore.

(Well, still kind of funny—he is my little brother, after all—just less funny.)

<snip>

 Hindsight also makes it easy to spot the quirks that would eventually develop into full-blown depression, and if I squint my eyes a bit I can see in his younger perfectionism the ominous shadow of what is now a crippling case of OCD: not the “group my M&Ms by color” kind of OCD, but the real OCD, the “my mind is not my own” OCD that makes him try to break his own hands or throw himself down the stairs. None of what he did as a child was a quantifiable, diagnosable disorder; none of it was the kind of behavior a wiser eye might have looked at and said “that child has dark things in his future.”

<snip>

This anthology, in a weird kind of way, is about that difference in trajectory. Just like people, some stories grow up one way and some stories grow up another way, and in slightly different circumstances one story could go in any number of different directions. When we set out to put together an anthology to help raise awareness of mental illness, we decided to focus not on the illness itself—most of these contributions are not stories about mental illness—but on the subtle differences that can send a story, or a life, down a completely unexpected path.

<snip>

In another way, this anthology is about itself: about the need to raise awareness of mental illness. Every story in here is accompanied by a brief note or essay from the author, explaining their own personal connection to mental illness. Whether it’s themselves, or a friend or a loved one, every author here has been touched by the needs and problems and realities of mental health.

<snip>

The world is not a nice place to people with mental illnesses, partly because the illnesses themselves are so hard to deal with, but also—and sometimes “mostly”—because we as a society, as a human race, go out of our way to make them harder. Every time you casually misuse a word like “OCD” or “neurotic” or “aspergers,” you make it harder for the people who hear you to take those words seriously as actual medical conditions. Every time you tell a depressed coworker to stop moping, every time you tell a friend with ADD to stop screwing around, every time you tell a person with anorexia or bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress syndrome to stop being such a drama queen, you’re playing the grown-up version of “See How Easy It Is to Bug Him?” Yes, it’s easy, but you’re better than that. We all are, and we have a responsibility to help each other however we can, for mental health just as much as physical health.

<snip>

But we can be better.

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. 

 

I especially recommend Seanan McGuire's essay frankly (anf humorously) discussing her OCD. 

1 hour ago, bdoble97 said:

Sorry for the spelling and grammar I can't type to save my life unless I have Microsoft word

You can always type in word, then copy/paste to the forums. I do that a lot with Notepad. . . 

Edited February 14, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[bdoble97]

@TreamayneI have really enjoyed your comments since i have come back to these forums after finishing Wind and Truth