[OB] Kaladin's love life ?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, deacon said:

I'm going to be honest, I'm not really sure how to respond... Do you want to talk in PMs?

There is no need to respond. Its just a fact, that every single time, that Adolin is criticized a mob of defenders comes along and tells you how you're wrong.

[Use the Falchion]

Shallan is married. Whether we think that's a good choice or a bad one, I think we should let her explore that terrain for a while. But I do have a question - people who like Shalladin, who is your Number 2 pick for Kaladin if Shallan stays with Adolin?

As an aside, I've vocally been a fan of Kaladin x Jasnah, but there was a theory either here or Reddit saying that the story of Fleet actually foretold Kaladin's fate, and that in Book 5 he'd die but stay as a cognitive shadow. Or something like that. If that happens, I'd totally support Kaladin and Syl getting together. But otherwise I'm on my Kaladin x Jasnah ship (at least until we learn more about Tarah). 

 

[Windrunner he/him]

Just popping in with a friendly reminder that this thread is about Kaladin's love life, and unless we're wanting to get into a Kadolin ship here, this isn't really the place for Adolin discussion. Let's just keep it focused on the subject at hand, thanks!

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

But I do have a question - people who like Shalladin, who is your Number 2 pick for Kaladin if Shallan stays with Adolin?

8 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

I'd totally support Kaladin and Syl getting together.

Nah.

8 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

Kaladin x Jasnah

Yeah, but primarily for that hot horizontal action.

Edited March 24, 2019 by SLNC

[Karger he/him]

I suppose this is as good a place as any to ask this question.  Can one be an item with a spren?  We have seen how Kaladin and Syl's relationship is something along the lines of that of a married couple.  Syl and Kaladin seem to love, support, and trust one another far more then any other radiant spren pair.  The work Syl does to keep Kaladin from being "gloomy" is some of the best parts of OB and I love their relationship but how would it work?  Syl is a piece of living investiture Kaladin is a physical being.  Yes in the cognitive realm they can interact physically bust still they are different kinds of beings.  I know nothing physical is required in a romantic relationship but if you discount the physical aspect then Kaladin and Syl already have a romantic relationship and Kaladin's love life is just fine making this thread redundant. 

[Calderis he/him]

Spren/human relationships... Weird me out honestly. 

If a human being is in the Cognitive and has a relationship with a spren, that's one thing. 

But a relationship in the Physical Realm where one party literally relies on the other for their sapience has some... Disturbing implications. 

I think @CrazyRioter brought this up in Discord just the other day. 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Calderis

[CrazyRioter she/her]

Just now, Calderis said:

Spren/human relationships... Weird me out honestly. 

If a human being is in the Cognitive and has a relationship with a spren, that's one thing. 

But a relationship in the Physical Realm where one party literally relies on the other for their sapirnce has some... Disturbing implications. 

I think @CrazyRioter brought this up in Discord just the other day. 

Wasn't actually me who said that, was somebody else, though I did agree they had a good point.

My main objection is that I think spren are asexual and aromantic by default.

[Calderis he/him]

Ah, it was @Rasarr who made that point. Had to go dig and give credit where credit is due. 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

1 hour ago, CrazyRioter said:

My main objection is that I think spren are asexual and aromantic by default.

Spren are shaped by human thoughts. Newer spren have the human two genders as opposed to the Singer four gender system.. If you take that to the full conclusion and Honorspren look like the most human of spren to me, it will be possible.

[galendo]

On 3/21/2019 at 7:44 AM, Alderant said:

That said, Shallan does keep some things hidden from Adolin. For example, that she's committed parenticide. That's...actually a pretty big deal. If she truly was in love with him and had his best interests at heart (as the return is spoken so often for Adolin as manifestation that he is truly in love with her), then why wouldn't she tell him that? Him telling her he murdered Sadeas was the perfect opening for her to reveal that bit of information. And yet, she stays silent. The obvious reason here is that she's afraid of him levaing, but if she truly loved him, wouldn't she want him to know what he was getting himself into? But then again, if we don't know what infatuation truly looks like on Roshar, then we don't actually know if she loves him, or he her, and we are therefore back to ground zero.

Great post in general, but I take some issue with this particular part.  If I were a patricide, I would tell literally nobody.  Not my fiance, not my wife, not my children, not my best friend, not my therapist, no one.  Expecting Shallan to tell Adolin this...seems pretty weird, honestly.

On 3/21/2019 at 7:33 PM, Karger said:

Professional, mentorship, apprenticeship, and friendships will all work.

Part of the issue, though, is that Kaladin already has all these relationships already.  He's got plenty of professional relationships, he's got mentoring and apprenticeship relationships going with Bridge Four and Zahel.  He's got friendship with Adolin, Syl, arguably Shallan, once Moash, and several others arguable possibilities as well.  What he doesn't have, and hasn't had for the entire series (other than some hints in a flashback), is a romantic relationship.

I'm not saying a romantic relationship would fix his problems -- it won't, though it might help.  But arguing for a platonic relationship in a thread about Kaladin's love life seems a bit misguided.

On 3/22/2019 at 11:14 AM, Calderis said:

I'm sorry, but I still disagree. 

Yes the story was about Amaram and not the Shardbearer, but if you remove Kaladin killing them, then you do a lot of other things to the story as well. 

Someone else got the blades, which means there's nothing about why he gave them up. Nothing about why he was singled out to be a slave instead of killed. It requires Kaladin to lie to even explain why he's alive. 

If you expunge that detail from the story, it's reduced to Kaladin talking at length about the one topic that he has literally screamed to the warcamps as a whole. 

Please excuse me for not finding that to be the monumental step that I think Kal needs. 

There's a pretty good in-book reason why Kaladin leaves the Shards out of the story, though.  Because when he explained about them before, people always thought he was lying.  Because what are the odds that a darkeyed slave actually killed a full Shardbearer in combat?  Of course the slave is lying and honorable lighteyed Aramam earned his Shards the honest way.

Not saying I find the chasm sequence to be a great step forward in Kaladin's relationships.  Honestly, I thought it one of the most forced scenes in WoR (probably third most.forced, after only the boots scene and Shallan's acceptance in the warcamps scene).  But he has good reason not to mention that he's the one who won the Shards.

On 3/23/2019 at 10:20 AM, Calderis said:

Right up until she asked him to stop. Which he did. 

Kaladin's struggles with delegating authority is a control issue. If he doesn't take care of it, they could get hurt. If he doesn't know where someone is he can't protect them. 

The difference between his treatment of Shallan, and his treatment of Bridge Four is that he doesn't view Shallan as his responsibility. She's not someone who he's supposed to take care of. 

If their relationship actually went somewhere, I don't think that would hold. 

I wouldn't say that Kaladin has control issues or issues delegating authority.  For instance, in WoR he's willing enough to leave the training of the bridge crews to Teft and to their homegrown leaders.  Also in WoR, he's willing enough to let his men go out drinking even though he doesn't approve.  Someone with control issues or delegating issues wouldn't allow those things.  They'd try to train all the soldiers in one big batch in order to be in charge, or to forbid the men from carousing.  But Kaladin doesn't do anything like that.

He does claim responsibility, probably to an unhealthy extent, but it's more along the lines of Truman's "the buck stops here" than anything else.  I'm not sure that I agree with the philosophy that the person ultimately in charge is therefore responsible for the failures of all beneath him, but it's a widespread and often lauded real-world belief, so it doesn't seem at all surprising or abnormal for Kaladin to adopt the same mentality.

13 hours ago, Calderis said:

Spren/human relationships... Weird me out honestly. 

If a human being is in the Cognitive and has a relationship with a spren, that's one thing. 

But a relationship in the Physical Realm where one party literally relies on the other for their sapience has some... Disturbing implications.

I'm not sure I see the disturbing implications.  I mean, not beyond the admittedly effed-up concept of "if you break your Oaths I'll spend the rest of eternity screaming" thing that's already going on with Radiants and their spren, anyway.  But that's true whether or not there's any romance involved.

OT: My three main Kaladin ships, in approximate order, are:

1) Kaladin/Lift -- Yes, yes, age difference, different kingdoms, complete strangers, blah blah blah.  All could be overcome with time.  There's just something strikingly similar between "I will protect those who cannot protect themselves" and "I will remember those who have been forgotten" that makes me think they have pretty similar overarching philosophies. They're both have a thing for helping others (even at great risk to themselves), they're both big into healing, they just seem like they'd get along well and compliment each other nicely.

2) Kaladin/Syl -- Talk about two people who get along well.  Syl very much provides for Kaladin the counterpoint he needs.  It's not quite so clear that he's as helpful for her, but he clearly cares for her quite a bit.  Honestly, if Syl were human, this would be an easy pick.  But that whole "being a spren" thing might cause issues.  On the other hand, issues are the foundation of good storytelling.

3) Kaladin/Nobody -- Not all characters need a romantic arc, and I'd much rather have no romance at all than a bad or forced one.

[Rainier]

On 3/23/2019 at 9:47 PM, Use the Falchion said:

who is your Number 2 pick for Kaladin if Shallan stays with Adolin?

Right now, there simply aren't any good candidates. I don't buy Lift or Rysn, they're just two young girls with screen time, which makes them spring to mind. I don't buy Jasnah, for many reasons, and I simply don't see them together in any committed way. Jasnah, as queen, will probably marry someone in her role as queen, not as an individual person, because she's logical and suppresses her emotions, and it's the logical thing to marry for alliances. We've got Laral, who's both married and very unimpressed with Kaladin, and we've got his partner from the army, who is by far the most likely of any of the aforementioned characters to become romantically entangled with Kaladin.

Syl is not a real option. She is not a person, she is an idea, and she has no business getting romantically involved with a mortal. The sooner this pairing dies, the better. You might as well ship Kalladin with a Ryshadium, at least they're both sentient and mortal. 

Besides that, we're left with even more minor characters (May Aladar?), brand new characters, or no one. 

[Karger he/him]

On 3/24/2019 at 1:21 AM, CrazyRioter said:

My main objection is that I think spren are asexual and aromantic by default.

Are they?  Misery loves company, pity has some pretty wild parties, and discretion and valor have been together for quite some time now.  Humans personify so doesn't that mean that the personifications engage in human like activities?

[CrazyRioter she/her]

4 hours ago, Karger said:

Are they?  Misery loves company, pity has some pretty wild parties, and discretion and valor have been together for quite some time now.  Humans personify so doesn't that mean that the personifications engage in human like activities?

You could be right. It's just my interpetation/headcanon.

Regardless, I definitely don't read Kal and Syl's relationship in particular as being romantic in the slightest.

Edited April 17, 2019 by CrazyRioter

[+Invocation]

1 minute ago, CrazyRioter said:

You could be right. It's just my interpetation/headcanon.

Regardless, I definitely don't read Kal and Syl's relationship in particular as being romantic in the slightest.

I agree that it's not a romantic relationship. They're closer than that, due to the whole soul-merging thing, but I don't think a relationship there would work.

[Karger he/him]

7 hours ago, CrazyRioter said:

Regardless, I definitely don't read Kal and Syl's relationship in particular as being romantic in the slightest.

Not romantic in the lovey sense but romantic in the sense that she fills the emotional role of wife or partner in his life.

[Subvisual Haze]

On 3/24/2019 at 0:19 AM, Calderis said:

Spren/human relationships... Weird me out honestly. 

The entirety of Syl+Kaladin relationship theorizing stems from differences in how we individually understand and define the concepts of "relationships" or "love".

In the modern world (and Sanderson's books) we have a very holistic and idealized view of what ideal partner relationships should entail.  Your ideal relationship should be: your best friend, emotional confidant, object of your emotional affection, focus of your sexual attraction, sole partner in sexual relations, lifelong roomate, financial partner, genetic mother/father of your offspring, and co-parent in raising your children.  Obviously this isn't the only model though.  Your spouse and/or life partner can be several different parts of this.

I don't think Kaladin is literally going to have sex with Syl.  That doesn't mean there aren't various other interesting ways their relationship could progress.  They already share an enormous amount of emotional intimacy and caring between each other.  They're already best friends, emotional confidants, and spend virtually all waking time with one another.  They even have a degree of physical intimacy as when Syl gives Kaladin a hug or clings to his arm in Shadesmar.  Can you call that true love, or does the absence of sex make this not a romantic relationship?  I think the idea of an asexual romance would actually be very interesting to see how it evolved moving forward.

[Jofwu he/him]

Tarah!

I know this isn't everyone's first choice, and we know so little about her... But I don't think Brandon has been planting the Tarah seeds for no reason. It's totally possible that she's just a throwaway character who serves to flesh out Kaladin's back story and love life. My gut tells me that Brandon has plans for her. I'm absolutely convinced that she's in Urithiru, which suggests she has a role to play in the future. Meanwhile, Oathbringer directly connected her to Kaladin's 4th Ideal struggles.

My prediction is that Brandon will have them meet up in book 4 and rekindle their friendship. He will develop her character a bit for our benefit while he uses her (and her past with Kaladin) to explore some of Kaladin's issues. MAYBE things will turn romantic by the end of the book, but I tend to think we won't see romance come back into their relationship until book 5.

If I can be even MORE bold with wild speculation... I believe Tarah moved to Mourn's Vault after leaving Kaladin, which is on the border of Alethkar and Herdaz, and that means she has connections up there. The [now scrapped] Lirin PoV that Brandon read, along with his commentary on the rest of the chapter, suggests that this region, particularly the Herdazian miilitary, will be important in the book 4 story. So, wild speculation: Kaladin will spend most of book 4 helping shore up defenses in this region. Tarah will be sent with his team because of some connection(s) that she has. (e.g. maybe she knows this Herdazian general personally)

[Rainier]

22 hours ago, Rainier said:

we've got his partner from the army, who is by far the most likely of any of the aforementioned characters to become romantically entangled with Kaladin.

49 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

Tarah!

That was the name I wanted. I agree with you on this. She's the only named character so far that I think Kaladin might connect with romantically in the future. Not that they will, I still think someone new or no one at all are more likely, but I fully expect to see Tarah in the next book, and not just in flashbacks but in real-time.

50 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

the Herdazian miilitary, will be important in the book 4 story

You mean the same military that we see in the interludes, feeding people to greatshells? I wondered what purpose that interlude was serving. Just like the interlude in WoR set up the mess in Kholinar, I suppose this could have served to introduce us the law-men in charge of a territory teeming with refugees fleeing the singers.

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Rainier said:

feeding people to greatshells?

Using the term people loosely.

[Calyx]

Does Kaladin actually need a love life? He'd probably be better off on his own for the time being, despite what Syl thinks.

Though, I can totally picture a newly married Adolin setting Kaladin up on (highly unsuccessful) dates - probably with help from Skar and Drehy. I now definitely hope this happens.

Edited April 18, 2019 by Calyx

[ShardShaper he/him]

Just a question, anyone else love the fact that Kaladin is so busy working on Radiant stuff, that Syl has taken it upon herself to map out his love life... by spying on people while they're... well, you get the idea. 

[UnMate]

10 hours ago, Calyx said:

I can totally picture a newly married Adolin setting Kaladin up on (highly unsuccessful) dates - probably with help from Skar and Drehy.

That could provide very good and very funny moments, also Them + Syl trying to set up Kaladin with someone.

[Jofwu he/him]

17 hours ago, Calyx said:

Does Kaladin actually need a love life? He'd probably be better off on his own for the time being, despite what Syl thinks.

He certainly doesn't need one. And I'd much prefer that, if he does get one, it comes after he has developed a bit more. Specifically, I think he needs to learn to let go of his obsession with keeping his men safe before he's ready for that.

I hope that he gets one because it seems like something he has interest in. And because it would be a symbol of healing, given what happened with Tarah. (inability to balance romantic relationship with his obsessions)

[Guest]

For that to happen, he first has to try. With all the trials and tribulations. If he finds the right one, he'll find a balance. Waiting for him to balance before finding love is stupid, because he'll never have two sides to balance. Tarah wasn't the right one for him, which is why he didn't follow her. I don't doubt, that he loved her, but not enough to completely abandon his life for her. Likewise, he wasn't the right one for Tarah, because she also didn't drop her opportunity to stay with him. Hence, why I also think, that they are done. There was love, but it wasn't strong enough.

The problem with Kaladin are not his obessions, but his depression. That is always the underlying issue with him. He doesn't believe he's worthy of being loved - not even by soldiers, his friends, who he is trying so hard to protect. There is nothing to balance, if he can't even form a relationship in the first place. If he doesn't let himself form a relationship.

Edited April 19, 2019 by SLNC

[Calyx]

10 hours ago, UnMate said:

That could provide very good and very funny moments, also Them + Syl trying to set up Kaladin with someone.

Yes, now that Syl actually knows Adolin from their time in Shadesmar, I can totally see this happening. It would be hilarious.