shawnhargreaves

"Let me count the pages.... ok one more chapter" Been there so many times :-)

I like this line of thinking. Fits well with what little we know of the Heralds, who are not only the key figures in Vorinism but also shown to be capable of repeated deaths that seem completely real and yet don't stick long term. How better to explain this than the the Heralds really do die, move on to somewhere afterlife-y, yet are able to return from the afterlife to the physical realm on Roshar?

I like the approach you've taken here, but am not convinced by the details. In particular reusing 5 for both Honor and Endowment, and combining via multiplication in most places but addition in one, just don't feel right to me.

I'm not sure it's as simple as they need stormlight to grow. My guess the growing part happens pretty much the usual way (eat food, metabolize it, grow bigger) and the role of the gemheart is to give them extra strength so their bodies won't collapse once they grow past a certain size. This exempts them from usual physical limits as to how much weight a skeleton can support, how far a circulatory system can pump blood, etc. So if you deprived one of stormlight, I think it would keep growing but then eventually die.

A giant glowing glyph appears in the air as Feather speaks the First Ideal of the Order of the Traveling Splintercasters: "I will keep up on these edits, even amidst travelling"...

FWIW I'm really looking forward to a Szeth book. He's a crazy character with a very interesting backstory that I want to learn more about.

Very true that Brandon does an unusually good job of keeping a character interesting through more than one chapter of them being statically locked up in prison. But this comment makes me wonder, have you read Mordant's Need by Stephen Donaldson? If not you should, firstly because it's a great couple of books (I so want to hear a Splintercast reaction to King Joyce in book 2!) but also because of how many key scenes and important character developments happen while one person or another is behind bars. Very impressive writerly display of using imprisonment as a metaphor for shifting power dynamics and internal psychological states.

Feather, serious kudos on continuing to struggle with your computer issues all the way through chapter 57! I think I would have given up and just read the book :-)

I like many things about this theory. How would ancient Parshendi have gotten their hands on so much Odium power in the first place, though?

It seems pretty clear that you need both attributes. Right qualities to attract a spren in the first place, plus a cracked soul for the spren to bond with once it arrives. There are plenty of people who could count as cracked (eg. Roshone) but clearly lack the necessary character. But I don't think it's as simple as being a "good" character, as we have seen that each Radiant order values different aspects and at least in the past have violently disagreed about goals and fought with each other. The defining characteristic seems to be to focus obsessively on the right narrowly defined objective - things which in moderation are clearly good but could become harmful when taken to excess (eg. Skybreakers).

I've suspected this for a while, but it's just a gut feeling without a lot of evidence to back it up. Thanks to those who collected some of the relevant quotes! Ugh to the idea of it being Gavilar, though. Just, ugh. I don't think it fits. Not convinced by Sadeas, either. Jasnah's writings about him don't fit that, plus it would be narratively disappointing if we learn in some future book about terrible backstory involving someone who's already dead. No chance of closure for Jasnah there. My nomination: Amaram. Old family friend who everyone thinks is the most honorable upright paragon imaginable, but we know he's actually a slimy villain, and Jasnah is the only character other than Kaladin who dislikes him (for reasons that are not explained). It fits.

I have glowing that needs to be done.

The meme may die, but Stick will remain. Always has been, always will be.... a Stick!

Wait, are you saying that dumb jokes do not always get funnier after excessive repetition? mmmm, this humor thing you humans use is strange and hard to understand, mmmm

(in case it's not obvious, this was not a serious post) But they are both A Stick.

WoK chapter 42: Wow! Stick was in WoK as well as WoR!! Stick was hiding under Shallan's bed!!! She knew he was there!!!! She's been trying to Soulcast Stick all this time!!!!! Clearly Stick is even more important than we had already realized.

Oh, I know. My imagination is fully up to this task :-)

If you pace this just right, you could finish posting the last WoR chapter the day before Brandon's next book comes out. I think he's prolific enough to keep up with you. Because you are going to continue doing this for all future Brandon novels until the end of time, right? :-)

Awesome explanation, thanks for taking the time to write this up! Do you think anyone really has an innate ability to comprehend social context, though? I suspect this is something everyone has to learn, and it's just that some of us learn it faster than others. I'm not autistic, but was way behind most of my peers in figuring social stuff out :-)

Good question! I definitely think you are on to something with Shallan's power of visual memory and using "lies" (deliberately positive reinterpretations of how she sees other people) to effect transformation. I think that's more to do with her Radiant powers, though (in some way we don't yet understand as it isn't simple Surgebinding) rather than a remnant of her abuse. I wouldn't call myself an expert on this, though. I have second hand experience where people close to me have been affected by issues not identical but related to what Kaladin, Shallan, and Renarin go through, so I know enough to recognize when a portrayal feels right, but I haven't studied any of this in detail. My knowledge of PTSD is third hand from reading about it and talking to others. (odd - I felt uncomfortable writing that paragraph, like I was betraying confidences about my friends and family, even though I left out anything that could even remotely be considered identifying information) Just the same as how neurotypical (whatever that even means!) people are infinitely varied in their character and personalities. An interesting point brought up earlier in this thread is how Shallan is different from Kaladin and Renarin in that her issues are a result of abuse rather than an original part of her. This got me thinking about Stormlight healing and its relationship to the Cognitive side of things. We know Stormlight can perform amazing healings, but only when this fits the self-image of the individual. Lopen can regrow his missing arm because he always imagined it was still there. But Kaladin cannot get rid of his slave brand because he considers that a part of himself (random prediction for future books: Kaladin will eventually have some kind of epiphany and eject that branding, after which Gaz will use Shallan-squire powers to heal his missing eye...) So could Kaladin heal his depression, or Renarin his autism? So far it looks like not, and I hope it stays that way. These things are a fundamental part of who they are, not some external attribute that could be removed while leaving the same person behind. I don't ever want to read a scene where Renarin uses his newfound Radiant powers to "fix" himself. It's really, really hard to be him, but he's wonderful just the way he is! (and yes, I am projecting attitudes about my real world loved ones here). And what about Shallan? She wasn't born that way - it was done to her, so could it be undone? We know Cosmere magic can retroactively change the past (Forging) but when you Forge a person, the result is not the same person you started with. A Shallan who had a happy childhood with two loving parents would not be the same Shallan we know and love today. Assuming she gets the power to "fix" this part of herself, would she do it? Should she? This ties in with the end goal of a lot of abuse survivor counseling. An crucial early step is to stop repressing the memories of abuse, but just remembering what happened is not enough to be healthy and balanced. It is hugely desirable to reach the point where you are able to say that, although something horrific happened in the past and of course you are not glad about that, you do like the person you have become today, and that person is a direct result of all the experiences which led up to becoming who they are. Incredibly hard thing to accept, but incredibly liberating once done. How amazing would it be if Shallan someday understands how to heal her past, but decides not to do it and instead speaks a Truth, "these experiences made me who I am, and I like who I am"?

Well said!

This is a common reaction from people who are not familiar with clinical depression, and in some ways I think one of the harder things for sufferers to deal with. Well ok, that's not true - the depression itself is the hardest thing :-) but this kind of reaction from friends, co-workers and bosses doesn't help. It's a natural enough response in many ways. Depressed people don't look sick in any physical way - they're just really, really sad. So why won't they cheer up? You want to tell them they are being silly, everything is fine, it's all in their head... But what's going on inside their head is extremely, horrifically real. In many (most?) cases there is a physical problem where chemical imbalance prevents neurotransmitters from functioning correctly. Other times the root cause may be psychological or something we don't understand yet. I've had this described to me as a crushing black weight of hopelessness which makes it impossible to care about anything or focus on any thoughts other than an endless loop of self-reinforcing negativity. Shaking someone who is going through this is unlikely to help them much :-)

I think you are misinterpreting that comment. Leinton actually made a couple of different points: Since the text does not explicitly say anything about whether Kaldin experiences same sex attraction, it's not accurate to jump to the conclusion he does not. There are more possible outcomes than just straight or gay. The statement "he likes women, so cannot be gay" is ignoring many other valid possibilities

Take an upvote from me. A "cracked soul" is necessary for bonding with a spren, but I don't think that is what attracts the spren in the first place. Some pretty serious virtue is also needed. People who are "merely" broken won't attract spren in the first place. People who have the right virtue but without cracks will attract spren, but then not be able to bond it. Not sure I'd go so far as to call the magnitude of brokenness irrelevant, though. So far we only have detailed backstory for Kaladin and Shallan, both of whom are seriously mangled! That might not be necessary, but it seems quite likely that it is.

The behavior of the bridgemen during WoK seems more like combat stress reaction (CSR) than post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). CSR can often be a precursor of PTSD, but can also occur independently. In addition to emotional numbing, PTSD usually causes recurring flashback memories of the traumatic event, difficulty sleeping, and hypervigilance, none of which match Bridge 4. Taln's reaction to Shallan using lightweaving, though... to me that had the feel of a hypervigilant startle response.