[OB] Does anyone else like Jasnah?

[goody153]

It's a fictional story so ridiculously talented people are fine but if it starts to not make sense that can destroy the suspension of belief quite easily. 

Confidence and perception doesn't grant to pure skill and experience. You can pretend to be the real thing but you can't do the things that the real thing does unless you are actually the real thing. One of shallan's chapters actually address this extremely clearly with her being Veil distributing food ending up a disaster since while she can pretend to be a street savvy she doesn't really understand the nuances that a street savvy knows because she is not one. Hence failure.

Perception isn't the the answer to everything. You don't suddenly become a great cook without cooking alot in your life.

Since if power of illusion is all you need and not really experience/knowledge/actual skill then you might as well put Elhokar's son or Navani or some random servant girl into the battlefield by just brainwashing them into thinking they're soldiers and expect them to be able to spin the spear in an extremely awesome way like Kaladin does without training them for years. Cause that's just a waste of time if perception can grant skills those skills anyways.

That's why we can't expect Kaladin or Adolin to suddenly have godlike scholastic throughprocess and knowledge by simply by them thinking "i could be a scholar" without the actual education and shaping of mindset that scholars get. 

That's why i would think Jasnah's sudden competence on a matter she shouldn't be competent if you really think about how her overall character should act.

 It's just a criticism that hard to ignore. Jasnah is still the female character i look forward to the most from Stormlight(after reading oathbringer). I mean other female characters are good and all but Jasnah is just so much more fun reading about than them.

damnation i didn't expect to write so much comment(or complaints) just because of her one scene(probably one line).

[Calderis he/him]

@goody153 I understand your complaints, and honestly, I would fully agree with them if we'd seen any extended swordplay from Jasnah.

But here's the deal. We saw her swing a Shardblade, which people without plate or blades can't block, through some bloodlusted people rushing her once. 

The woman that we have seen as coldly competent while under threat in the alleyway. The woman the knows, from experience, that she can be stabbed through the heart and heal it without issue. 

She has no need to flinch. She only had to time a single swing to pass through people mindlessly rushing her. 

I think your granting her greater competence here than she actually showed. 

Edited July 20, 2018 by Calderis

[goody153]

@Calderis I considered that reason actually since we have seen some Radiants like Szeth/Kaladin/Shallan can literally ignore the pain of getting wounded and continue functioning despite getting stabbed, arrow in the head, hit hard, slammed etc where they know from a fact that stormlight will keep them alive but then Jasnah didn't get hit by anything. It really bothers me that somebody who isn't combat savvy didn't get hit in response by soldiers trained their entire lives that scene was acceptable if it was Szeth since the dude is extremely proficient in combat and is used to reading attack/response pattern of people cause he fights people in physical confrontation alot but not Jasnah who has spent most of her time doing scholastic chores.

She didn't so much as take a spear in the gut or get hit by a blunt attack by one of them. Or even an awkward moment of struggle or some of the dead bodies hitting her. Or the weight of the shardblade being a bother. Nothing it's like she's actually Szeth who can outdo people with equal training quite easily.

It didn't make sense it's like seeing an average office worker running through a squad of policemen no problem. It was the level of difficulty that she should've faced that bothered me, it shouldn't have been that smooth. Obviously a healing shardbearer beats a squad of soldiers but she isn't really somebody like Kaladin/Adolin who is practiced in the arts of war so that shouldn't have been that smooth . It was a untrained(could be trained depending on the past but still) vs people who dedicated their lives in mastering the arts of war, it shouldn't have been that easy for Jasnah. There should've been much more resistance.

Anyways this is really the last time i'm gonna write a wall of text about this . Since i think i may overexplained the case why i think Jasnah was MarySue-ish more than enough amount.

Edited July 20, 2018 by goody153

[Vissy]

Shardblades are incredibly light, to the point where you can swing them without getting tired pretty much for as long as you can swing your unburdened arm. They are also long weapons, which means you can swing them without any real danger of being hit by the corpses unless you specifically try to run towards them and hit them. Also consider that Jasnah never wandered into the thick of the battle, she stayed in the outskirts of the battle where there wasn't as great a chaos. And when she did fight, she had others watching out for her so that she did not get stranded and cut off. Jasnah is not stupid; she knows that charging alone into a battle, even if one was a Radiant, could end up in trouble. She didn't do that, she stayed with her allies and dispatched small groups of enemies efficiently. It is not hard to kill people when all it takes is literally just waving your arm at them.