Odium's Champion

[Calderis he/him]

Stereotypes persist because people take them to heart. 

One of my favorite things about Brandon's writing is his penchant for taking those stereotypes and twisting themon their heads. 

Adolin is one of, if not the, strongest written characters in the series. Viewing him as an idiot when he's both socially savvy and competent in battle means you're not paying attention. The speed of thought required to perform in the duel where he made himself appear to be struggling is astounding. Unless you've participated in martial arts. The mental acuity required to not only respond to an attack, but to effectively make it look like you are less skilled than you actually are is just... I don't have words. 

You can be massively intelligent and not do well in school. Many people fail for reasons that have nothing to do with lack of capacity. 

If you think that grades are the only measure of intellect... You're narrow minded.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Calderis said:

Stereotypes persist because people take them to heart. 

One of my favorite things about Brandon's writing is his penchant for taking those stereotypes and twisting themon their heads. 

Adolin is one of, if not the, strongest written characters in the series. Viewing him as an idiot when he's both socially savvy and competent in battle means you're not paying attention. The speed of thought required to perform in the duel where he made himself appear to be struggling is astounding. Unless you've participated in martial arts. The mental acuity required to not only respond to an attack, but to effectively make it look like you are less skilled than you actually are is just... I don't have words. 

You can be massively intelligent and not do well in school. Many people fail for reasons that have nothing to do with lack of capacity. 

If you think that grades are the only measure of intellect... You're narrow minded.

I definitely agree with you.

I would add there might also be the fact fantasy readers, on average, tend to be more "book smart" then "street smart". When they read Adolin has never bothered to learn how to read glyphs, they do not read it as the symptom of a socially flawed world which frowns on men being academically smart, they read him as being an idiot who can't learn. When Adolin states he could never remember his history lessons as he found most of them profoundly boring, they also read it as a sign he is intellectually inept whereas real world is flocked with people being math geniuses but terribly poor at memorizing the large amount of data required to become either a doctor or a historian. People completely gloss over Adolin actually understanding not only the concept of percentages, but applying it in a casual manner. Of course, considering most fantasy readers tend to be very educated, it does not seem like much, but did you know more then 2/3 of the adult population is completely unable to figure out how many gallons of paint they need to cover a wall? Simple mathematics confound most adults, even adults having been educated, so for Adolin to actually be one of the few who understands it does mean he is far from being a simpleton. This is even more impressive when we know Adolin's entire tuition was done without the help of written manuscript: he had to commit all to his head as he can't read nor write. People gloss over the fact Kaladin's instruction was actually written in glyphs which he was studying... Adolin, as far as we know, never had a similar support. I think most people also completely overlooked the difficulty of learning anything when you can't read it: some people just can't learn if they can't see it. I know I would have done very poorly if I did not have written support: when listening, I usually loose attention after 15 minutes.... I wouldn't be surprised if young Adolin just couldn't concentrate long enough to commit anything to memory, much unlike Renarin. Had he been able to read and write, things might have gone down differently, but we will never know. If one of the boys learn how to read, all signs are it will be Renarin.

As for the stereotypes, I personally marvel at how Brandon is using pre-existing stereotypes in order to steer his readers into thinking one thing or another. I do not think it a coincidence he wrote Adolin as the blue eyed blond headed boy (and not Renarin): this plays with Westerners imagination and cluster of familiar tropes. The Knight in Shinning Armor, the Prince Charming, any character trope which calls for a young man to be dreamily handsome, athletic and good in sports related activity are usually those which comes to mind to most readers and these tropes usually goes hand in hand with "dumb". Jock. Rich Frat Boy. Individuals most fantasy readers hate, as a rule of thumb, but the magic of Brandon is when we scratch Adolin's character, we get so much more. His character is one which evolved around the need to be what others want him to be: how characters in the book perceive him (Kaladin mostly, but also other characters) diametrically differs from whom he truly is. My thoughts are Brandon is also making his readers perceive Adolin in a simplistic way which makes the reveal of his true self so much more empowering.

In essence, I do think Adolin is strongly written and I hope future books will give enough of a spotlight to show just how much, but on average most readers over look Adolin's intellectual skills because it is more convenient to think of him as a simple minded man with poor capacities.

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, maxal said:

I would add there might also be the fact fantasy readers, on average, tend to be more "book smart" then "street smart"

I actually wrote almost this exact sentence in my previous post, and decided against it because I wanted people to read what I'd written without going on the defensive.

Quote

When Adolin states he could never remember his history lessons as he found most of them profoundly boring, they also read it as a sign he is intellectually inept

And I think this is exactly why I recognize his intelligence. 

I almost failed out of school because I was bored. The US education system is highly repetitive and after I'd grasped something I wanted to move on. So I read books to continue my own education while failing classes. If a class weighed its grading by test and attendance I passed, if by work I failed, because actually learning was more important to me. Being young at the time, I obviously didn't think about the long term consequences, and I don't recommend anyone doing the same. 

I get annoyed by the fact that people only seem to accept academic performance as a level of intelligence, when our methods of teaching are design for two specific things. The way that the majority of people are able to learn, and then to try to catch people who fall behind.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Calderis

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I actually wrote almost this exact sentence in my previous post, and decided against it because I wanted people to read what I'd written without going on the defensive.

I am more "book smart" than "street smart", so I wouldn't have taken it negatively. I did really well at school, I was one of those straight-A students, but as I moved out of the education system, I encountered countless of much smarter people with less stellar credential. 

38 minutes ago, Calderis said:

And I think this is exactly why I recognize his intelligence. 

I almost failed out of school because I was bored. The US education system is highly repetitive and after I'd grasped something I wanted to move on. So I read books to continue my own education while failing classes. If a class weighed its grading by test and attendance I passed, if by work I failed, because actually learning was more important to me. Being young at the time, I obviously didn't think about the long term consequences, and I don't recommend anyone doing the same. 

I get annoyed by the fact that people only seem to accept academic performance as a level of intelligence, when our methods of teaching are design for two specific things. The way that the majority of people are able to learn, and then to try to catch people who fall behind.

On my side, I am quite good at the learning by heart type of learning, providing I can read it. I am doing extraordinarily poorly into taught class: my attention wanders seriously after 10 minutes. I slept or read through most of my classes because I couldn't listen as it made my head swirl, but I am a hard worker who took great pride into the written marks kind of thing, so I studied very hard afterwards.

This being said, my husband which I consider to be much smarter than I am is terrible, but terrible at learning anything by heart. He is bad at history and the one time we had to learn something by heart for an ethic exam, he had to study so much harder than myself (and pestered endlessly all through it) who just read the thing once and remembered most of it. So Adolin not committing boring history lessons to mind is nowhere near a sign of lack of mental capacities. We also have to take into consideration young Adolin was put into hard training at the age of 6. If the poor kid had to work out on the dueling ring in the morning, then be tutored by Ardent Kadash in the afternoon, he was probably fighting not to fall asleep. Renarin (and every single young women and also Kaladin) did no physical training whatsoever which means he always were more alert towards learning. Young Adolin probably needed a lot more resting time to decompress and to recover from the training which no doubt put a strain on his academic learning capacities. If you are tired and aching, you can't be predisposed to learn. Dalinar states how hard Adolin has been working for his dueling: the kid probably worn himself down on the practice ground which left him wasted for academic pursuits. Kaladin, Shallan, Renarin, none ever did the amount of physical work-out Adolin has put himself into.

A lot of smart people are being bored into the schooling system, your story is rather common. Many smart kid give up school because school fails to interest them, it is why many schools are trying for alternate ways in order to give those kids an environment better suited to their capacities. I did well within the regular system, but I know not everyone is the same. Currently, I am looking at my own kid (the one who is in school, the other one I suspect will be the perfect straight-A no problem student) and I am trying to figure out what is the best way for her to learn. Some things the school does, I think it is great, but some things, I am frowning upon. We'll see how it goes as she gets older, but I am questioning myself on these things quite a lot actually.

[gbazz4 he/him]

@maxal and @calderis that was an interesting discussion on intelligence. I think you are essentially getting at that people communicate and learn in different ways. There are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners/communicators. Auditory people learn by listening and talking, visual people learn by watching how things are done or reading, and kinesthetic people learn by doing an activity themselves. My best friend is a terrible test taker. But he is great at understanding things when he can use his hands and do it himself. He is an electrician and knows practically how to do the job. He just performs poorly on written tests. There are plenty of people he would compete with on jobs that could ace the exam but couldn’t actually do the job when hired because they couldn’t practically apply the book material in real world situations.

The points you noted where Adolin can't focus on his history lectures shows he is not auditory. He is much more of i think a kinesthetic/visual perso whereas Renarin is more of an auditory person. People need to be taught differently to learn things in a way that click for them. When i used to train in martial arts my instructors tried to hit on all of these methods to help people learn the curriculum. They would say how to do a move, while showing how to do it, then have us practice it. I never thought Adolin was not intelligent. He seems to have a knack for strategy.

 IIRC correctly from the stories Adolin also seemed to have an aptitude for politics. He read Sadeas well and knew Sadeas was trying to undermine Dalinar. Reading a political situation is not easy, it takes a different type of thinking and intelligence and shouldn't be discounted. His understanding of politics i think shows he is intelligent in other ways than your simple book smart, rote memorization intelligence.

[Calderis he/him]

@gbazz4 exactly. 

Another great example of this is lift. 

She has little to no education. This shows in her speech and pretty much every aspect of her personality. 

She reads people remarkably well though and is able to adapt very quickly. 

People tend to call it street smarts but it's a combination of emotional intelligence and I don't know the proper term but... Situational intelligence? 

The way that Lift functions, if she were to gain the education necessary, and act with the proper decorum, she would do very very well in a political situation because that is all political maneuvering is. Emotional and situational intelligence. 

They are very different people, but Lift and Adolin use the same types of intelligence. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, gbazz4 said:

@maxal and @calderis that was an interesting discussion on intelligence. I think you are essentially getting at that people communicate and learn in different ways. There are auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners/communicators. Auditory people learn by listening and talking, visual people learn by watching how things are done or reading, and kinesthetic people learn by doing an activity themselves. My best friend is a terrible test taker. But he is great at understanding things when he can use his hands and do it himself. He is an electrician and knows practically how to do the job. He just performs poorly on written tests. There are plenty of people he would compete with on jobs that could ace the exam but couldn’t actually do the job when hired because they couldn’t practically apply the book material in real world situations.

The points you noted where Adolin can't focus on his history lectures shows he is not auditory. He is much more of i think a kinesthetic/visual perso whereas Renarin is more of an auditory person. People need to be taught differently to learn things in a way that click for them. When i used to train in martial arts my instructors tried to hit on all of these methods to help people learn the curriculum. They would say how to do a move, while showing how to do it, then have us practice it. I never thought Adolin was not intelligent. He seems to have a knack for strategy.

 IIRC correctly from the stories Adolin also seemed to have an aptitude for politics. He read Sadeas well and knew Sadeas was trying to undermine Dalinar. Reading a political situation is not easy, it takes a different type of thinking and intelligence and shouldn't be discounted. His understanding of politics i think shows he is intelligent in other ways than your simple book smart, rote memorization intelligence.

I once made the same argument you did with respect to auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners, so I definitely agree with everything you have said here. Adolin most probably a combination in between a visual and a kinesthetic learner: he isn't an auditory learner and, sadly, Alethkar society preventing males from having written support make it so Adolin would be seriously disadvantaged in his learning. In comparison, Kaladin which is often praised for his higher intelligence benefited from a complete training: he had auditory from his father, he had visual from the glyphs written books he had to commit to memory and he had kinesthetic throughout helping out his father performing surgery. Adolin did really good at things he could actually get his hands on: dueling, strategy, politics. He did really poor at things he had to commit to memory through mere auditory means: history, glyphs.

I am not an auditory person myself. My attention span during class was about 15 minutes. Pass 15 minutes, I would loose focus. I hardly ever learning anything in class: all I learned was by reading and/or doing exercises. I learned very little by just listening to a teacher. I just can't stay focus, I can't listen. I can't. I will tap my pencil, play with my hair, fall asleep, read, do crosswords, anything, but I just can't listen. If I try, I walk out of the class completely wasted and exhausted. I had paid formation last year at work and, by the end of the day, I was ready to through myself onto the wall because I couldn't stand having to stay put and listen to it.

This being said, Adolin being able to read people is more linked to emotional intelligence: he is good at decoding the non-verbal language of people which gives him cues as to whom is lying, whom isn't.

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

@gbazz4 exactly. 

Another great example of this is lift. 

She has little to no education. This shows in her speech and pretty much every aspect of her personality. 

She reads people remarkably well though and is able to adapt very quickly. 

People tend to call it street smarts but it's a combination of emotional intelligence and I don't know the proper term but... Situational intelligence? 

The way that Lift functions, if she were to gain the education necessary, and act with the proper decorum, she would do very very well in a political situation because that is all political maneuvering is. Emotional and situational intelligence. 

They are very different people, but Lift and Adolin use the same types of intelligence. 

I think Lift is going to get education now, so I am keen to see her evolve. 

[Calderis he/him]

2 minutes ago, maxal said:

I think Lift is going to get education now, so I am keen to see her evolve.

Me too. I like her in doses, but I look forward to her growing before she becomes a main character. 

She has a lot of potential, but extended exposure as she is now would annoy me. 

[Contessa she/her]

All of these topics are super interesting, but I feel a little behind so I'm going back a ways in the conversation...

When I first read the end of WoK, and the parts about picking a Champion, I assumed it was because "Honor is dead" and therefore could no longer fight Odium himself. If that were the case, then obviously Odium wouldn't need a Champion in the first place, and the whole thing about one person being the Champion for both Shards would be completely inconsequential (is that the right word? I mean there would be no need for two Champions because Odium is still kicking' around).

All this being said, I am woefully behind in regard to all theories and some simple facts (I'm quite new here) so I'm just trying to catch up...

[Carcinios he/him]

A question to think about:

What would Odium risk by picking a Champion?

1. The theories linking it back to Mistborn identify one possibility: His champion would essentially be a free agent and thus able to choose a course of action that may cause Odium to lose.

2. A Champion is a single point of failure since they could be killed, meaning Odium again risks defeat by choosing one.

Bearing that in mind, it seems unlikely that Odium would want to pick a representative. Unless...

Dalinar and the others manage to persuade Odium that his defeat is possible anyway.

It might be that by choosing a champion Odium protects himself from damage. i.e. he may fail to conquer Roshar but his essence in the Cosmere remains intact. If Odium is forced into a choice between risking himself to win or protecting himself but increasing the chance of defeat he may choose the safer option.

As to who he might choose as his champion I think it is too soon to really have any idea but my gut is leaning towards one of Venli, Eshonai or Taravangian (Maybe Ishar)

Edited July 20, 2017 by Carcinios