[OB] Wit's advice

[PhineasGage]

1 hour ago, GoddessIMHO said:

I believe that she is stable as she can be at the moment with Veil and Radiant still there but under control. She will be "healed" when their traits are just a part of the base Shallan and she has no need to use them in order to fight with a blade or drink and joke with her soldiers (Just to a name a couple).

Yes I think this is a fair judgement to make - given that we have a 1 year time-skip forecast. I don't think she is particularly stable, but as long as she isn't stressed then she probably won't dissociate. The issue is that just sitting and resting isn't usually enough. She needs to learn coping mechanisms other than "run" (i.e dissociate into another person) or "hide" (i.e blackout). I'm guessing she and Adolin go on an extended honeymoon somewhere safe and she isn't faced with anything awful until the advent of the next book.

56 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

Just my opinion, of course, but @PhineasGage maybe it's because I'm finally closing out my stages of grief over Shallan's romantic arc in OB 

Hooray. This is why forums were created  

8 minutes ago, insert_anagram_here said:

And even though Shallan was build up as a smart and bold character in the previous books, now she runs and hides behind a marriage. I hate that

Its ok, hate/anger is part of the grieving process - you'll get to acceptance just like @Dreamstorm did

EDIT:

Oh and @Rainier - fab post. Thanks for putting all that together. It was a wonderful way to show how Shallan's dissociation is affecting both herself and Pattern - I'm simply sorry I can only give you one upvote for it. I think it is very interesting how he changes moods from calm and supportive (as she's considering telling Adolin - ie the truth) to panicked as he sees her start to fragment. 

Edited November 28, 2017 by PhineasGage

[insert_anagram_here]

5 minutes ago, PhineasGage said:

Its ok, hate/anger is part of the grieving process - you'll get to acceptance just like @Dreamstorm did

Nope, my acceptance is that I'm staring to dislike Shallan as a character.

[kari-no-sugata]

The reason I rushed out earlier was to go meet Brandon so I have a fresh set of WoBs:

I was always planning to ask some questions about Shallan at the end of Oathbringer. (Unfortunately, I am dead tired today so my memory isn't too good). Question 3 is highly relevant to this thread, though question 2 is also relevant.

[Guest]

@kari-no-sugata

Thank you for those. So basically valid points for all of us.

[Dreamstorm]

47 minutes ago, insert_anagram_here said:

edit: And I'd appreciate if this didn't become the second Adolin-Shallan-Kalladin thread. Thanks.

Sorry, sorry, I was actually trying to make that a positive post (finding good things in a plot line I didn't really like when I read the book!)

31 minutes ago, kari-no-sugata said:

The reason I rushed out earlier was to go meet Brandon so I have a fresh set of WoBs:

I was always planning to ask some questions about Shallan at the end of Oathbringer. (Unfortunately, I am dead tired today so my memory isn't too good). Question 3 is highly relevant to this thread, though question 2 is also relevant.

Alright, well this is pretty clear cut that we're supposed to see the end as a step forward for Shallan's development.  Makes me sad we don't see something more powerful from her when this step forward happened, but so it goes.  (Look at my acceptance coming through!)

ETA:  Thank you for asking these questions!!  Not excited about what this is saying about Shallan's storyline, but good to know what the author is meaning to do here, so really appreciate you asking!

Edited November 28, 2017 by Dreamstorm

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

Alright, well this is pretty clear cut that we're supposed to see the end as a step forward for Shallan's development.  Makes me sad we don't see something more powerful from her when this step forward happened, but so it goes.  (Look at my acceptance coming through!)

Well, finding some stability is a step forward, but not what Wit really meant. I think, that is what Brandon meant with it, when he said, that Wit would tell her she still has wayyys to go.

And I'm glad, that we have confirmation, that she isn't really in control.

Edited November 28, 2017 by SLNC

[Dreamstorm]

2 minutes ago, SLNC said:

Well, finding some stability is a step forward, but not what Wit really meant. I think, that is what Brandon meant with it.

Haha, I kinda think you're trying to read what you want to read in those answers   It seems pretty clear Brandon sees Shallan's ending as a positive development where she took steps forward and that was (at least partly) due to Adolin recognizing the "Shallan" her.  It bothers me to no end that our male leads get big steps forward by coming into powerful realizations on their own and our female lead comes to her realization by grabbing onto a man's hand.  I'm obviously a feminist so this completely cuts counter to how I want to see women portrayed in fiction, but these aren't my characters to create!

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Dreamstorm said:

It bothers me to no end that our male leads get big steps forward by coming into powerful realizations on their own and our female lead comes to her realization by grabbing onto a man's hand.  I'm obviously a feminist so this completely cuts counter to how I want to see women portrayed in fiction, but these aren't my characters to create!

No, I'm just as upset about that. I really am! I wouldn't call myself a feminist, but I can sympathize with a lot of feminist views and I absolutely agree with you on that, but my point is that Shallan did make a step forward by finding some stability - but I don't see it as a big step forward. And it seems to me that Wit doesn't either per WoB.

That it had to be tied to Adolin "seeing" her still annoys me, because it directly tied the romantic subplot to Shallan's main arc, which robs her of a lot of her independence, that I have enjoyed so much.

[Dreamstorm]

4 minutes ago, SLNC said:

That it had to be tied to Adolin "seeing" her still annoys me, because it directly tied the romantic subplot to Shallan's main arc, which robs her of a lot of her independence, that I have enjoyed so much.

I ran out of upvotes for the day, but exactly this.  I read WoK and WoR as partly her journey to independence, and I feel like this undermines that journey.  As much as I love romances, I don't want any of my female characters needing a man in order to experience self-discovery 

[Awesomness]

1 hour ago, Dreamstorm said:

It bothers me to no end that our male leads get big steps forward by coming into powerful realizations on their own and our female lead comes to her realization by grabbing onto a man's hand.  I'm obviously a feminist so this completely cuts counter to how I want to see women portrayed in fiction, but these aren't my characters to create!

I think she is slower to progress because her oaths/truths are so tied with her mental state; as opposed to Dalinar an Kaladin, who have one arc about morality/responsability and another about KR oaths (related, but not as much as Shallan´s).

I agree with you, this is just how I rationalize this.

[analyticaposteriori]

Yep, that WoB makes it pretty clear that what some called pseudoShallan is actually the real Shallan (so I assume Veil/Radiant aren't really as essential parts of her as some of us thought) and that she is actually on the upswing at the end of OB.

Disappointing.

Edited November 28, 2017 by analyticaposteriori

[kari-no-sugata]

4 hours ago, Rainier said:

The most important thing to remember with Shallan is what Words of Radiance (the in-world book) says about Lightweavers.

Funnily enough, I had wanted to squeeze in a question to Brandon that referenced that quote (but I was starting to over-stay my welcome). I wanted to ask if Lightweavers can only progress as far as the number of (sufficiently deep) secrets they have. Eg, if you have just 1 deep secret then you'll forever be stymied at the 2nd Ideal. It kinda makes sense to me, else I don't see how Lightweavers would work in terms of progression - I think we can safely assume that reaching the Final Ideal is hard for all Orders, so something has to limit Lightweavers. I don't think this is necessarily the best way to phrase it but it seems like (for Lightweavers at least), the more broken you are the more you can potentially progress.

[Willow]

8 minutes ago, kari-no-sugata said:

Funnily enough, I had wanted to squeeze in a question to Brandon that referenced that quote (but I was starting to over-stay my welcome). I wanted to ask if Lightweavers can only progress as far as the number of (sufficiently deep) secrets they have. Eg, if you have just 1 deep secret then you'll forever be stymied at the 2nd Ideal. It kinda makes sense to me, else I don't see how Lightweavers would work in terms of progression - I think we can safely assume that reaching the Final Ideal is hard for all Orders, so something has to limit Lightweavers. I don't think this is necessarily the best way to phrase it but it seems like (for Lightweavers at least), the more broken you are the more you can potentially progress.

My next Truth is: 'I'm starting to grow envious of the other Lightweavers progressing faster than me, and it's affecting my professional relationships with my fellow Radiants, as well as my relationship with my spren.' There, progression.

Edited November 28, 2017 by Willow

[Rainier]

1 hour ago, Awesomness said:

I think she is slower to progress because her oaths/truths are so tied with her mental state;

Wait, I thought that Shallan was already level 4 at the start of book 2. I seem to recall WoB that Shallan was one level over Kaladin at the end of book 2, and the last time we saw her speak any truths was when she soulcast the goblet to blood in book 1.

So she's not slower to progress, she's much faster to progress, but is having trouble maintaining her progress and backsliding, which I think she started pretty much immediately after waking up from that incident.

Kaladin still doesn't have level 4, and unless you're going to argue that Dalinar jumped levels 3, 4, and 5 in about 90 seconds at the end of Oathbringer, neither does he. 

 

54 minutes ago, kari-no-sugata said:

Eg, if you have just 1 deep secret then you'll forever be stymied at the 2nd Ideal. It kinda makes sense to me, else I don't see how Lightweavers would work in terms of progression

I think that if you only have 1 deep secret, you simply won't attract Cryptics. Makes enough sense to me. It's also not just secrets, but self-awareness. You don't have to have deep secrets to constantly lie to yourself about yourself.

For a moment I got excited thinking about what kinds of secrets Elhokar was hiding, but it's more likely that his progression would have been acknowledging that he's a bad king and confronting his own self-image.

[Greywatch]

Hey Rainier, I merged your posts together. Remember that the plus sign button is Multi-Quote, and you can edit your posts to add things in, so as to avoid double-posting.

[FuzzyWordsmith]

3 hours ago, kari-no-sugata said:

The reason I rushed out earlier was to go meet Brandon so I have a fresh set of WoBs:

I was always planning to ask some questions about Shallan at the end of Oathbringer. (Unfortunately, I am dead tired today so my memory isn't too good). Question 3 is highly relevant to this thread, though question 2 is also relevant.

So, I just saw this. I'm really sad now. Like, really sad. Everything till this point was looking like we finally had a realistic depiction of a character with OSDD. Just like we had a realistic depiction of depression in Kaladin. If this is what he means, if she is genuinely better and the real Shallan at the end of OB while every bit of real life evidence points to her having moved backwards, then I have lost most of my faith in Sanderson as an author. I'll read SA 4, but depending on how that goes, I may drop SA. Hell, if he does something similar in his other series, I might end up dropping the Cosmere as a whole. This was really disheartening. I'm sorry if I offend anyone with this post, but as someone who has experienced OSDD, this really hurts coming from one of my favourite authors.

[Awesomness]

2 hours ago, Rainier said:

Wait, I thought that Shallan was already level 4 at the start of book 2. I seem to recall WoB that Shallan was one level over Kaladin at the end of book 2, and the last time we saw her speak any truths was when she soulcast the goblet to blood in book 1.

So she's not slower to progress, she's much faster to progress, but is having trouble maintaining her progress and backsliding, which I think she started pretty much immediately after waking up from that incident.

Kaladin still doesn't have level 4, and unless you're going to argue that Dalinar jumped levels 3, 4, and 5 in about 90 seconds at the end of Oathbringer, neither does he. 

Sorry. I ment her progress regarding her "brokenness". We see Kaladin slowly overcoming his depression, and Dalinar finding / redeeming / forgiving himself, but Shallan seems to be making baby steps with her coping mechanism, and by the end of OB she is still worse than before the 4th truth.

Yes, Shallan is 4th level as a radiant, but doesn't manifest her advanced abilities. I think it may be because she said the truth but didn't mean it, instead she tried to bury those memories (If you say an oath but you don't mean it, its like you never said it or worse).

I half believe Dalinar jumped 3 oaths in 90 seconds anyway, but that´s for another topic.

[Andvari]

On 11/27/2017 at 4:20 PM, Ookla the Idiopathic said:

Hmm, I think it’s pretty clear that Shallan still has a loooong way to go, and it will end either in tears or in a Crowning Moment of Awesome. She hasn’t had that yet - unlike Kaladin/Dalinar. 

 

On Adolin with Shallan. He’s not fixed her, and he’s not fixing her. He’s not her cure - he’s her Tylenol. He helps her, makes things hurt less, and makes things better/easier for her, but he doesn’t and hasn’t cured her. 

As Tylenol, he’s both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he helps her understand, function and survive. A curse in that she doesn’t need Tylenol, she needs surgery and she needs to want it. Adolin may take away her need/desire to actually heal, as she’s able to function around him. This is very dangerous. 

 

I suspect that Shallan has a lot of work to do, and will get her CMOA where she actually confronts and deals with her problems. And it won’t be because of Adolin fixing her. (As much as I like Adolin. Not as much as @maxal, but I think he’s pretty great and want to see more of his own character growth). 

Shallan's journey in this book really confused/worried me. She continued to push the truth below the surface (Kaladin killing her brother, her association with the Ghostbloods, multiple personality disorder), and rushing into a MARRIAGE at the end was a terrible way to "resolve" her crisis! Additionally, she has separated two core parts of who she is (Veil and Radiant), from herself and we have no evidence that she's even allowing them to advise her decisions. Is this kind of haste truly something BS thinks is a good idea in real life? It felt so forced and weird. The next book had better begin with some kind of wedding-day catastrophe, like Aladdin or the 2nd Pirates movie.

[Prelude]

So looks like Shallan/Veil/Radiant will continue in SA4. I’m so nervous about this.  Will BS normalize this behavior and we are to just be ok with the way Shallan and Andolin are handling  it. Why does it feel I’m in the minority thinking all stinks. Where there was anticipation with Oathbringer now there is just trepidation for SA4. I won’t be ok with this even if everything else is Stormlight. 

[Calderis]

I feel like I'm intruding here, but Shallan isn't done growing yet, and that's clear in both the text and Brandon's response. 

Insinuating that Shallan as she is at the end of the book is somehow going to be the "new normal" is wrong. 

She did step backwards in this book. Look into the way therapy works, and most problems get worse before they get better. That's exactly what's happening with her.

[Guest]

I'd have rather had posted it this in the now (still) locked KSA discussion thread, because it will heavily refer to the romantic subplot in Oathbringer, but since Sanderson has chosen to knot those two plot threads together anyway... Yeah, I don't know where else I should put it.

---

Let me preface this with: Everybody is entitled to their opinion and I, by no means, want to forbid someone from having it.

That said, I was reading the Beta Reader AMA on reddit and @Harbour asked the general sentiment of the romantic "angle" (I don't dare to call it triangle anymore) in Oathbringer. There I have read, that Sanderson even convinced some very convicted Shalladin supporters with it. And I'm constantly thinking to myself... What am I missing? Why am I not satisfied with it? And then I read another comment regarding that by a Beta Reader, that stated, that it was because Adolin was good for her because he had "seen" her and Kaladin was bad for her because he encouraged her to "hide".

That was when it hit me.

See, the reason why I always liked our main characters in SLA was because they were realistic in that they had real-world problems and I commend Sanderson for being brave enough to incorporate such difficult topics like depression and now OSDD into his characters and even pull it off! Kaladin's arc in Oathbringer was met with some criticism, but it was realistic. It made sense.

What annoys me so much is, that the romance between Adolin and Shallan is being interwoven with Shallan's main arc. My main worry, while reading Oathbringer and it became clearer and clearer, that Shallan has a problem with dissociation, was, that Adolin, or whoever she'd end up with, would be her salvation™ and save her from her dissociation disorder. And this is exactly what happened, as now confirmed by the WoB. I was so happy, when I read the chapter with Wit, because it seemed to me, that Shallan would work with Wit to overcome her problem and gain some stability. It would left her independent in nature, but now she is dependent on Adolin in that regard. And what is even worse is, as @FuzzyWordsmith already stated, that this isn't realistic and in real-life the state she is in at the end would be considered non-progress or even steps backwards, because she is pulling up even thicker walls between her alters. This is not how it works, which is why I've had been just as annoyed if Kaladin and Shallan would have got together, because "she banishes the darkness". It would have been just as bad.

Conclusion

This whole interweaving of Shallan's main arc and the romance is diminishing Shallan's character in regards to her independence. And this is what annoys me to no end. Also, it lowers the value of the whole marriage, since it makes it feel like a marriage of necessity on Shallan's side.

Edited November 29, 2017 by SLNC

[Windrunner]

My interpretation of the whole thing was not to assume that Adolin is going to be her crutch. Shallan's working on mastering her personas right now, and Adolin caught her in a moment where she had lost her control. While she was reasserting control, he recognized who she was at the core. My read of it was in that moment she realized that Adolin really understands her on a level that Kaladin simply doesn't and that made up her mind. I don't think this is leading to Adolin being the person that she needs to reassert her control every time or anything. I think that he'll try to help, and maybe even succeed in helping sometimes, but it's not going to be that easy. If in SA 4, Shallan is hanging on Adolin's arm to maintain her semblance of self, I'll accept that I read it wrong, but I really don't think that what Brandon is driving at here is the implication that Shallan is going to be dependent on Adolin for her mental health.

[FuzzyWordsmith]

3 minutes ago, Windrunner said:

My interpretation of the whole thing was not to assume that Adolin is going to be her crutch. Shallan's working on mastering her personas right now, and Adolin caught her in a moment where she had lost her control. While she was reasserting control, he recognized who she was at the core. My read of it was in that moment she realized that Adolin really understands her on a level that Kaladin simply doesn't and that made up her mind. I don't think this is leading to Adolin being the person that she needs to reassert her control every time or anything. I think that he'll try to help, and maybe even succeed in helping sometimes, but it's not going to be that easy. If in SA 4, Shallan is hanging on Adolin's arm to maintain her semblance of self, I'll accept that I read it wrong, but I really don't think that what Brandon is driving at here is the implication that Shallan is going to be dependent on Adolin for her mental health.

My issue is that this condition IRL is not about "mastering" the alts, it's about integrating them and accepting them as part of you. The Shallan he sees can't be the one at her core because that would require the other ones to not exist anymore and become part of her again. The fact that Adolin treats each one as a discrete individual suggests he doesn't actually understand her deeply enough.

[kari-no-sugata]

11 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

Alright, well this is pretty clear cut that we're supposed to see the end as a step forward for Shallan's development.  Makes me sad we don't see something more powerful from her when this step forward happened, but so it goes.  (Look at my acceptance coming through!)

ETA:  Thank you for asking these questions!!  Not excited about what this is saying about Shallan's storyline, but good to know what the author is meaning to do here, so really appreciate you asking!

Glad I could help others too. I was frustrated myself with how Shallan's arc was portrayed at the end of OB, but not because of where she ended up but because it was frustratingly vague (and one of the steps at the end was really hard to understand). If Shallan was in more of a mess at the end then the next book would probably feel more like a repeat of OB, which I don't think would be too exciting to read. Instead, we'll probably see new and deeper battles for Shallan to face, as part of her progress to the Final Ideal. I have no idea how much it will cover the "scars" (personas etc) she has picked up from previous battles and whether those will be becoming better or worse separately to her bigger problems.

Shallan is sort of the "quiet one". Her battles are really all on the inside - others generally don't even notice. Even her Surges are "quiet" (don't get a reaction during Part 3). In the final battle she's basically just standing/sitting there quietly - yet she's holding back thousands of soldiers and going through a huge amount of pain as a side-effect.

 

11 hours ago, Dreamstorm said:

Haha, I kinda think you're trying to read what you want to read in those answers   It seems pretty clear Brandon sees Shallan's ending as a positive development where she took steps forward and that was (at least partly) due to Adolin recognizing the "Shallan" her.  It bothers me to no end that our male leads get big steps forward by coming into powerful realizations on their own and our female lead comes to her realization by grabbing onto a man's hand.  I'm obviously a feminist so this completely cuts counter to how I want to see women portrayed in fiction, but these aren't my characters to create!

Yeah, it's positive development for Shallan but not purely positive and she still has some ways to go. She won the battle but it wasn't a decisive victory and she didn't come through unscathed. But overall she's probably stronger than ever before, mentally.

I have my own problems with some of Shallan's portrayal but she's not the only one to have been somewhat saved by love - Dalinar would have remained a "beast" without "beauty" (Evi).

 

8 hours ago, FuzzyWordsmith said:

So, I just saw this. I'm really sad now. Like, really sad. Everything till this point was looking like we finally had a realistic depiction of a character with OSDD. Just like we had a realistic depiction of depression in Kaladin. If this is what he means, if she is genuinely better and the real Shallan at the end of OB while every bit of real life evidence points to her having moved backwards, then I have lost most of my faith in Sanderson as an author. I'll read SA 4, but depending on how that goes, I may drop SA. Hell, if he does something similar in his other series, I might end up dropping the Cosmere as a whole. This was really disheartening. I'm sorry if I offend anyone with this post, but as someone who has experienced OSDD, this really hurts coming from one of my favourite authors.

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. I would be curious to know what specifically led you to feeling this way though (ie what just changed for you?)

I can't claim to have much knowledge in this area, so the following are purely my impressions as a general reader: My impression is that Shallan's personas were a side-effect of a bigger problem and not an independent problem, and while she made real progress on her bigger problem, the side-effects (her personas) are still there, and she also still has a ways to go in general. So perhaps her personas will independently become a problem in of themselves, or perhaps they will get worse as we start to get very deep into her personal problems (eg Final Ideal and/or what really happened in her early childhood), or maybe they'll turn out to be some kind of solution.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, kari-no-sugata said:

I have my own problems with some of Shallan's portrayal but she's not the only one to have been somewhat saved by love - Dalinar would have remained a "beast" without "beauty" (Evi).

I don't really get it. Dalinar basically was saved by Cultivation and not Evi. Evi was his guilt.