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There are so many negative reactions to the Dalinar flashback. It was pretty much exactly what I expected. Really, he could have been much worse. I figured that archer at the end was done for. Recruiting him made the old Blackthorn come off as much more likable than I expected. I The first two books tell us explicitly that Dalinar used to be a brutal warlord. His portrayal is almost a relief. There are so many much darker roads he could have gone down.

Yeah, they said it was its spren. If she is going to become a Surgebinder, it's going to be tough for her to figure that out, now that she has a pet larkin.

I'd say that she does glow, even if she didn't in her Interlude, as when she sees Nalan glowing, she recognizes what is happening.

They don't say what year it's in, just that society was in shambles after something or other happened, and the barons got things in order again, after an indeterminate period of time. All of the currently reigning barons (except the Widow, of course) are the first generation, so this society has only been around for 20 years or so. The reason for banning guns was simply that the barons figured that a populace with firearms would make it difficult to maintain their absolute rule. As long as medieval weaponry is all that's available, the barons' highly trained experts will always be able to dominate whatever the peons throw at them. That makes perfect sense. What I think is flimsy is the notion that this edict would work. People have said, "Well, you get executed if you get caught with a gun." Okay. So? You used to get executed for stealing a horse. People still did it. And those horses didn't let you put down an unstoppable killing force at a distance. Like I said, I'm willing to roll with it for the sake of the show, but it's a pretty thin explanation.

I agree with much of what you are saying, but I think that your assessment of Jasnah is off. The image that she projects is so wholly devoid of vulnerability. She's trying to protect herself from something. Kaladin seems not too far from becoming a full Radiant--plate and all. Shallan is probably right there with him. The first hint that Jasnah has knows she has a Blade is when she emerges from Shadesmar with one, five or six years after first beginning to bond with Ivory. What is delaying her development so? The way she is so cold with everyone seems to indicate some kind of problem.

Double post. Sorry.

I agree with you to a certain extent, but I think that your ideas about agency are a little off. Everyone reacts to things in their past. That doesn't mean that they don't have agency, as much as anyone does (of course, moving into a philosophical discussion about determinism and such is really outside the scope of the story). What about Shallan? Does she lack agency? WoR is largely about her learning to move beyond suppressing her memories of a horrific past in order to function. And yet she needed that period of time when her character was largely defined by her past in order to build the personal strength to get past it. As for Jasnah, I think something pretty bad did happen to her. I don't think Shallan was imagining things when she saw something in her expression, after she Soulcast some guys to death. But Jasnah didn't turn into a weeping, ineffective mess or someone totally amoral, like Ialai. Instead, she became her own person. Sure, some of that is a reaction to events in her past, some is a defense mechanism--just like in all human beings. Now, I understand that having the story go down the road of, "Oh, she's just frigid because a man did her wrong," is stereotypical and does a disservice to her character. However, having her motivations grounded in things that happened in her past--some of them that were perhaps very traumatizing to her--doesn't cheapen the character at all, if it's handled properly.

It's definitely them. Confirmed by WoB and everything. I just thought it seemed weird that Temoo is Galladon's alias, when it sounds almost exactly like Demoux.

Anyone see the premiere on Sunday? It followed The Walking Dead, so some of you had to, but I'm surprised to see no relevant thread here. I think it's a really promising show. It could almost be a fantasy series, if they dropped the whole post-apocalyptic thing and just went with a whole new society. While the reason they give for the absence of guns is pretty flimsy, I'm willing to accept it, for the sake of awesome kung fu sword fights. Thoughts?

Without getting too much into just how bad things have to be for a person for them to become a Radiant (though I do think maxal is right: some of us are overestimating just how awful things have to be), I do think something bad happened to Jasnah. Personally, I'd for it to not be rape. Alethi society is extremely reserved, in terms of interactions between the genders. We don't need something as extreme as rape to traumatize a product of that kind of society. Someone simply trying to take advantage of Jasnah should be enough to have deeply affected her, when she was younger and more naive. You know what would be interesting? If Amaram was the one who tried to make an inappropriate move on her. We already have some interesting drama with Amaram set up (both Kaladin and Shallan hate him, and there will be complications when they inevitably discuss that). Adding Jasnah to the mix could make it even more interesting. The text says next to nothing about what she feels towards Amaram, the one time she encounters him in the WoR prologue, except... Now, I always read Amaram meeting her eyes, then scurrying off, as him feeling awkward about Gavilar wanting him to marry Jasnah, when she wanted nothing of the kind. It would be more interesting if there was more there, but if he had gone so far as to force himself on her--that's just too much. Now, it might be more interesting if it was even more complicated. For example, maybe Amaram wasn't directly involved but one of his men was, and he intervened in such a way that Jasnah both resents and feels indebted to him. Anyway, just an idea.

I think there are some clear hints that we'll see Parshendi Radiants. There haven't been any before, but it has been mentioned a number of times that this Desolation is different than any that came before. Eshonai is an obvious candidate, but it would be cool if Rlain became one, too.

Lopen and Wayne, on a training mission shortly following their induction into the 17th Shard, with Galladon and Baon training them--that would be the best short story.

I'm not sure where the quote is, but I'm pretty sure that I remember a WoB that all magic users in the Cosmere have cracks in their spiritwebs that allow Investiture to get in.

I don't think it's fair to say that animated characters are generic, but one must admit that animation just isn't taken as seriously as live action. Some comments I've seen about the White graphic novel adaptation indicate that some people feel like we're not really getting the real thing. Sure, that's a little different, but it demonstrates that there are people who feel like a medium where the characters are drawn is subpar. Also, you know, I think Aramis Knight has a good Alethi-ish look. He's only 16 now, but I bet he could play one of the leads in a few years.

I've been formulating an idea based on ground up mushrooms, since Kaladin complains about soulcast meat tasting moldy. I was thinking it might be seitan-ish. Ish. I don't like seitan much.

I gotta say, Michael Pena as Lopen is a pretty inspired choice. That's not how I imagine him to look at all, but I think that he could play the character perfectly.

Also from Peter, "They have all sorts of different stuff. Not everything has been mentioned in the books." I think I'm being RAFO'd on onions, guys.

Peter says, "they do have stagm..." Not very helpful. We have to petition Team Sanderson to care more about their Rosharan foodstuffs, apparently. EDIT: About stagm, though--I want to say it's like yucca. Maybe potatoes make more sense, but I want it to be like yucca. So there.

I just tweeted him. Maybe I should try Peter, too. EDIT: Went ahead and did that.

Onions wouldn't survive. They might have them in Shinovar, but Kaladin and Hoid actually have a brief conversation about farming on the Shattered Plains. It's when Kaladin is guarding Adolin on his date with Shallan, where they end up visiting a menagerie. Kaladin rides in the driver's seat with Hoid on the way to pick up Shallan, and he's surprised when he sees Sebarial's farms. He says that he wouldn't think anything would be able to grow because of the storms, and Hoid says that it's a different species of grain polyp--smaller and more rugged. So far, we really only know how grain works. Fruits and vegetables must be similar, but we don't know anything about them. Unfortunately, none of the POV characters seem to particularly care. At a feast, Dalinar observes that he's eating an orange vegetable. He doesn't even know what it's called. It sounds like it could be something like a carrot, but it's hard to say (also, carrots wouldn't survive, either).

I think chapati is about right for the bread. However, I think that the bread should actually be fried in an inch or two of oil, not just in a lightly greased pan. If flatbread is the Rosharan norm, the latter is something Kaladin probably would have seen many times, unless they usually bake in something like a tandoor. The way he objected to the practice, though, a greasy fry seems more likely. For flangria, I think pork is the right meat. Kaladin is disparaging it as soulcast garbage. Now, crab or anything like that would be the real meat, in his mind. Chicken doesn't work because it's a known delicacy. I would say the loin would be the best choice because it's milder in flavor than the rest of the pig and would therefore better fit the book's description. Also, while it's prepared like a meatball, I don't think the pieces are actually rolled into balls (Kaladin does describe it as "chunks"). I agree that barley would probably be a good lavis stand-in. Does it say anywhere what grain is used in their bread? Maybe the bread would have to use barley, too. For the gravy, I would definitely go the curry route. Lots of curry on Roshar, it seems. Nothing terribly authentically Indian, mind you--I'm talking about regular roux + stock gravy, with some curry powder thrown in. I wish there was more stuff about what else they eat. Like, do they have stuff like onions? This recipe needs onions. Maybe it would all be chive-like stuff--onion grass you have to catch before it escapes into its hole.

I would include the interludes. I don't think any of the Cosmere-related stuff in the books is only an Easter egg. It will all become important. Game of Thrones opened with a White Walkers scene, and I don't think we saw them again for a very long time. It didn't turn viewers off; rather, it hooked them into the series. Now, I would intersperse the interludes throughout the episodes, not bunch them together. That works as a narrative device in the books, but it would be weird for a show. I would change them a little. The ardents' observation of spren would have to be shortened. The dialog in the Purelake interlude would have to be edited to make it clear that Baon, Galladon, and Demoux are worldhoppers (yes, I would include that: Hoid is a worldhopper, and his character can't be excised from the story without really messing it up).

Yeah, I didn't mean to downplay that. The battle scenes are pretty explicit in their depictions of the horrors of war, at times. I just meant to say that it would be hard to sell Stormlight as an edgy, "adult" show. There are long stretches where there is no fighting at all, and very little else happens that would be considered a reason to give it a mature rating. Of course, that's not a bad thing; I was just saying it seems necessary for trying to sell a cartoon that isn't for kids. I guess the first episode would be intense, with the Final Desolation and Kaladin's battle for Amaram, and people might not realize that it didn't continue to be so gritty and grim. I don't think that it would be necessary to do that for a live-action show. With Game of Thrones' popularity, I could see people thinking that a fantasy show would have to be all grimdark to succeed, but MTV's Shannara show doesn't look like it's going that direction.

Even if it wasn't marketed to children, the fact is that in the US market, animation is generally regarded as being for children. The only popular exceptions are comedies. Sure, people will allow for anime, too, but I really don't think that anime is right for Stormlight. I don't know what it is about anime, but when I watch anime that is clearly in the genre of epic fantasy, it doesn't feel like epic fantasy to me. I would be okay with high-quality animation that was not anime, but would the general market take it seriously? The whole marketing campaign would have to be all about how this is a serious cartoon, and that would be difficult. Any exception to the "cartoons-are-for-kids" rule is always full of adult content to prove how not-for-kids they are. Sure, there's violence in Stormlight, and there are scenes that could contain nudity (but those are just bathing scenes, where it really isn't necessary to show anything and would seem gratuitous if you did), but the story isn't characterized by it. There would be a number of episodes that would really just be PG- or even G-rated. With a property like The Stormlight Archive, where there's already a ton of stuff that will confuse the uninitiated, you really don't want to spend your advertising dollars convincing people that the show isn't for kids. You want to spend that money explaining why this very complicated and immersive world is worth the average viewer's time. Anyway, I think SA would work just fine as a live action TV show. So far, a decent amount of time has passed over the course of each book, so you could do, say, 10 seasons or so and not have the aging actors look weird. Now, something like The Wheel of Time, you might have to animate it. The whole story (with the exception of the prequel), all 14 books of it, happens over the course of 3 years, tops. Almost every main character is 17-19 years old, and it would quickly become very difficult to hide actors' aging, as the series stretched over the years.