Kogiopsis

I am actually fairly certain Steris is not-straight. Not necessarily lesbian, but not straight (my current speculation is asexual. hecka ace. so ace. ace aro. what are relationships people are illogical and I want no part of your shenanigans I have a House to run). While she has never met Ranette, and I don't know that she ever will, unless she for some reason needs to acquire a gun, it is very unlikely they could possibly be in love. But I won't say you can't ship it! It'd be a cool match. Like... Spirk cool. Oh gosh, now I'm thinking about it, oh no.

 

edit: (I'm also running on the assumption that Marasi is at least bi, but also not straight, based on the trope that going to university makes her more "cultured" and exposes her to more than bland nobility default heteroness so she has actually had the chance to determine at least one part of herself for herself. It'd be a nice piece of character development alongside the illegitimacy issue and all of the emotional problems that stem from that).

I love all of these headcanons and am adopting them as my own (though any kind of queer Steris would be fantastic).

Gosh, what if they just... wound up as a little found family all living in the Ladrian house - Wax and Steris married for appearance's sake, Ranette living with them because she and Steris are an item; Marasi is a mature woman with a career and so has her own house but lives nearby; Wayne pops in and out but there's always a bedroom waiting for him when he's in town and sometimes he just shows up at breakfast and they all pretend nothing happened.  That would be cute.  

thanks, kogi! if I just start chanting "shasnah shasnah shasnah shasnah" similar to how I am over in the Steris thread, how fast do you think I can derail the convo.

 

You know, I'm pretty sure there was a post on... somewhere, detailing every piece of Shasnah ever. Wasn't that Feather's, actually?? Or was that one about Kadolin?

That was Badger/Stormfather's, actually!  (I keep trying to convince Gavin to write a Shasnah shipping manifest ala the Kalarin/Shallarin ones Feather and I did last fall, but ze is busy with unimportant things like grad work - pssh.  To my knowledge there's no Kadolin manifesto finished, though Grey is getting close.)

And I see no downsides to chanting 'shasnah' here; it's technically on-topic, right?  

tbh I am just going to ignore the overwhelming het in this thread because Shallan has seen Jasnah's safehand and other parts and lingered on them light blind it. Shasnah! Literally, I only voted Shadolin because Jasnah is not an option up there, though she definitely is in the series. Shaaaaaaaaaaaaasnah. Nooooon-monosexual couples please for the love of Harmony just accept that people are going to ship them and therefore please include those options in your fandom-poling. Please.

 

(shasnah)

Brings this back to the thread because I suspect it may have gotten lost in the lengthy debates, and it is a good point.  (and a good ship.)

Apology acknowledged; and in the interest of getting the thread back on track, I'm willing to drop the issue, since we're going in circles and each one gets more disrespectful than the last.  I'd be happy to discuss sexism with either of you in private messages, if you want to know in more detail what happened here or get a working academic definition of the term.

Because the initial post was a pointless digression off the topic (I admit to the irony). That alone wouldn't have necessitated a response, but the reply to king of nowhere's post (mistaken or otherwise, his intent seems honest) was incredibly condescending and ad hominem:

Actually, we didn't digress until king of nowhere's post, the way I see it - I made a request, was politely answered, assumed the matter was done with and we could move on.  Then I got patronizingly lectured, to which I objected.  Condescension for condescension; or does a two-paragraph explanation of what a metaphor is not strike you as condescending?  

(I also have a problem on principle with anyone who uses 'political correctness' as a derogatory term, since it's basically a euphemism for 'being respectful to others', but I know I'm not going to win that fight here.)

Edit: hang on, making people feel more comfortable in a discussion is 'pointless'? 

The phrasing, especially in context, does not suggest that Shallan is not an independent agent, merely that Kaladin is able to unilaterally decide that he will not pursue a relationship with Shallan. Mentioning that Kaladin may choose to do so without conferring with Shallan and choosing to do so due to Adolin's relationship with Shallan does not denigrate Shallan's ability to choose.

You know, sometimes UrbanDictionary is a powerful resource - if, for instance, you want to look up a colloquial phrase to see how it's commonly interpreted.  Like 'dibs'.  The first few definitions, to save you the trouble of clicking the link, are:  "to claim", "to call possession", "to express priority over an object" (emphasis mine), and "to have the rights to something, to own something."

So - yes, actually, it suggests that she's an object and that she's something to be possessed by someone else.  Moreover, it prioritizes Kaladin and Adolin negotiating who gets a shot with Shallan over the fact that she might - and does - have a preference herself.

I'm not sure why you're defending this, since the person who originally used it had no problems with my request.  If it's such a small phrase that I shouldn't be bothered by it, why is it so valuable to you?

...I believe that my interlocutors are enlightened people until proven otherwise, and I expect the same courtesy.

The only one here who didn't assume I understood what the phrase meant was you.  I'm a bit surprised that, with Traceria's mature, polite, and respectful response right above yours, you weren't able to meet the same standards of courtesy as she.  Perhaps reread it and take guidance therefrom?

...stepping back to let his buddy Adolin have dibs...

I get that this is just a turn of phrase, but could we not refer to Shallan like she has no agency in this?  Talking about having 'dibs' on a person like she's the last slice of cheese pizza is weird and unpleasant.  :/  

Agree with you here. It was a nice story, very well written, but it did not portray Renarin as an antagonist, more like a victim, which is quite different in my view.

Debatable, since protagonist and antagonist are defined by point of view.  In order to show what she wanted to, Feather had to write from Renarin's point of view - as, technically speaking, have most of the write-ups here.  However, were this to happen in canon Dalinar and Adolin would almost certainly be POV characters, and Renarin would probably not be - so in that case he would be functioning as an antagonist to the extent of the reader's knowledge.  (and while it would probably later be revealed that he had not in fact been antagonistic overall, killing Kaladin is - arguably - an antagonistic action at least in the short term.)

Haha, so it is!  Glad you like it, Melaan!

Renarin as a villain is so easy as you are right, who would ever suspect the quiet introvert kid?

 

Nobody.

 Or like, a third of the people on this very forum.  Do you know how many 'Renarin is secretly evil and plotting to kill Adolin/Dalinar/Elhokar/whatever HE'S SHIFTY WE DON'T LIKE HIM' threads and comments I've seen?

Too storming many, is what.

That said - Feather's write-up gave me chills.  Harmony.

Ohhh dear.  Shallan, not making a good antagonist?  Please.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two scenarios in which she could switch narrative sides -

1.  Pre-WoK

I'm surprised this isn't obvious to anyone else, but what if Shallan had begun the process of joining the Ghostbloods directly after her father's death, instead of trying to avoid them?  She still follows Jasnah to Kharbranth, but with two objectives - first, steal the Soulcaster; second, kill the princess.  Unbeknownst to her, Kabsal was also placed in Kharbranth on the same assassination mission, as a redundancy, so when Shallan fails to eliminate Jasnah quickly enough (she postpones it in an attempt to distance herself as a potential suspect) he moves forward with his poisoning plan.  It goes wrong in the same way it does in canon - though to Shallan's benefit, because Jasnah now believes her to be a simple thief caught up in larger plots, and she's not under any suspicion of Ghostblood membership.

Shallan, noticing Jasnah's exhaustion while they're aboard the Wind's Pleasure, uses the opportunity this presents to kill her in her sleep.  She then takes the soulcaster and transforms the ship to water as she does in canon, allowing her to cast herself as the sole survivor of the shipwreck and destroying all evidence of the murder.  She hides the soulcaster in her safepouch when she arrives onland.  Her overland journey goes much as it does in WoR, with the cardinal difference that Tyn is a contact rather than a random acquaintance, whom Shallan later kills in order to 1) gain the undivided loyalty of all the soldiers in the caravan and 2) be sure that she is a more important resource to the Ghostbloods in the warcamp.

By the time she meets Mraize, she's proven herself enough to become a full member of the organization.  Instead of petty tests, the tasks he assigns her are more high-profile: assassinations, information gathering, and causing general disruption to their advantage.  And as a LIghtweaver, she's perfectly capable of making herself appear to be anyone, so she can frame whosoever they please...

2.  Post-WoR

Shallan is actually really well set-up for a villainous turn at the end of Words of Radiance - she's just completely changed her own social standing, so all of her previous alliances are up in the air; she's got strong ties to the Ghostbloods, and they have several potential blackmail holds on her; she's questioning her own identity; and the character best positioned to observe and put a stop to this, Pattern, she openly admits to hating.  Moreover, the two Radiants who could keep her from turning - Jasnah, who could probably talk her down, and Kaladin who could oppose her best in a fight - will both be absent from Urithiru for an unspecified period of time following the end of the book.

In this situation, however, Shallan is more likely to find herself in a slow slide to villainy rather than a quick face/heel turn - though if something scared her enough I could see that too.  More probable is that, as she considers the questions Mraize brought up in their last conversation and her own wavering sense of self (is she Shallan?  Veil?  And how does she define each persona - is Shallan the Radiant, the sheltered Veden girl, the would-be scholar, the murderer?) she decides to continue her association with the Ghostbloods, in a bid to learn more about them.

Perhaps she comes to sympathize or agree with their cause, as her father did.  Perhaps she gets into a situation where they have control of her in some way - honorable Dalinar would hardly respond well to learning that she's been working with the group that murdered his niece, after all.  There are numerous situations in which she would have incentive to kill one or more of our protagonist characters - Dalinar, Adolin, and Renarin being the most likely targets - and then flee Urithiru with her soldiers.  Anyone she leaves alive (including the aforementioned absent Jasnah and Kaladin) would have motivation to view her as an active threat and hunt her down, and anyone related to her - giving Shallan more reasons to act against them, and in the interest of her house.

Hmm, I'm at work so don't have my books now...but I thought that the "destroyer" was from the back of WoR?

Nope!  You may be thinking of the Explorer, which did refer to Eshonai.  Here's the dust jacket text from WoR.

I thought that it was pretty blatantly clear that Eshonai was the 'destroyer.'  You know, summoning the Everstorm and all of that.

Can't be; she's not among the listed characters in that text.  The destroyer has to be one of the core 4 POV characters:  Kaladin, Dalinar, Shallan, or Szeth.

Granted, the rationale that leads me to think Shallan is a good option is founded on the idea that whoever wrote that is aligned with the protagonists - it could just as easily be someone with goals counter to Our Heroes, in which case their perspective on redeemers and destroyers would be completely different.

Honestly - though it's probably unlikely at this point - I'd be most interested in Adolin re-forging his relationship with Danlan.  I felt like she was built up in WoK to have a more significant role than she had in WoR, and I think it'd be fascinating to see Adolin work at rebuilding something rather than just starting over, as he had in the past.  (Hypothetically speaking, it could dovetail thematically with the theory about him re-awakening his Shardblade...)

I'd be thrilled to see Kadolin become canon, but I don't expect it in the least.  Most probable of the characters we know of is Shallan, IMO.

(By the way, props to OP for listing Kaladin as an option at all.   )

Going to have to disagree with you here. I cannot recall the exact passages, but there were 2 occassions where Pattern declares she "cracked" where others would have completely broken. She is fractured and damaged but not broken in the way she believes. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

I'd agree that she's not broken in the way that she believes, buuut I still don't think that makes her stable - witness the times when she effectively blanked out when Pattern brought up her past.  Shallan's estimate of her own brokenness is based on the parts of her background that she chooses to acknowledge, and may not incorporate the parts that she's still in deep denial over.

I also think that part of the contradiction of Shallan's character is that her unhealthy coping mechanisms are what have made her survival possible thus far.  She  managed, to a great degree, to hold her family together - at the cost of not dealing with her own psychological burdens.  It's a case of trading long-term gain for short-term benefit, and I firmly expect to see it come back to bite her.  (Actually, at this point Shallan is my pick for the 'destroyer' mentioned on the back cover of WoK - she's the  most ambiguously positioned, and it would be more narratively interesting than, say, Szeth.)

Somewhat tangential to the current debate, but I wanted to bring up a specific part of the chasm scene since DeployParachute quoted it above and no one's brought up a certain aspect of it...

 

 

He listened with wonder.  Storms.  Why wasn't this woman broken, truly broken?  She described herself that way, but she was no more broken than a spear with a chipped blade, and a spear like that could still be as sharp a weapon as any.

As readers, we know that Kaladin is completely wrong here.  He's buying into Shallan's facade, the one we've seen her put up over and over throughout the book - not the false confidence that they'll survive the chasm, as has previously been mentioned, but the way she resolutely and internally refuses to acknowledge and work through her past.  Short of Pattern forcing her to confront it she barely even acknowledges some of the most traumatic parts of her life, and even then she's never gone through a healing process, moving as she did straight from her mother's death to trying to hold the rest of her family together (and her mother's death was caused by her Radiant abilities, not the cause of them, so there must have been something even earlier in her life that 'broke' her initially).

Shallan is not a psychologically healthy person, nor is she guaranteed to be a stable one, for all she pretends to be both, and Kaladin's awe of her is based on the same pretense that keeps her from progressing by dealing with her past.  That's not healthy for either of them.

You might want to workshop the name. Kadolin maybe?

That's what the Tumblr fandom uses.  We're pretty good at portmanteau names over there, if I do say so myself.  (not that this stopped me from misspelling my own shipname for months - though I blame Feather for that, sort of, since I only portmanteau'd it in response to Shallarin...)

Actually, for reference - the most common portmanteau names we use are as follows:

Kaladin + Adolin = Kadolin

Kaladin + Renarin = Kalarin

Kaladin + Shallan = Shalladin

Shallan + Adolin = Shadolin

Shallan + Renarin = Shallarin

Shallan + Jasnah = Shasnah

Adolin + Renarin = Adorin (that one gets used both for the platonic and the less so, because it's so cute.)

Obviously what names you use for ships are up to you, but if you're looking for content across the internet chasm those are the terms most likely to yield results.

A lot of Brandon's stuff has parallelism.

 

I see the triangle of Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin repeating the history of Dalinar, Navani, and Gavilar. I think that, regardless of Kaladin's personal feelings towards Shallan, he will step aside for Adolin, who becomes more like a brother to him throughout the book.

You know, I've seen this idea around these forums a lot and I've never quite understood the rationale behind it.  What parallelism Brandon's work does have is rarely that literal/repetitive, and in this case that love triangle would be quite the plot tumor, especially since Dalinar and Navani have both commented on how bad a situation the first triangle was for everyone involved.  Brandon doesn't really go for the kind of frustrating, fatalistic dramatic irony of characters getting themselves into a situation readers have already seen gone sour.

I'll admit, much of my pushback against Shalladin is that I think it's the most obvious ship - it's the one I would have predicted from the back cover of WoK, and I've read too many bad Young Adult books not to roll my eyes at that kind of predictability.

Part of it, though, is that in the interim between WoK and WoR I've spent so much time discussing characterization and shipping with other people that I'm really invested in other alternatives - which is entirely a subjectivity issue, but makes it frustrating to read the clear romantic setup in their WoR interactions.  I feel like both of them have more potential for a truly dynamic relationship with other people - something more than just 'finding someone who sympathizes with past trauma, healing, and becoming a power couple'.  (I'm totally onboard with Kaladin and Shallan having a strong platonic friendship, which could have all of that same emotional healing without the messiness or cliche qualities of a romantic plot.) 

*looks around nervously* uh...ok..? I hope I have not angered her.

You haven't; fear not.

 

Me calling him a "thing" had nothing to do with autism, it had to do with my dislike of his behavior at the end of WoR. I keep reading Renarin autism only is one part of this character and yet if I pass a negative judgement on him I insult other autistic persons? My judgement of his actions had nothing to do with his disabilities. I will not use such an expression again but people shouldn't read more into it then there really was.

Dude.  Let me put this plainly.

I don't care if his autism wasn't the reason you dehumanized him:  you shouldn't dehumanize autistic characters/people.  I mean, don't dehumanize anyone, obviously, but especially those who are subject to that treatment in a way that literally threatens their lives. 

(and is it really so unbelievable that insulting a character would insult people who identify with that character and see themselves in them?)

Maxal, I think what may be going on here is that you're trying to apply behavior of children to an adult character - that, and the perception of autism from a parent/outsider's perspective is vastly different than the perspective of autistic people themselves.  This, among other things, is why most ASD people I know can't stand organizations like Autism Speaks, which has no ASD people on its governing board.  I don't know if you've had a chance to talk to ASD people who are, say, 20 or older about the experience of being young (and often undiagnosed) in public schools?  (Being constantly told to stop stimming, forced into social situations, constantly overstimulated with no way to control their environment, etc - there are reasons autistic kids aren't always on their best behavior around neurotypical kids of similar ages.)  It's a vastly different conversation.  

Anyhow, the point is - a lot ASD people develop coping strategies that let them 'pass' as neurotypical by the time they reach adulthood.  So no, Renarin doesn't act like the autistic kids you know - because he's an autistic 20 year-old, not a preschooler, and he's adjusted his behavior to allow him to function in the world as much as possible.  If you look for it like that, it's a great deal more visible.

(Also, tangential to this conversation but relevant to Renarin in general, I'd like to gently remind you that he actually does express suicidal ideation in Way of Kings:

 

"Then perhaps the monster would have swept me off the plateau," Renarin said bitterly, "and I would no longer be such a useless drain on everyone's time."

"Don't say such things!  Not even in jest."

"Was it jest?"

p. 281, for reference.  Obviously ideation isn't equivalent to actually being a suicide risk, but Renarin is certainly a great deal closer to it than most people.)

He is a character in a book and I am sure he is not offended I called him "a thing". Besides, it was just an expression. That Renarin is autistic is NOT clear in the book and I am sure most readers won't catch on that. The fact he is seeing the future is not something we know in the book either. All we know is that he sees. Period. No great explanations there and at the time of this event, we know nothing. So yes to the casual reader, Renarin's breaking down is sort of annoying, much like Shallan thought it was annoying. Not everyone reads a book while going through Internet to find explanations for everything. Most people just get into the story and feel how they feel as they read it. So sorry, but all you say is not obvious, not at all for one who is not looking for it.

.............

I don't know whether I've mentioned this?  I feel like I have.  Anyhow, one of my roommates is one of the people who has provided writing reference for Brandon re: Renarin - they wrote up a 4 page document about autism, anxiety, and seizures for him, and when we went to the WoR signing in our area he recognized them.

I mention this to establish my credibility, sort of, but also because of the circumstances in which this came to be.  See, my roommate and their then-not-yet-girlfriend were at a con together, and they'd gone to a dancing class thing, and dancing with their crush had actually caused my roommate to have a panic attack.  They wound up collapsed on the floor in the hall for almost half an hour, trying to calm down.  Thankfully, Girlfriend was cosplaying Hermann Gottlieb that day and so had a cane with her, which she lent to Roommate so that they could walk around.  Those are the circumstances in which Roommate met Brandon, and in which they explained how much Renarin meant to them as an autistic/disabled character: still shaking post-seizure, cosplay makeup awry, walking with a cane and human assistance to stay upright.

You don't know my roommate, obviously, but... you do know that they exist, or at least that people like them exist.  Moreover, it's not hard to see how shallowly autistic people are portrayed in media, as a rule; they're rarely more than a collection of stereotypes, to be mocked or pitied but never to be heroes.  They're not written as 'people who are also on the autism spectrum'; they're written as if autism is their primary traits.  Given that, it's no great logical leap to see why Renarin matters.

Renarin is different.  He's written with a great deal more nuance than pretty much any other canonically ASD character in media, and a great deal more respect.  Moreover, he's positioned as a protagonist and, very likely, a future hero - as evidenced by Brandon saying that he's going to be important enough, eventually, to merit his own flashback book.  (He's also referred to as 'a key character' in the acknowledgements.  Just saying.)  That makes him incredibly special and valuable to people like my roommate, who don't get to see themselves represented in fiction like this.

So... when you call him a 'thing', no, he's not personally offended.  But the people he's based on?  The people for whom he might be the first time they get to see themselves as heroes?  You better believe that's offensive and hurtful to them.  And really, we live in a world where parents who attempt (or succeed in) murdering their autistic children are offered sympathy by the media.  People's lives are literally devalued by our society because of their neurotype.  They're treated as less than human - and they you single out the only autistic character in the series to refer to as an object rather than a person?  That's pretty gross.

((Also?  Renarin's autism might not be obvious to you, but it sure as heck is to a lot of ASD readers.))

I've mentioned all of my complaints regarding Kaladin in fairly great detail before, so I'll keep this as brief as I can.  Note that I agree that the portrayal of Kaladin in WoR may be realistic, but it doesn't make him more sympathetic or enjoyable to read.

 

There is an immediate backslide of Kaladin at the end of WoK to Kaladin at the beginning of WoR in terms of his attitude.  His character arc in WoR is damnation close to identical to his character arc in WoK (the scenery on the path is different, and maybe he takes a couple different branches along the way, but reading from WoK to WoR straight through it was very super obvious noticeable and more importantly annoying).  He killed Syl because of his desire to hold onto his hate.  He is a hypocrite, in that he judges people based on eye color to at least the same amount as anyone else in the room with him.

 

In WoK, Kaladin's viewpoint writing was the right balance to keep me interested in him, rooting for him, empathizing with him because of similar struggles we have gone through; he was my second favorite character in the book (Syl, of course, being most favorite), the same with most people.  WoR didn't have the same type of balance.  On at least four occasions, rather than stay up reading later into the night, I saw it was a Kaladin chapter and closed the book to sleep.  I think that Sanderson could (should) have written his character arc differently than Spider Man 3. 

 

Did I mention that Kaladin killed Syl because he loved hate too much!?  Just because he later had an incredibly well-written redeeming scene where he saves Elhokar and brings Syl back doesn't change that bit--not even a little.

This comment is just fascinating to me, because all of the reasons you listed as making Kaladin less sympathetic are things I find make him more so.  I guess part of that is that I actually deal with depression myself, so seeing a fictional character struggle and backslide and eventually succeed through supreme effort really resonates with me.  I'd honestly feel kind of betrayed had Kaladin not still had all of those flaws in WoR - we've got too many fictional stories about how one success magically does away with depression and fixes everything.  (And as one of my friends said about his WoK arc, it's boring and grinding and repetitive because that's what life is like when you're depressed - the same applies to Kaladin going through a similar process in WoR.  Dealing with depression is kind of just... a thing you keep doing in perpetuity.)

As far as his prejudice re: lighteyes, I can't help but see a lot of parallels to racism in the modern world in that?  It's perfectly reasonable for someone who's been on the bad end of societal inequality for years not to trust those who've gained from the system, especially when (like Kaladin) they have numerous traumatic experiences as a result of that societal imbalance being used against them.  Kaladin's categorical hatred of lighteyes is misplaced in some cases (see: his dismissal of Dalinar after the duel) but we only know that because we, as readers, have perspective that he doesn't - and even the lighteyes whose POVs we've seen still mess up as a direct result of the societal privilege with which they were raised.  (See: Dalinar mistrusting Kaladin about Amaram; Adolin casually insisting that stratification is natural and not exploitative.)  Honestly, if I were in Kaladin's place and had been hurt by lighteyes over and over, I would be suspicious of them all too.

Note that I'm not saying that Kaladin doesn't have flaws - I think a lot of his arc in WoR was about exposing his flaws and exploring their consequences.  But I think that flaws, especially those with dramatic consequences, make a character more relatable.  I'm certainly not perfect, and I'd be bored to tears reading about protagonists who are!

(I also respectfully disagree that his redemption scene changes nothing; that's a scene highlighting character growth and pushing him forward into a new arc, and while it doesn't negate his previous mistakes, that growth should be taken into account when discussing him as a character.  It's reductive to pretend that either state - Kaladin at his most flawed or Kaladin at his best - is absolute; what makes him compelling is the way, like a real person, he moves between the two.)

I know. The problem with that is that if the levels were say, each 1 meter further out than the one above, Urithiru would quickly become 

a) rather squat and

2) absolutely massive, with the bottom have a radius of about a kilometre.

 

By my model Urithiru is already larger by floorspace than any building on Earth - if Urithiru was as described then it would be mind numbingly big. I already have a hard time seeing it situated in the mountains tbh.

The descriptions in WoR do suggest that it's enormous, though - I mean, they're housing multiple entire armies inside by the end.  And technically speaking, Urithiru is a city, so it can't really be compared to buildings in the first place.  'Absolutely massive' sounds about right to me.